peer pressure Quotes

″‘Should I put this speck down? . . .’ Horton thought with alarm. ‘If I do, these small persons may come to great harm. I *can’t* put it down. And I *won’t!* After all A person’s a person. No matter how small.‘”

“Hillari Kimble walked up to Stargirl and said, ‘You ruin everything.’ And she slapped her. The crowd grew instantly still. The two girls stood facing each other for a long minute. Those nearby saw in Hillari’s shoulders and eyes a flinching: she was waiting to be struck in reply. And in fact, when Stargirl finally moved, Hillari winced and shut her eyes. But it was lips that touched her, not the palm of a hand. Stargirl kissed her gently on the cheek. She was gone by the time Hillari opened her eyes.”

“Do not let yourself be forced into doing anything before you are ready.”

“Why would you want to mail out a bunch of tapes blaming you in a suicide? You wouldn’t. But Hannah wants us, those of us on the list, to hear what she has to say. And we’ll do what she says if only to keep them away from the people not on the list.”

“But now it’s too late. And that’s why at this moment I feel so much hate. Toward myself. I deserve to be on this list. Because if I hadn’t been so afraid of everyone else, I might have told Hannah that someone cared.”

“I am a drifter, and as lonely as that can be, it is also remarkably freeing. I will never define myself in terms of anyone else. I will never feel the pressure of peers or the burden of parental expectation. I can view everyone as pieces of a whole, and focus on the whole, not the pieces.”

“Dead silence along the street. The kid had done the unthinkable, he had chomped on one of Mars’s own bars. Not only that, but white kids just didn’t put their mouths where black kids had had theirs, be it soda bottles, spoons, or candy bars. And the kid hadn’t even gone for the unused end; he had chomped right over Mars Bar’s own bite marks.”