Sweet is highly overrated." So is responsible, loyal, and every other adjective you'd find scrawled in my yearbook.

I could have been killed, and their response is to film me?...In that moment, the myth that every time your picture is taken, a part of your soul is stolen strikes me as a certain truth, because I feel my spirit being sucked out of me, into hundreds of all-seeing lenses that simply want to capture my fear, my anger, my performance.

And I’ve got admirers. Okay, probably drunken geeks with nothing better to do than scroll through a thousand videos to check out cleavage shots in slow-mo, but still.

I need to use my mind in a way that slows the out-of-control beating in my chest. The darkness around us could be anywhere, anytime. I could be alive or dead. Okay, I choose alive. While I’m at it, I choose the darkness to be a gentle blanket on a moonless night, where I rest a few feet from a boy who’s warm and sweet. When he holds me, his heart beats strong with what I tell myself is passion, not fear.

She realized all at once that Doon, thin, dark eyed Doon, with his troublesome temper and his terrible brown jacket, and his good heart---- was the person she knew better than anyone now. He was her best friend.
--City of Ember--

I am subject to very powerful lows. When you have highs, you have terrible lows. When you pinpoint that you are responsible for everything that happens to you, it is very frightening.