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“Don’t do it. Don’t go to that job you hate. Do something you love today. Ride a roller coaster. Swim in the ocean naked. Go to the airport and get on the next flight to anywhere just for the fun of it. Maybe stop a spinning globe with your finger and then plan a trip to that very spot; even if it’s in the middle of the ocean you can go by boat. Eat some type of ethnic food you’ve never even heard of. Stop a stranger and ask her to explain her greatest fears and her secret hopes and aspirations in detail and then tell her you care because she is a human being. Sit down on the sidewalk and make
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Mostly, as I’m sitting here in A.P. English, I think about the way my classmates are always raising their hands and sucking up to Mrs. Giavotella just so she will give them As, which they will send to Harvard or Princeton or Stanford or where-fucking-ever, to go along with their lies about how much community service they supposedly did and essays about how much they care about poor minority children they’ll never meet in real life or how they are going to save the world armed with nothing but a big heart and an Ivy League education. “Save the world in your college application essays,” Mrs.
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Yellow stands for sections that made me emotional
I’ll never have to go to a fake university and wear one of those standard college sweatshirts that’s supposed to prove I’m smart or something.
Orange made me laugh
If you could see that, you’d know that all of the pain you have to endure to get here, where you are happy in the future, is most definitely worth it.
We have so much sex!
he was always carrying this violin case—like everywhere he went.
I already wanted to kill Asher Beal back then, but I still thought I might want a future so I wasn’t really actively planning his execution, well not consciously anyway.
it was like he didn’t want to believe that he was being targeted for violence. It’s like he had to believe we were all better than that here in America. Maybe because that’s what his parents told him when he left Iran—America is better.
And I understood why he didn’t need friends or to be accepted at our shitty racist high school, because he had his music, and that was so much better than anything we had to offer.
since I’ve already made up my mind to shoot Asher Beal and off myself,
Once you understand how adults are controlled by the system, manipulating them is elementary.
“Why does he have to shake everyone’s hand every day?”
“He’s so fucking weird,”
And I want to pull out the P-38 and blast them both in their übermoronic heads, because Herr Silverman is the one teacher who cares about us and takes the time to let us know that—every day—and these stupid asshole classmates of mine hold it against him.
Red made me angry
Nazis and Hitler and Ted Kaczynski and Timothy McVeigh and Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold and Cho Seung-Hui
Research these names
Like how the kids the teachers think are the nicest are really the kids who drink tons of alcohol on weekends and drive drunk and date-rape everyone all the time and are constantly making less popular and truly nice kids feel shitty about themselves. But these same awful students transform themselves in front of the adults in power, so they will get the good college letters of recommendation and special privileges. I’ve never once cheated on a test or plagiarized, and Herr Silverman is probably the only teacher in the building who would write me a college-recommendation letter if I wanted one.
Herr Silverman dutifully stands by the door and says good-bye to each student as he or she leaves. I can tell he cares about everyone—even the stupidest among us. It’s like he’s a saint or something.
It makes a difference, let me tell you, even if the übermorons in my class don’t appreciate it.
There have been days when Herr Silverman was the only person to look me in the eye.
The only person all day long. It’s a simple thing, but si...
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That’s why people give presents, right? Because they don’t know how to express themselves in words, so you give gifts to symbolically explain your feelings.
Maybe you can keep it in your desk drawer and whenever you get to feeling like maybe teaching isn’t worth it anymore you can think of that crazy kid Leonard Peacock who loved your class and gave you his grandfather’s Bronze Star as a reward for being an excellent teacher.
He was confused, had no clue, which made me so happy.39
I don’t think I’ve ever felt better than I did at that moment, maybe because I’ve never made another human being that kind of I-will-joyfully-tackle-you happy.
It felt so fucking good making my friend happy. Like I was a hero.
“I just lit your balls on fire, Dad.”
Footnote
You can be the nicest guy in the world, but without Jesus in your heart, you are going to hell.
Jesus Christ!
Footnote
she’d drown a baby in a bathtub if it would make her look ten years younger.
If god existed and he created the whole universe, like these people believed, why would he need our help, let alone our praise? Why would he need us to serve him? Was god really both all powerful and emotionally needy?
a graduation gown.
shit you not—and
She literally just asked you about Jesus how did she lead you on Leonard? 😂
“Holy shit! I have to roll my grandmother over in her bed. She gets bedsores if I don’t do it every four hours or so. My grandfather does it when I’m at school, but he refuses to do it on the weekends. He says, ‘The weekends are mine,’ which seems mean until you know that he has Alzheimer’s, so you really can’t hold it against him. Okay.
God, I loved her so much
She said that in this really flirty way that made me even harder than I already was.
If god made everything, why did he invent sin to trick us and then hold our sins against us?
Leonard Peacock is such an intriguing man. He interests me and I will fall in love with him.
That depressed the hell out of me.
This man has me dying
Footnote is me
whose mother doesn’t even say a word when she walks in on her son and his best friend naked one day, but simply shuts the door and pretends it never happened.65
Maybe if we would just picture our enemies jerking off once in a while, the world would be a better place.
People pay for what they do, and still more for what they have allowed themselves to become. And they pay for it very simply; by the lives they lead.
He was trying to make us think about how life is hard and people suffer in all sorts of ways without our adding to their suffering to satisfy our sense of vengeance,
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.
“Not letting the world destroy you. That’s a daily battle.”
And how stories and objects and people and pretty much everything can blink out of existence at any time.
way—he’s just being nice to my face, but then when I leave he’ll tell Julius that I sicken him. I keep telling myself that Herr Silverman isn’t like that—that he’s good and understands—but it’s hard to make myself believe in Herr Silverman a hundred percent now.
