I don't know who I am. Or maybe I do know who I am and I just don... by Gayle Forman

I don't know who I am. Or maybe I do know who I am and I just don't want to be her anymore.

Gayle Forman

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Categorized in : Want Knows Who I Am

He gives me a little shrug, like, of course, why else? And at this point, I really have no right to be surprised by people's capacity for kindness and generosity, but still, I am. I'm floored every time.

generosity kindness people

I want to ask him where that kitchen is. Where he's from. But he seems guarded. Or maybe it's me. Maybe making friends is a specific skill, and I missed the lesson.

making-friends kitchen skills

Travelling's not something you're good at. It's something you do. Like breathing. You can't work too much at it, or it feels like work. You have to surrender yourself to the chaos. To the accidents.

breathing too-much travel

But then Mason touches my neck, to the spot on it where the cut from that night has since healed, and I pull away. He was right, after all; it didn't leave a scar, though part of me wishes it had. At least I'd have some evidence, some justification of this permanence. Stains are even worse when you're the only one who can see them.

cutting wish night

And this is the truth. Because I may be only eighteen, but it already seems pretty obvious that the world is divided into two groups: the doers and the watchers. The people things happen to and the rest of us, who just sort of plod on with things. The Lulus and the Allysons. It never occurred to me that by pretending to be Lulu, I might slip into that other column, even for just a day.

groups two people

I think you're the sort of person who finds money on the ground and waves it in the air and asks if anyone has lost it. I think you cry in movies that aren't even sad because you have a soft heart, though you don't let it show. I think you do things that scare you, and that makes you braver than those adrenaline junkies who bungee-jump off bridges.

air heart thinking

You meet people, you part ways, sometimes you cross paths again.... by Gayle Forman

You meet people, you part ways, sometimes you cross paths again. Mostly, you don't.

path people way

It's nice, this. The canal." He looks at me. "You." "I'll bet you... by Gayle Forman

It's nice, this. The canal." He looks at me. "You." "I'll bet you say that to all the canals.

canals nice looks

Every fiction has its base in fact. by Gayle Forman

Every fiction has its base in fact.

facts fiction

It doesn't rain every day. Just every other day. by Gayle Forman

It doesn't rain every day. Just every other day.

rain

Something special is ending, and you're sad, but you can't be that said because, hey, it was good while it lasted, and there'll be other vacations, other good times.

vacation hey special

It's the same thing that happens when I turn off a really good movie - one that I've lost myself to - which is that I'll be thrown back to my own reality and something hollow will settle in my chest. Sometimes, I'll watch a movie all over again just to recapture that feeling of being inside something real. Which, I know, doesn't make any sense.

good-movie real feelings

It's just accidental, just temporary. Until the next accident sends me somewhere new. That's how life works.

accidents next temporary

When you make such a large withdrawal of happiness, somewhere you'll have to make an equally large deposit. It all goes back to the universal law of equilibrium.

deposits withdrawal law

Leaving people to jumped conclusions is sometimes simpler than ex... by Gayle Forman

Leaving people to jumped conclusions is sometimes simpler than explaining a complicated truth

leaving sometimes people

I miss my father. I miss my grandfather. I miss my home. And I miss my mother. But the thing is, for almost three years, I managed not to miss any of them. And then I spent that one day with that one girl. One day ... It was like she gave me her whole self, and somehow as a result, I gave her more of myself than I even realized there was to give. But then she was gone. And only after I'd been filled up by her, by that day, did I understand how empty I really was.

girl mother father

I’ve since come to understand that the universe operates on the same general equilibrium theory as markets.It never gives you something without making you pay for it somehow.

theory pay giving

Accidents. It's all about the accidents. by Gayle Forman

Accidents. It's all about the accidents.

accidents

I am adrenaline slammed into inertia: a fast car stuck in traffic... by Gayle Forman

I am adrenaline slammed into inertia: a fast car stuck in traffic.

stuck-in-traffic adrenaline car

For the hundredth time tonight, I’m back with Lulu, on Jacques’s barge, the improbably named Viola. She’d just toldme the story of double happiness and we were arguing over the meaning. She’d thought it meant the luck of the boy getting the job and the girl. But I’d disagreed. It was the couplet fitting together, the two halves finding each other. It was love. But maybe we were both wrong, and both right. It’s not either or, not luck or love. Not fate or will. Maybe for double happiness, you need both.

fate girl jobs