Paula Stokes Quotes

Once I accepted the fact that I was bad luck, I shied away from group activities. And groups. And activities. I started spending a lot of time in my room, tucked under my covers reading books. There's only so much damage a book can do, and I wasn't worried about hurting myself. Accidentally hurting yourself is way better than hurting other people.
Sure, I got lonely for a while. But getting invited to slumber parties just wasn't worth the stress of wondering if I might accidentally burn down the house with my flat iron or be the only survivor of a freak sleepover massacre. And loneliness is just like everything else - if you endure it long enough, you get used to it.

Whoever said it was better to have loved and lost was completely full of shit.

Whether I deserve affection is not dependent upon how quickly I learn to speak fluently again.

I understand the impulse to downgrade your own issues when you're confronted with others who have struggled more, but you shouldn't invalidate your pains and experiences. It's okay to feel sad, even if you're not homeless, even if you've never had a stroke.

I've been thinking that when people break up there's usually a reason, and whatever it is, it's still going to be there even if we do get back together.

Where does seeking justice end and seeking vengeance begin?

Our "protective bubbles" - our houses, our cars, our friends, our online identities - might make us feel secure, but most of it's just an illusion. It's easy to get hurt, just like it's easy to hurt other people.

Sometimes being poor means having to choose between your principles and your survival.

No really, Lainey. Give it a chance. Millions of readers can't be wrong."
"That's like saying millions of boy-band fans can't be wrong," I mutter, but I flip through a few more pages.

I think again about the word criminal, how if it describes me it might also describe a lot of other decent people who made a mistake while struggling to do their best.

Lainey is hot in a prom queen kind of way and we used to be friends back in grade school, but that was two lifetimes ago. Now she's a varsity soccer player and card-carrying popular girl who hangs out with the kind of mean girls and douchebags who get killed first in horror movies.

People are always clinging to what they want to hear, discarding the evidence that doesn't fit with their beliefs, giving greater weight to evidence that does.

How will this stroke steal away my remaining dignity, let me count the ways.

Jesse stirs again. This time his fingers twitch. As much as I want to see him open his eyes, I can't be here for that. It'll make leaving him too hard. I turn toward the doorway and I'm outside in the main room of the ICU when I hear his weakened voice say, "Winter?"

I hurry back to the waiting area. Hopefully he'll think he dreamed me. Maybe he did. Sometimes I feel like I'm not even real anymore

I remember a time when all I wanted was a gun and to learn how to use it. I thought a gun would make me feel safe. I thought a gun would make me feel powerful. But right now I just feel . . . heavy. Like I live in this world of death and destruction and I'll never escape alive.

Well, my dads are always saying I'm the handsome one in the family, but it's always nice to hear a girl say it, too. Especially if she's under fifty.

Killing someone is different in practice than it is in theory. There are factors you can't prepare for, feelings in the moment where you'll question everything you thought you knew about yourself, other feelings that might follow you long after the deed is done.

Standing up for yourself is about more than flinging barbed-wire insults around. Its about picking your battles, knowing when to fight, knowing exactly what and who is worth fighting for.

How can something feel so crucial in the moment and then seem completely trivial after the fact?

How do you make me smile when it seems like there's nothing in the whole world to smile about?

When you share feelings with someone, or secrets, it adds a layer of complexity to even the simplest things.

A lot of kids think high school represents the best years of their lives, but others recognize that it's mostly irrelevant bullshit, and that life doesn't even begin until afterward.

My name is Winter Kim. Today I killed a man. Soon I hope to kill another.

The world is full of holes and uneven seams, wrinkled places that you can't make smooth, no matter how hard you try.

Why fight the natural order of things?"
"I guess becomes some things are worth it.

But my history isn't something I should hide from or be ashamed of. Everyone has dealt with things in their past. It's not our struggles that make us who we are, it's how we respond to them.

The world needs more beautiful things.

