Front Desk (Front Desk #1) (Scholastic Gold)

by Kelly Yang

As I walked, I gave the butterflies in my stomach their usual pep talk—It’s going to be okay. I’ll make friends, and if I don’t, I’ll borrow books from the library.

“Why put a scary part in the middle of a beautiful piece?” I remember asking my piano teacher. “Because life is scary sometimes, little one,” he had said.

“We’re immigrants,” she said. “Our lives are never fair.”

“It means a mistake isn’t always a mistake,” he said. “Sometimes a mistake is actually an opportunity, but we just can’t see it right then and there. Do you know what I mean?”

I used to think being successful meant having enough to eat, but now that I was getting free lunch at school, I wondered if I should set my standards higher.

You can’t win if you don’t play.

“You know what you are in English? You’re a bicycle, and the other kids are cars.”

He said that if you break a bowl, you can put all the pieces back together, but it will never be the same. Water will seep through the cracks.

sometimes, you have to take matters into your own hands. And you have to be creative to get what you want.

“Don’t be sorry. Be better,”

“free” means! Free means innocent until proven guilty, not guilty no matter how innocent.

There’s a saying in Chinese that goes “Never forget how much rice you eat.” It’s a reminder to stay humble, to stay real. Just because you have an important job doesn’t mean you’re better than everybody else. You still eat rice, like the rest of us.

It was the most incredible feeling ever, knowing that something I wrote actually changed someone’s life.

in China, girls are kind of like spare tires. It’s nice if you have one, but they’re not important.

I always thought I was the one who needed her, that I was the barnacle to her whale. But it wasn’t one way. We needed each other,