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1 " ...if you smile for no reason at all you will actually start to feel happy "
― Rebecca Stead , Liar & Spy
2 " Life is a million different dots making one gigantic picture. And maybe the big picture is nice, maybe it's amazing, but if you're standing with your face pressed up against a bunch of black dots, it's really hard to tell. "
3 " Boredom is what happens to people who have no control over their minds. "
4 " Mom. She always says to look at the big picture. How all of the little things don't matter in the long run. . . I know that Mom is right about the big picture. But Dad is right too: Life is really just a bunch of nows, one after the other. The dots matter. "
5 " Mom's always telling me to smile and hoping I'll turn into a smiley person, which, to be honest, is kind of annoying. "
6 " If you took every tear cried by everyone on earth on one single day and put them in a container, how big would that container need to be? Could you fill a water tower? Three water towers? It's one of those unknowable things. There has to be an answer, but we'll never know what it is. "
7 " Blue Team! It's what's for breakfast! "
8 " Life is really just a bunch of nows, one after the other. "
9 " Dad is looking at the bookshelves, deep in thought, deciding which book should go where. Once, Mom came home from work and discovered that he had turned all the books around so that the bindings were against the wall and the pages faced out. He said it was calming not to have all those words floating around and "creating static." Mom made him turn them back. She said it was too hard to find a book when she couldn't read the titles. Then she poured herself a big glass of wine. "
10 " Look, I know Mom talks about the big picture. She wants you to remember that you'll find new friends, that life is always changing, sometimes in really good ways. But life is also what's happening NOW, Georges. What Dallas and Carter are doing is happening NOW, and you can't just wait for it to be over. We have to do something about it. Now. "
11 " While the rest of the class is hanging on every syllable that comes out of Mr. Landau's mouth, I'm looking at the false tongue poster and I'm kind of wishing it wasn't wrong. There's something nice about those thick black arrows: sour here, salty there, like there's a right place for everything. Instead of the total confusion the human tongue actually turns out to be. "
12 " It's weird, because I know Mom is right about the big picture. But Dad is right too: Life is really just a bunch of nows, one after the other.The dots matter. "
13 " Dad cooks milk shakes. In the blender. "
14 " MISS U MIS U MIS U There’s a shortage of S’s and only two M’s, so the last one is an upside-down W. I fall asleep to the sound of Dad murmuring into the phone behind his bedroom door. In the morning there’s a message from Mom: ME TOO PICKLE "
15 " Look, I know Mom talks about the big picture. She wants you to remember that you'll find new friends, that life is always changing, sometimes in really good ways. But life is also what's happening now, Georges. "