I don't make to-do lists, but if I did, today's would have gone something like this: 1. get drunk, 2. get laid, 3. go surfing (not necessarily in that order.) Noticeably absent from the list: get arrested. And yet here I am, spending my eighteenth birthday with my back against the wall of the Colonel's hunting cabin, two FBI agents prowling the dark with their guns drawn, both trying to get me to confess to the murder of my friend Preston DeWitt.

Because they recognize the only thing that separates them from us is bad luck, or making the wrong choice at the wrong time," the woman said. "Most rich people feel like there's a divide between them and us. They don't see we're all the same kind of human.

There's nothing abnormal about loneliness.

Not sure how you can get them to him without looking like a crazy stalker chick," Micah says.
"You think I'm a crazy stalker chick?"
"You're using an ancient war manual to try to win back your boyfriend. I think you're a girl who will do whatever it takes to get what she wants," he says. "Hey, at least you're committed.

Healing is a process, not something I can accomplish in an hour.

My lower lip trembles. I try to hold back the tears, but then for some reason I think of Sea telling me that first day after my stroke how I've earned them. I feel like maybe I've earned them again.

Or maybe tears aren't something you have to earn.

Enough with the apologies. I can't just forgive seventeen years of hurt all at once. But you can do better, all right? From today onward, do better. Not just for me. For my mom too.

I am not warm. That is why my sister chose the name Winter for me.

I remember the big gaping hole left by my dad's absence in the months following the accident. He'd been the one who went to my parent-teacher conferences, the one who taught me mnemonics to memorize the Great Lakes and the Earth's atmospheres. Whenever I did something silly, my dad always made me feel better by telling me a story from the firehouse about someone who had done something even sillier. Sometimes you don't realize all the things a person does for you until they aren't there to do them anymore.

Turning off the lights is like opening a doorway in my mind.

We wind our way up the spiral staircase and then down the long hallway that leads to his room. I feel almost like I'm watching the scene unfold from outside my body. My fingers are interlocked with his as he pulls me toward a moment that's going to change everything. We are ten steps away. Five steps. I can't decide. But then I do.

Rose lived the same life I did, but she doesn't have PTSD. No bad dreams, no missing memories. Sometimes I'm jealous that she seems to deal with everything better than I do. But then I'll catch her with this hollow look in her eyes and think maybe she just disguises everything for my benefit.
Maybe she's broken on the inside too.

That's one of the problems with nice guys. If They can't stand up for themselves then they won't be able to stand up for you either.

Sometimes I think I'm the worst sheep of all.

Nothing stings quite like an unanswered text message.

To me, Mother Nature isn't nearly as scary as human nature.

There is something intoxicating about ending a life, about wiping bad people off the face of the earth. But it's also a dark and deadly pull. After all, who am I to decide who lives or dies?

Yeah, history is just brimming over with stories of total degenerates evolving into decent human
beings.

And this time it's different. This time our bodies slide together like they were made to fit. This time Tyson doesn't have to tell me to look at him, because I can't stop. He is all that I see, every inch of dark skin, every curl of hair, every scar or tiny imperfection that all combine to make him seem…perfect. No, not perfect, but perfect for me.

This time it's not about needing an escape. This time it's about wanting a connection.

Sobs force their way out of my throat. I feel like I'm trapped in a disaster movie where everything is shriveling into darkness and ash. Sunflowers are being uprooted. Puppies are being trampled. Whole cities are crumbling to dust.

I'm glad you still have your survival instinct."

"We've all got something." I lift my fingertips to the exposed skin on my face. It's colder than the night sea. Cupping my hands, I blow into them, let my breath warm my nose and cheeks. "I apparently still have a face, which is good."

Holden vaults up onto the wooden platform and I step up after him. "That is good," he says, pulling me in close. He lifts his gloved hands to my cheeks. "After all, this is one of my favorite faces."

I scrunch my lips into a pretend pout. "One of?"

