coming-of-age

Ryan had read half his book, listened to all his music, eaten two packets of biscuits and an apple, played seventy-two games of Donkey Kong, completing all the levels, and counted every Italian sports car they__ passed in the last hundred miles. Twenty-four hours of groggy sticky travel, twenty-four hours stuck in this overheated tin can on wheels, and he finally knew what it was like to be utterly and unendingly bored. He propped an elbow on the car window frame and stuck his arm out of the opening. Combing his hand through the slipstream, he let the cool air tickle his fingers as he watched the countryside stream past.

That could also be because at one point during the film, our hands found each other. And when I felt Michael's middle finger caress the inside of my palm, it sent a tickle up my spine, and the fingers of my right hand were soon exploring his left hand, and we each took turns tracing the contours of the other's hands.

Unfortunately, I am only myself. I am scared and alone and unsure, but I am practicing. I am scared and alone and unsure, but that doesn't mean I always will be.Like AJ repeating words, I can repeat being me, until I start to believe it.

If I'm going to fail, I want to fail trying.

The next thing Jordana says makes me realize that it's too late to save her. "I've noticed that when you light a match, the flame is the same shape as a falling tear." She's been sensitized, turned gooey in the middle. I saw it happening and I didn't do anything to stop it. From now on, she'll be writing diaries and sometimes including little poems and she'll buy gifts for her favourite teachers and she'll admire the scenery and she'll watch the news and she'll buy soup for homeless people and she'll never burn my leg hair again.

We love each other. You love me, you do._ His eyes beseech me to believe it, to remember it, to feel it.

And in the end, we were all just humans, drunk on the idea that love, only love, could heal our brokenness.

Sometimes we called one another by our future doctor names. We did it partly to be funny, but mostly because we liked it when people did it back to us.

She wasn't trying to overcome life, only to get along with it, to blend with the processes she could scarcely understand in a world that had permitted her no solid ground.

There was a dazzling intellect beneath the girl's sadness, she was sure - and it bothered Mallory to no end that it might go wasted on the world if Dawn could not be coaxed out of her melancholy.

Is it possible that that's all maturity is? Speaking better? Is it possible that everybody in the world, is just a dumb, stupid kid acting like a grown-up because they can sound like one and look like one? It almost seems easy.

not knowing what I needed to do or where I needed to go, I knew all the same that I was going in the right direction.

It sounded bizarre and I was afraid of what awaited me. We entered a town called Dobbs Ferry in Westchester County. We drove up a long hill past some houses and past a sign that read __elcome to Children__ Village._ __xcerpts From: Life of a Bastard Vol. 1 By Damien Black

Do you ever wonder whether people would like you more or less if they could see inside you? I mean, I__e always felt like the Katherines dump me right when they start to see what I look like from the inside__ell, except K-19. But I always wonder about that. If people could see me the way I see myself__f they could live in my memories__ould anyone, anyone, love me?

It's bewildering to me how you can just start chatting with a complete stranger on Facebook, and - next thing you know - it seems as if there's some intense connection with the person - or at least you feel that closeness and hope it's mutual

All of the crazy, risky, wild, dangerous, irrational things I'd been doing, like rushing through my firsts. I'd been wrong, desperate. Just waiting for the end." - Edie

Mel eventually gave up trying to talk to him and just sat there looking at him. There was not likely to be much to look at, apart from the red, puffy eyes, runny nose and the rest of the mess that was Kyle French. Certainly not the once good-looking young student that Mel had developed a crush on.

The terrible price of living, ain__ it? To live through others dying?