Amy Reed Quotes

#1. BEAUTIFUL is stark, disquieting and, quite simply, riveting. Amy Reed is an author to keep on your radar.

Ellen Hopkins

#2. Maybe that's all love is-one person saying it because they think they're supposed to and the other person feeling to guilty to say anything else

Amy Reed

#3. What if talking about your feelings doesn't fix anything? What if what you really need is to make the feelings go away?

Amy Reed

#4. Every since I got sick, all I've done is think about how everyone else is feeling.

Amy Reed

#5. I'd love to wrap myself inside your sadness and pretend it is mine

Amy Reed

#6. You never heard me tell you that I want everything, not just the perfect pieces, not just the sparkling, charming snapshots of you. You never let me tell you that I want every piece of you, even the broken ones, even the dark places where scary things hide.

Amy Reed

#7. Reed's blood is now mixed with mine, so that he is always with me, no matter where I am.

Amy A. Bartol

#8. All I know is I want you to be happy, and if I could do anything to give that to you, I would.

Amy Reed

#9. They said the doctors could tell from the scars."
"Stop."
"Scars can tell you how old the wound is."
"Stop."
"When I stopped going to school, they came and found me. They found me in the closet."
"Sarah.

Amy Reed

#10. Teen angst is so boring, isn't it? I try so hard not to be a cliche, but it's like written in my DNA to hate my parents and be totally unsatisfied with everything. I wonder if there's anyone our age who actually likes their life.

Amy Reed

#11. Do you remember? Do you remember being solid? Do you remember life before the hole? Before you were empty and needed to be filled? There was a time when everything was enough. There was a time you didn't try to get out of your own skin. Remember?

Amy Reed

#12. You act like you're invincible, but I know deep down you want someone to hold your hand and buy you flowers and look you in the eye and tell you you're his soul mate. You want someone who will love every piece of you, even the pieces you can't love yourself.

Amy Reed

#13. No one knows what to do with me now that I'm alive. There's no protocol for how to treat someone who comes back from the dead. There are so many books about grief and loss, about saying good-bye to the people you love. But there is no book about taking back that good-bye.

Amy Reed

#14. What if I'm so broken I can never do something as basic as feed myself? Do you realize how twisted that is? It amazes me sometimes that humans still exist. We're just animals, after all. And how can an animal get so removed from nature that it loses the instinct to keep itself alive?

Amy Reed

#15. Sometimes I think you don't really believe the things you say; you just like the sound of yourself having opinions.

Amy Reed

#16. Even though I'm sleeping again, everything still feels a little rickety, like I'm here but not quite here, like I'm just a stand-in for my real self, like someone could just reach over and pinch me and I'd deflate. I thought I was feeling better, but I don't know anymore.

Amy Reed

#17. Everyone gets the message when they're a kid that girls like pink and boys like blue, but she's taken it to a whole new level, like being a girl is her religion and wearing pink is some kind of commandment.

Amy Reed

#18. Smoke follows beauty.

Amy Reed

#19. Getting rid of the drugs doesn't get rid of all the other ways you learned to deal with the world. It's not that easy.

Amy Reed

#20. Imagine everything feeling wrong. Imagine a hole in your chest the size of God.

Amy Reed

#21. And maybe these words have become something more than emails; maybe they are a kind of journal. Writing to you is like writing to another piece of myself.

Amy Reed

#22. You are poised to be the most perfect creature I have ever encountered, under God, and the affection that I feel for you cannot be measured on Earth

Amy A. Bartol

#23. Sometimes, I think I have made you up just to torture myself- and there are other times that I know you must be real because I couldn't have dreamed such perfection.

Amy A. Bartol

#24. Fucked-up, Insecure, Neurotic, and Emotional. (FINE)

Amy Reed

#25. There are voices you can silence.

Amy Reed

#26. I wonder if anybody else feels this way, if anyone in here is as scared as I am. Are they as sad and angry and confused and ashamed? Is that even possible? Is it even possible for one building to hold all that pain?

Amy Reed

#27. Phones are only good for ordering pizza and telling someone you're running late

Amy Reed

#28. But I am doing that thing I always do-the obsessing about what I don't have, the ignoring where I am now.

Amy Reed

#29. Reed, I should've protected myself against you, but I didn't and now you live here, inside of me," I say, pointing to my heart. "I won't ever be able to run from the love I have for you. Your name is written on my heart. I can't hide from it and it will wreck me if something happens to you -

Amy A. Bartol

#30. And my name sounds like flowers in his mouth.

