Before I Fall

by Lauren Oliver

The whole point of growing up is learning to stay on the laughing side.

A good friend keeps your secrets for you. A best friend helps you keep your own secrets.

When you’re young you just want to be older, and then later you wish you could go back to being a kid.

Here’s another thing to remember: hope keeps you alive. Even when you’re dead, it’s the only thing that keeps you alive.

dying is about the loneliest thing you can do.

Like there’s no continuity in people at all. Like something ruptures when you hit twelve, or thirteen, or whatever the age is when you’re no longer a kid but a “young adult,” and after that you’re a totally different person. Maybe even a less happy person. Maybe even a worse one.