Dumplin' (Dumplin', #1)

by Julie Murphy

on the eighth day God created ranch dressing.

But she and Tim have been dating for almost a year and a half and she still blushes every time she talks about him. I don’t know how to measure love, but that seems like a good place to start.

All my life I’ve had a body worth commenting on and if living in my skin has taught me anything it’s that if it’s not your body, it’s not yours to comment on. Fat. Skinny. Short. Tall. It doesn’t matter.

“I guess it’s an awfully big sky not to share.”

I probably shouldn’t follow a guy I only kind of know down a dark road in the middle of the night. Because he could, like, kill me, and then it wouldn’t matter if I was fat or if my first kiss had been next to a Dumpster, because I’d be super screwed.

I turn the volume on the radio up all the way in the hope that it might drown out everything rattling inside of me.

But that sounds pretty unbelievable. Even to me. And I was there.

Virgin for life. Team hymen here to stay.

I guess the magic of being someone else is lost when you can never quite shed your own skin.

I think maybe it’s the things we don’t want to talk about that are the things people most want to hear.

being good at something didn’t mean you had to do it. Just ’cause something’s easy doesn’t make it right.”

I think you gotta be who you want to be until you feel like you are whoever it is you’re trying to become. Sometimes half of doing something is pretending that you can.”

life is not a river and we’re not all headin’ in the same direction.”

how is it that people can even pump gas or pay bills or tie their shoes when they’re in love? Or might be in love. Or are in love. Or are in between the two.