Amy Reed

#31. Everyone's always making fun of him and calling him crazy behind his back, but I can kind of understand how someone would end up that way. I mean, if no one ever pays attention to you telling the truth, then it probably makes sense to try lying for a change.

Amy Reed

#32. Everybody has fucked-up families, even normal kids, even the ones who aren't in here. There's no magic math equation that makes us addicts, nothing that separates us from everyone else.

Amy Reed

#33. I feel the ghost of his fingers inside me.

Amy Reed

#34. How is feeling like a failure supposed to help me? The way I see it, they should invent some pill that just makes you forget whatever you want, some pill that makes you numb and functional.

Amy Reed

#35. I figure it's better to make a decision and do something rather than just sitting around thinking about it forever. Then at least I'll be moving.

Amy Reed

#36. I'm not the girl they remember. I'm not anyone they know.

Amy Reed

#37. People grow up listening to all kinds of stories, but that doesn't mean they all want to spend their whole lives studying them.

Amy Reed

#38. Total silence would be better. Total silence I could get used to.

Amy Reed

#39. And I am sick and tired of feeling pathetic.

Amy Reed

#40. Humans are capable of a lot more than they know.

Amy Reed

#41. Maybe this is all love is and all it will ever be
boys fucking girls and pretending it's love, girls getting fucked and pretending they like it, saying "I love you, too," and wanting to throw up.

Amy Reed

#42. Do you remember? Do you remember the world before the poison?

Amy Reed

#43. This is the downside of being complete. Others want what you have. They covet your doneness.

Amy Reed

#44. Your boyfriend smells bad, says Sarah as she sniffs the armpit of the giant sweatshirt.
All boys smell bad I say and she nods her head like we have just figured out something very important.

Amy Reed

#45. You get to a certain point and you just realize there's no use in trying to pretend your normal.

Amy Reed

#46. I want to crush my cigarette on his eyelid. I would rather he keep fucking me for the rest of the night than lie here staring at me tracing my ribs with his fingertips, acting like what happened meant something.

Amy Reed

#47. Me, I'm my own brand of perfect, I guess. The kind that has to work a little harder than everyone else.

Amy Reed

#48. I am ready even if they aren't. I am ready to say goodbye.

Amy Reed

#49. Smoke is not chasing me and making my eyes sweat. My eyes are not burning. I am not crying. I am not standing behind my mother and she is not facing the wall and she is not saying, 'Smoke follows beauty.' Smoke follows beauty. Smoke follows beauty. Smoke follows beauty.

Amy Reed

#50. The thing is, I like rules. They make me feel safe. The predictability of my boring life makes everything make sense. I guess that makes me a freak but I'm okay with that. You get to a certain point and you just realize there's no use in trying to pretend you're normal.

Amy Reed

#51. What are you supposed to do when you forget what normal feels like?

Amy Reed

#52. This is the kind of thing that makes sense to them; this is a language they know. They know what to do with'disease'. They know how to attach a doctor's medical descriptions to hope.

Amy Reed

#53. Do I pray for her life or mine? They're one in the same ... Be this soul in Thine hands ... I stop, unable to pray for her ascension. I cannot let her go, I think in agony. I try again, May this soul in Thine hands be with me ... always.

Amy A. Bartol

#54. I don't know what any of this means. All I know is I feel crazy, like I want to cry and laugh and scream at the same time.

Amy Reed

#55. This is the first time in I don't know how long that I've come even close to caring what happens next. I guess you could call that hope.

Amy Reed

#56. Maybe someday you'll realize that we are both solid despite the cracks.

Amy Reed

#57. And that's when it hits me, the punch in the stomach, the carving out of my insides. That's when I realize that none of this is a movie. I will not go out with a bang. There is no ending. There are no credits. I will wake up and I will keep waking up and this will always be waiting for me.

Amy Reed

#58. People don't just let you change identities, not unless there's something in it for them.

Amy Reed

#59. There is a whole other world with an entirely different version of me, a me that is not pretty, a me that no boys want, a me she would never talk to.

Amy Reed

#60. Maybe sometimes you have to leave before you're ready to let go; sometimes you have to leave before someone is ready to let go of you. That's the rub of it-if you wait until you're ready to do everything, you'll never get anything done.

Amy Reed

#61. What if I can't ever be who you want me to be? What if I keep letting you down?

