A Map of Days (Miss Peregrine's Peculiar Children, #4)

by Ransom Riggs

“Travel is crucial to one’s development,” said Miss Peregrine, her tone strangely defensive. “Until they have traveled, even the most educated person is ignorant. It’s important the children learn that our society is not the center of the peculiar universe.”

Every movie and TV show aimed at teenage guys made it seem like not having lost your virginity by the time you had your driver’s license was some kind of personal failure. Which I knew was idiotic—but it’s hard not to internalize that stuff when you hear it so often.

“There are many unpleasant and difficult things about being one of us. Learning how to negotiate a world of people who can’t understand you and don’t want to—that’s probably the hardest bit.

in. All my life, normal people had mostly baffled me—the ridiculous ways they strove to impress one another, the mediocre goals that seemed to drive them, the banality of their dreams. The way people rejected anything that didn’t fit their narrow paradigm of acceptability, as if those who thought or acted or dressed or dreamed differently from them were a threat to their very existence. That, more than anything, was why I had felt so alone growing up. Things that normal people thought were important, I thought were dumb. And there was never anyone I could talk to about it, so I kept my thoughts to myself.

apocryphally,”