It was as Harry suspected. Everyone here seemed to have been invited because they were connected to somebody well-known or influential – everyone except Ginny.
But, by careful observation from the sidelines, I’d worked out that social success is often built on pretending just a little. Popular people sometimes have to laugh at things they don’t find very funny, do things they don’t particularly want to, with people whose company they don’t particularly enjoy. Not me. I had decided, years ago, that if the choice was between that or flying solo, then I’d fly solo. It was safer that way.
“So now books were her only friends. She’d read Lord of the Rings so often she could recite whole scenes by memory.
“It was not a skill that aided one in becoming popular.”
“If you base your identity on having friends, being accepted, and being popular, you may find yourself compromising your standards or changing them every weekend to accommodate your friends.”
“I don’t want to be ugly all my life. I want those perfect eyes and lips, and for everyone to look at me and gasp. And for everyone who sees me to think, ‘Who’s that?’ and want to get to know me, and listen to what I say.”
“The persistent refusal of the Adamses to sacrifice the integrity of their own intellectual and moral standards and values for the sake of winning public office or popular favor is another of the measuring rods by which we may measure the divergence of American life from its starting point.”
“It was rigged, the whole thing, every year. There were no more nominations and then came the vote. Marion Hawthorne got it. Every year either Marion or Rachel Hennessey got it.”
″...that leaves Harold Barton to decide who’s in and who’s not. That’s because he has the swimming pool and the biggest house. So he acts like he knows everything, and kids believe him because kids like swimming.”
“I WANTED to sign up for Home Economics 2, because I was pretty good at Home Ec 1. But being good at sewing does not exactly buy you popularity points at school.”
“I try to explain all this popularity stuff to Rowley (who is probably hovering around the 150 mark, by the way), but I think it just goes in one ear and out the other with him.”
“It’s a big deal how many roses you get. You can tell who’s popular and who isn’t by the number of roses they’re holding. It’s bad if you get under ten and humiliating if you don’t get more than five—it basically means that you’re either ugly or unknown. Probably both. Sometimes people scavenge for dropped roses to add to their bouquets, but you can always tell.”
“That baby came complete. Their value was innate from their first breath. Their value did not depend on external things like wealth or appearance or politics or popularity. It was the infinite value of human life.”
“With these advantages their popularity as a body was very great- and it is only due to them to say that they bore their honours magnanimously, and distributed their kicks and favours with the strictest impartiality.”