Collected Book Quotes: A Pain Less Ordinary

Page numbers are based on a .pdf sent by the author.

It’s a funny thing about hope. When it dies in you, everything turns black. The world starts to turn angry and mean. And you can try to put hope into other things, like hoping you’ll grow up and never be such an awful mom, but those hopes are bandages to the first wound, which never really heals.
— Chapter 4 – Page 14

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Everything gets worse if you don’t deal with it.
— Chapter 5 – Page 15

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[…] for the kids who aren’t the best at anything, unless parental dysfunction is a category, there’s a sense of shame. Like I don’t deserve to walk the halls. Like I’m a ghost or worse, like I’m walking around with a horribly contagious disease, one that could cause someone who befriends me permanent social annihilation.
— Chapter 9 – Page 30

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Hating men has always been safer than trusting them.
— Chapter 9 – Page 33

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Looking at the girl, her desperate eyes searching mine, I realize she’s my reflection. Had I been searching
for answers from strangers when I was her age? Had I been desperate for attention or a treat like her?
— Chapter 18 – Page 86

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I wish I didn’t care what others think of me. I don’t want to care, but there’s something about having a nice bag or new clothes that makes you feel acceptable to the world.
— Chapter 22 – Page 106

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Familiar in my life means chaos.
— Chapter 23 – Page 115

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Everyone’s mixed up. Adults act like kids. Kids have to be adults.
— Chapter 24 – Page 121

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Bad memories haunt you until you dig up the roots.
— Chapter 31 – Page 177

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Pain is sometimes temporary. Sometimes it lasts a lifetime. The past can haunt for a night and then just as easily vanish in the day. It can hide for years and return when you least expect it. It can kill you, and it can save you.
— Chapter 34 – Page 200