The Perks of Being a Wallflower

by Stephen Chbosky

• It’s just that sometimes people use thought to not participate in life.

• The heart asks pleasure first, And then, excuse from pain; And then, those little anodynes That deaden suffering;   And then, to go to sleep; And then, if it should be The will of its Inquisitor, The liberty to die.

• This one time when it’s peaceful outside, and you’re seeing things move, and you don’t want to, and everyone is asleep. And all the books you’ve read have been read by other people. And all the songs you’ve loved have been heard by other people. And that girl that’s pretty to you is pretty to other people. And you know that if you looked at these facts when you were happy, you would feel great because you are describing “unity.”

• “This is not a time for heroes because nobody will let that happen.”

• 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.

• 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.