Title: The Perks of Being a Wallflower
Author: Stephen Chbosky
ISBN: 978-0613237529
“This is the story of what it’s like to grow up in high school. More intimate than a diary, Charlie’s letters are singular and unique, hilarious and devastating. We may not know where he lives. We may not know to whom he is writing. All we know is the world he shares. Caught between trying to live his life and trying to run from it puts him on a strange course through uncharted territory. The world of first dates and mixed tapes, family dramas and new friends. The world of sex, drugs, and The Rocky Horror Picture Show, when all one requires is that perfect song on that perfect drive to feel infinite.”
QUOTES I LOVED:
“We accept the love we think we deserve.” (24)
“Let the quiet put things where they are supposed to be.” (26)
“I want to make sure that the first person you kiss loves you.” (70)
“I don’t know if you’ve ever felt like that. That you wanted to sleep for a thousand years. Or just not exist. Or just not be aware that you do exist. Or something like that. I think wanting that is very morbid, but I want it when I get like this. That’s why I’m trying not to think.” (94)
“I feel great! I really mean it. I have to remember this for the next time I’m having a terrible week. Have you ever done that? You feel really bad, and then it goes away, and you don’t know why. I try to remind myself when I feel great like this that there will be another terrible week coming someday, so I should store up as many great details as I can, so during the next terrible week, I can remember those details and believe that I’ll feel great again. It doesn’t work a lot, but I think it’s very important to try.” (103)
“I would die for you. But I won’t live for you.” (169)
“We hoped he gave her a ‘soft’ version of the truth. Enough to make her stay away. But not enough to make her doubt everything about everything. Maybe it’s better to know the whole truth. I honestly don’t know.” (179)
“And I guess I realized at that moment that I really did love her. Because there was nothing to gain, and that didn’t matter.” (179)
“He didn’t ask me why I was crying. He just let me hear what he had to say in my own way and let things be. That was probably the best part.” (182)
“She wasn’t bitter. She was sad, though. But it was a hopeful kind of sad. The kind of sad that just takes time.” (198)
“And if it meant that I would never get to think of you that way, as long as you were happy, it was okay. That’s when I realized that I really loved you.” (200)
“You can’t just sit there and put everybody’s lives ahead of yours and think that counts as love. You just can’t. You have to do things… like take their hands when the slow song comes up for a change. Or be the one who asks someone for a date. Or tell people what you need. Or what you want.” (200)
“At those times, you weren’t being his friend at all. Because you weren’t honest with him.” (201)
“It’s just that I don’t want to be somebody’s crush. If somebody likes me, I want them to like the real me, not what they think I am. And I don’t want them to carry it around inside. I want them to show me, so I can feel it, too. I want them to be able to do whatever they want around me. And if they do something I don’t like I’ll tell them.” (201)
“Maybe he didn’t really encourage me to do things, but he didn’t prevent me from doing them either. But after a while, I didn’t do things because I didn’t want him to think different about me. But the thing is, I wasn’t being honest. So, why would I care whether or not he loved me when he didn’t really even know me?” (201)
“So I guess we are who we are for a lot of reasons. And maybe we’ll never know most of them. But even if we don’t have the power to choose where we come from, we can still choose where we go from there. We can still do things. And we can try to feel okay about them.” (211)
“And even if somebody has it much worse, that doesn’t really change the fact that you have what you have. Good and bad.” (211)
life in session 