He grins. "Well, you know. I'm a sucker for the classics. Helen of Troy, the Mona Lisa, that - "

"Hey. The Mona Lisa isn't even hot." I give him a little shove away from me, toward the edge of the platform.

"Disagree," Holden says. "She's beautiful in her own way. That mischievous smile, those dark, soulful eyes, the way she - "

"Fine, whatever." I cross my arms. "But I insist on being ranked above her."

"Okay, okay," Holden says. "Yours can be my second-favorite face . . . right after that guy from The Scream." He pulls me in close again.

"You're such an ass," I say, as our lips touch.

Holden laughs. "My girl Mona Lisa would never be so rude.

Time doesn't heal anything. It's like drinking. The best it can do is help you forget, if you're lucky.

Jake Darby? Ugh." Jake Darby is like the villain in a bad teen movie - perfect on the outside, a
festering mass of evil on the inside.

But the truth is, pretending something didn't happen doesn't make it less real. it just makes 'me' less real.

It's strange to hear myself described as someone with a big heart. I've blocked out a lot of the memories of L.A., but perhaps in some ways the girl I used to be was better than the girl I am now. Now I feel so cold, almost incapable of loving anything.

But if you want him, you might have to fight for him."
I let my head fall to the tabletop. "For the love of all that is dead and Chinese, please, no more fighting. This army needs a break.

Accidentally hurting yourself is way better than hurting other people.

I go through memory after memory, looking for reassurance that nothing has changed, but it's like flipping through a book of stories I've outgrown. Everything has changed.

To us, reality is just raw footage: Unclear. Desultory. Too shocking or not quite shocking enough. It's ironic that making something more real involves making it less real, but Gideon always says people don't want real. They want the idea of real, which involves production.

I'm stronger with Cheyenne. Sure, I never settle for less than my best, but my best is better with my sister beside me. The realization brings me a weird sense of calm. Not peace, exactly, but resolution.

It sucks that it takes losing something important to make some people realize they need to change, but unfortunately that's how it is.

Beyond the snowy trees, the endless high-rises of Seoul have faded to a blurry gray shadow, but their presence hasn't dwindled. Even in the poor visibility, there's no denying that the city feels like the walls of a fortress, a fortress that is both protecting us and trapping us.

Who would vandalize a doghouse? I ask.
"Cats?" Bee suggests.

I like helping people. Especially people who deserve it.

I nod. It's true, but I wish it were more true. Usually helping requires either money or time, and it's often the case that someone without one of those things is also lacking in the other.

Oh for sure. He's a Greek god. One of the ones who tricked and tortured people for their own
amusement.

We're like magnets, you know. Only I'm spinning, so I keep pulling you in and then pushing you away. I like you, but then you hurt me, so I run. I like you, but then something makes things feel impossible, so I turn away. And you. You're so constant. Your orientation never wavers. You feel what you feel and you want what you want without hesitation or doubt. God, I envy that. I feel like if someone stripped away my hesitation and doubt that there'd be nothing left.

Maybe I could dole out the truth in tiny pieces that, once assembled, would make a picture that resembled a reality in which I hadn't done anything wrong.

So what if I'm right?" I dig in my purse for a few singles, flopping back to our conversation about Seth as if we'd never changed the subject. This is a thing I've found only best friends can do - press pause on a conversation and then press play again at any moment.

I'm afraid if she comes to visit all she's
going to do is remind me of everything I've lost.

Maybe that makes me a bad friend, selfish. I think of it more like self-preservation. I can't handle
more sadness right now.

Cheyenne strolls into the room wearing gym shorts and a T-shirt with a picture of a rhinoceros and the words REAL UNICORNS HAVE CURVES. I smile even though I'm still sad about Wheels. It's a gift the way my sister manages to find the very best T-shirts.

The best revenge is living well', I think.

'Right now just living feels like a pretty big accomplishment.