The Perks of Being a Wallflower

by Stephen Chbosky

“Charlie, we accept the love we think we deserve.”

“He’s a wallflower.” And Bob really nodded his head. And the whole room nodded their head. And I started to feel nervous in the Bob way, but Patrick didn’t let me get too nervous. He sat down next to me. “You see things. You keep quiet about them. And you understand.”

And in that moment, I swear we were infinite.

Maybe these are my glory days, and I’m not even realizing it

I just hope I remember to tell my kids that they are as happy as I look in my old photographs. And I hope that they believe me.

First, I am very interested and fascinated by how everyone loves each other, but no one really likes each other. Second, the fights are always the same.

I don’t know if you’ve ever felt like that. That you wanted to sleep for a thousand years. Or just not exist. Or just not be aware that you do exist.

“I would die for you. But I won’t live for you.”

Something like that. I think the idea is that every person has to live for his or her own life and then make the choice to share it with other people.

So, I guess we are who we are for a lot of reasons. And maybe we’ll never know most of them. But even if we don’t have the power to choose where we come from, we can still choose where we go from there. We can still do things. And we can try to feel okay about them. I think that if I ever have kids, and they are upset, I won’t tell them that people are starving in China or anything like that because it wouldn’t change the fact that they were upset. And even if somebody else has it much worse, that doesn’t really change the fact that you have what you have.

And I was really there. And that was enough to make me feel infinite.