Amy Reed

#62. Maybe there's a galaxy with a planet that's just a little more tilted, with a sun that shines just a little bit darker, and that's where I'm supposed to be, where it somehow makes sense to feel this broken.

Amy Reed

#63. It feels like the ground is breathing and the air has hands, like everything is moving except me, like I am the only thing solid, like it is the rest of the world that is dizzy.

Amy Reed

#64. I've spent my life comparing myself to everyone around me. I've made it an art form. I've developed detailed systems to calculate where I stand, based on GPA, body mass index, fashion, popularity, family income, etc. Based on this criteria, I have always fared somewhere in the safe middle.

Amy Reed

#65. Reed lifts his lips from mine, and looking into my eyes, he murmurs, I want those thousand years with you, Evie, you have no idea how much I want them. I want a thousand years, and then I want a hundred thousand more.

Amy A. Bartol

#66. I feel myself floating without the weight of him on my body.

Amy Reed

#67. And I know -I just know- you can remind me what it feels like to have someone look at me and love me with wanting me to be something else.

Amy Reed

#68. Imagine trying to live without air.
Now imagine something worse.

Amy Reed

#69. If you are still, no one can hurt you. If you play dead, there is nothing to kill.

Amy Reed

#70. I wanted you before this, for who you are - so intelligent, brave - delicate and beautiful. But now, you have power and strength, too. Danger, thy name is Evie. You are something from a dream and I just want ... he trails off.

Amy A. Bartol

#71. You are where I draw the line. They can have anything else that they want, but they cannot have you-not when I have breath in my body to prevent it. -Reed

Amy A. Bartol

#72. I have never had to fight so hard to take a breath.

Amy A. Bartol

#73. Shirley: "Christopher, would you like to tell Olivia what "F.I.N.E" means?"
Christopher: "Fucked-up, Insecure, Neurotic, and Emotional"
...
Olivia: "But what if you really do feel fine?"
Shirley: "Christopher, care to answer that?"
Christopher: "Um, there's no such feeling as fine.

Amy Reed

#74. Hold onto the string, love, until the current shifts and we can be together again.

Amy A. Bartol

#75. Your memories of me are part trees and part ocean and part magic, and I don't know if I will ever be that girl again. She was the best version of me.

Amy Reed

#76. She had no idea there were so many different kinds of lonely. But she does not want your pity. She just wants you to understand what can happen when you're a million kinds of lonely at once, when you find yourself among identical strangers you do not want to get to know.

Amy Reed

#77. Nothing made me the way I am. Nothing but me.

Amy Reed

#78. They are ghosts of people I never knew, which the rain will wash away.

Amy Reed

#79. The thing is, you don't get many choices when you're stuck in a secret. The world gets so small, you learn to be grateful for whatever you can get.

Amy Reed

#80. I used to think I was that girl you remember. And maybe I was, maybe those memories are real, maybe that girl who looked like me really was an angel. But maybe angels fall, maybe the wind blows and just like that they can be twisted into something unrecognizable.

Amy Reed

#81. This place has its own mini version of a cafeteria, complete with a couple of old ladies in hairnets dishing out tasteless gruel from behind a counter. The food looks like it's been sitting out for days, and there's always a weird smell like floor wax and soggy vegetables.

Amy Reed

#82. Is this what nice is? Letting people think things that aren't true just to avoid hurting their feelings? Being nice is dishonest.

Amy Reed

#83. And what they're doing could be called kissing but it's more like sword fighting with tongues.

Amy Reed

#84. I don't know if anyone can ever really explain why they believe in someone. But I do. I believe in you. I hope that's worth something.

Amy Reed

#85. You are afraid of me?" Reed asks me, sounding unpleasantly surprised.
"Of course I'm afraid of you. You're menacing, you're overbearing, you're arrogant, and if you don't see that, then you can just add high to the list," I say, using my fingers to tick off his shortcomings.

Amy A. Bartol

#86. Reece ... Reed ... isn't that a silly coincidence? he asks, his mouth twisting in a grim smile that neither reaches his blue eye nor his green one.

Amy A. Bartol

#87. I raise Reed's crushed, gray feather into the air. With my dying breath, I utter a single word in Angel, Champion.

Amy A. Bartol

#88. I feel like I'm a snow globe and someone shook me up and now every little piece of me is falling back randomly and nothing is ending up where it used to be.

Amy Reed