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Everyone gets an ending. Whether or not it’s happy is up to them.

hE looked around at hiS white walls, not seeing that hE alone held a string. hE would never reach up and feel the thread on hiS eyes. hE would never feel the zipper on hiS mouth.
“You are free now,” the voice said.
But hE could not hear it. hE could only sit in hiS solitary confinement. Watching the town. Looking for the next child.

Maybe it's all the same. Korgy and pants and YouTube and makeup and sweaters and junk food and sex. Maybe they're all just distractions from me. But right now, me feels okay. No chaos, no turmoil, no endless list of wants. Right now, I don't want for anything.

I want to scream. Or cry. But instead I just stare at her as an immaculate wave washes over me. A wave of recognition. Of peace. Of freedom. The peace and freedom that can only come from lowering your expectations of someone. From letting go of that person you wanted them to be, needed them to be, and in the letting go of that version, letting go, too, of all the resentments that came from them not being that version

It's funny, I thought our friendship would end dramatically, the insults we'd been saving up for years shot back and forth, lears and snot streaking our faces. But instead, the ending has been uneventful, petering out with almost no noise at all. Maybe that's how you know it's really an ending.

People who come from functioning families just don't have the same charge as the rest of us. Functioning families make for boring, favorless people who just go through the motions of life, never knowing what it really means to live it.

“A nightmare is nothing but a dream gone sick,” Christopher said out loud.

He remembered when he used to leave out cookies for Santa Claus. Christopher’s mother made delicious peanut butter blossoms with a Hershey’s Kiss right in the middle of each one.

Christopher went back to his bedroom and waited for morning to come. He would have read his books to pass the time, but the truth was that he had memorized all of them already. He saw them all like flash cards in his mind. Pages turning like generations from birth to death. Beginning to end. Trees to paper.

He just had to keep Christopher alive. He felt like the whole world depended on it.

I can’t tell…
I can’t tell…you what is happening, Mom.


It would…
It would…terrify you.

Carl went on to spew his trademark technical jargon. The sheriff always wondered why geniuses couldn’t talk like normal people. But maybe that’s what made them geniuses.

just remember…
we can swallow our fear or let our fear swallow us

It was never said that Christopher was in charge. But nobody questioned him. Not even Mike, and he was the strongest.
Somehow, children always know who the leader is.

Some people’s fake is more honest than other people’s real.

from the acknowledgements:

"And finally…
Emma Watson, who inspired the ending on the Perks of Being a Wallflower set
and Stephen King, who inspired everything else."

They’ve done a lot of good for each other. Really, she thinks, really. People can really change one another.

You should go, she says. I’ll always be here. You know that.

It’s funny the decisions you make because you like someone, he says, and then your whole life is different. I think we’re at that weird age where life can change a lot from small decisions.

You learn nothing very profound about yourself simply by being bullied; but by bullying someone else you learn something you can never forget.

Still, Connell went home that night and read over some notes he had been making for a new story, and he felt the old beat of pleasure inside his body, like watching a perfect goal, like the rustling movement of light through leaves, a phrase of music from the window of a passing car. Life offers up these moments of joy despite everything.

Since then Connell’s mental state has steadily, week after week, continued to deteriorate. His anxiety, which was previously chronic and low-level, serving as a kind of all-purpose inhibiting impulse, has become severe.

He often makes blithe remarks about things he ‘wishes’. I wish you didn’t have to go, he says when she’s leaving, or: I wish you could stay the night. If he really wished for any of those things, Marianne knows, then they would happen.

Even if the ballplayers were acquitted, he explained, they would “not necessarily” be reinstated.

There is no way to gauge the extent of the damage on the American
psyche. It is impossible to add up bitterness like a batting average.

There were essentially two kinds of people: those who worked for money, and those who simply took it.

As Jackson departed from the Grand Jury room, a small boy clutched at his sleeve and tagged along after him.
“Say it ain’t so, Joe,” he pleaded. “Say it ain’t so.”
“Yes, kid, I’m afraid it is,” Jackson replied.
“Well, I never would’ve thought it,” the boy said.

Chicago Herald and Examiner September 30, 1920

Gandil scored the fourth run of the inning. The crowd roared at Schalk to keep it going. But Schalk grounded to Rath, ending the inning.
It was over. All over. They were beaten. Twenty four White Sox players and 33,000 White Sox fans.

To a gambler, money in the pocket has only one real function—to be wagered—and, in this case, time was of the essence.

Chicago was ready for the World Series.
Only the ballplayers were not. At least, not those eight members of the White Sox who had met in New York’s Ansonia Hotel ten days earlier.

On September 21, the eight ballplayers assembled after dinner in Chick Gandil’s room at the Ansonia. In the history of American sport, it would be difficult to find another meeting that led to events so shattering.