She can smell him now, a smudge of unwashed skin, poverty, extreme loneliness. She takes the can, still holding his hand, unrolling it, running a finger across its weathered palm.
Then he did it a bit more. “I don’t understand. Who’s the good guy here?” There is not always a good guy. Nor is there always a bad one. Most people are somewhere inbetween.
He walked on angrily to school. He blamed Lily because it was mostly her fault, wasn’t it? He blamed Lily, because who else was there?
Except cleaner. And bossier.
And so he waited by himself, leaning against a stone wall away from the other kids as they squealed and laughed and looked at their phones as if nothing in the world was wrong, as if nothing in the whole entire universe could ever happen to them.
The world’s a dangerous place when you don’t know enough.
It was like looking into the most despairing kind of madness, a madness that only felt hurt and pain, a madness that therefore could only act in hurt and pain.
One minute I’m standing there behind everyone and the next thing I know, I’m between Matthew and Viola, I have my knife out pointing at him, my own Noise falling like an avalanche and my mouth saying, “You best take two steps away from her and you best be taking ’em right quick.
There’s peace to be found in doing something for yourself.
They’re fighting a war over who can be more peaceful.
Why did you butt in when it was none of your business?
He saved me from Prentisstown,” Viola speaks up. “If it hadn’t been for him–” “Shut up, girl,” says the beard. “Now’s not really the time for women to be talking, Vi,” Doctor Snow says.
But what good is being smart when you speak words and no one hears the ones you mean?
I am the Circle and the Circle is me.
But hell you make for yourself is still hell, maybe.
I want her so much, my heart feels heavy, like i’m grieving. Is this what they meant about that stomach feeling? They didn’t say it felt this sad.
Because nothing I did with Charlie ever once felt like that kiss with Jack.
Of course you are afraid, the monster said, pushing him slowly forward. And yet you will still do it.
We work so hard to get rid of them when sometimes they’re the very thing that saves us.
Although doesn’t really matter how many time you do it: you think it’s going to make your life less lonely, but it never does.
I’d heard there were some gay girls in senior year who were dating each other right out in the open. But not any boys. Its different for boys. I mean, everybody knows somebody gay – duh, it’s not 1980 or something – but not at school. At school, it was a secret, and you were on your own.