Quotes by Robyn Schneider

The world tends toward chaos, you know, Cassidy said. You could too. Just write down a made up name, or even a fictional character. And the next person who finds this geocache, its as though things really hapened that way. You have to at least allow for the possibility of it.

It was like Latham: sometimes the point wasnt being the best, because it didnt mean you had the best life, or the best friends, or the best time.

How many beers do yall think it takes before one internationally scientist turns to another and says, Dude, bet you twenty bucks I can levitate a frog with a magnet? Sam drawled.

In AP Bio, I learned that the cells in our body are replaced every seven years, which means that one day, Ill have a body full of cells that were never sick. But it also means that parts of me that knew and loved Sadie will disappear. Ill still remember loving her, but itll be a different me who loved her. And maybe this is how we move on. We grow new cells to replace the grieving ones, diluting our pain until it loses potency.The percentage of my skin that touched hers will lessen until one day my lips wont be the same lips that kissed hers, and all Ill have are the memories. Memories of cottages in the woods, arranged in a half-moon. Of the tall metal tray return in the dining hall. Of the study tables in the library. The rock where we kissed. The sunken boat in Lathams lake, Sadie, snapping a photograph, laughing the lunch line, lying next to me at the movie night in her green dress, her voice on the phone, her apple-flavored lips on mine. And its so unfair. All of it.

Fine! You guys can all be beautiful snowflakes! Im gonna go over here and be an awkward snowflake!

But at the last minute, I turned left, because I never had before, and because I had time to go down a different road.

Sometimes I think that everyone has a tragedy waiting for them, that the people buying milk in their pajamas or picking their noses at stoplights could only be moments away from disaster. That everyones life, no matter how unremarkable, has a moment when it will become extraordinary--a single encounter after which everything that really matters will happen.

Steinbeck wrote about the tide pools and how profoundly they illustrate the interconnectedness of all things, folded together in an ever-expanding universe thats bound by the elastic string of time. He said that one should look from the tide pool to the stars, and then back again in wonder.

I climbed into my car and started to head home, my visor down against the glare of the sun. But at the last minute, I turned left, because I never had before, and because I had time to go down different road.

Why do they even call it that, saving yourself? Like we need to be rescued from sex? Its not like virgins spend their whole lives engaged in the sacred ceremony of being saved from intercourse.

Heres a secret, I said. Theres a difference between being dead and dying. Were all dying. Some of us die for ninety years, and some of us die for nineteen. But each morning everyone on this planet wakes up one day closer to their death. Everyone. So living and dying are actually different words for the same thing, if you think about it.

And so she ghosted on, in relentless pursuit of escape, not from society, but from herself.

And that was when I saw what Cassidy had done to herself: the gold and red ribbing on her sweater-vest, the matching stripes on her tie, the gray uniform skirt, and the navy blazer draped over her arm...Is that a Gryffindor tie? I asked.And an official Harry Potter Merchandise sweater-vest, she confirmed smugly.

Still here, Faulkner? Luke sneered.Still doing that terrible impression of Draco Malfoy? I asked.

Not at all, I just dont understand how the Arch Alchemist became mortal all of a sudden.Because he split his soul into seven pieces and hid them all over Justice City, Toby retorted.You turned our comic book into a Harry Potter rip-off? I spluttered.

Maybe I’d already guessed that the physics of us didn’t defy any laws of gravity, and with her, there was always an equal and opposite reaction.

To Cassidy, the panopticon wasnt a metaphor. It was the greatest failing on everything she was, a prison she had built for herself out of an inability to appear anything less than perfect. And so she ghosted on, in relentless pursuit of escape, not from society, but from herself. She would always be confined by what everyone expected of her because she was too afraid and too unwilling to correct our imperfect imaginings.

Everyones life, not matter how unremarkable, has a singular tragic encounter after which everything that really matters will happen. That moment is the catalyst - the first step in the equation. But knowing the first step will get you nowhere - its what comes after that determines the result.

“If everything really does get better, the way everyone claims, then happiness should be graphable. But thats crap, because better isnt quantifiable.”

“Life is the tragedy, she said bitterly. You know how they categorize Shakespeares plays, right? If it ends with a wedding, its a comedy. And if it ends with a funeral, its a tragedy. So were all living tragedies, because we all end the same way, and it isnt with a goddamn wedding.”