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Katherine Applegate

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“See that vine?" I said to Tobble. "My siblings and I used to swing out from it, then land in the lake." I gave a small laugh. "Well, they did anyway. I was too afraid." "You? Afraid?" "Always and forever," I said. "I'm beginning to think that's how life works." "Are we stopping here?" Tobble asked. "The horses are well watered." "Yes, but I'm not. Do you know what I need, Tobble? I need a swim." I checked the icy water with a long stick to be sure it was as deep as I recalled. Two silver fish darted past. As I clambered to a low-hanging branch, I felt a familiar shiver of anticipation and dread, and for a moment, I was the old Byx, with all her hopes and fears and longings. Then I kicked off as hard as I could, swung far out over the pond, and let go.”

“I cannot, will not, tell the full story of my next few hours. I'll only say that I found what I knew I must: the sun-bleached bones of everyone I'd once loved. Even knowing what I would find, I was unprepared for the knife of pain that cut through me. I half fell, half dismounted, from my pony. Kneeling on the ground, I gave in to the grief I'd held at bay for so long. I howled like an animal. I beat my fists against my chest. I wept. I don't know how long it went on. Time disappears, I suppose, when you need it to.”

“His look of shock confirmed, as did the red blood flowing, that I had cut him. But it wasn't yet fatal. He wouldn't die of the cut I'd inflicted. No. He'd die when I felt, coursing through me, all the pain and rage of finding my family slaughtered because of this evil man. He'd die when I looked into his wide, horrified eyes and cried, "For the dairnes!" I grabbed the hilt firmly in both hands, and I plunged the Light of Nedarra through his heart.”

“Pleasure fades, gets old, gets thrown out with last year's fad. Fear, guilt, all that stuff stays fresh. Maybe that's why people get so enraged when someone does something to a kid. Hurt a kid and he hurts forever. Maybe an adult can shake it off. Maybe. But with a kid, you hurt them and it turns them, shapes them, becomes part of the deep, underlying software of their lives. No delete.”

“But mostly, I remembered what I’ve always believed. What my mom taught me. That while some things are just plain awful, most things in life can be seen either tragic or comic. And it’s your choice. Is life a big, long, tiresome slog from sadness to regret to guilt to resentment to self-pity? Or is life weird, outrageous, bizarre, ironic, and just stupid? Gotta go with stupid. It’s not the easy way out. Self-pity is the easiest thing in the world. Finding the humor, the irony, the slight justification for a skewed, skeptical optimism, that’s tough.”

“People don’t understand the word ruthless. They think it means ‘mean.’ It’s not about being mean. It’s about seeing the bright, clear line that leads from A to B. The line that goes from motive to means. Beginning to end. It’s about seeing that bright, clear line and not caring about anything but the beautiful fact that you can see the solution. Not caring about anything else but the perfection of it.”

“So, there we were. The five of us - Marco, Tobias, Rachel, Cassie, and me. Five normal mallrats heading home. Sometimes I think about that one, last moment when we were still just normal kids. It's like it was a million years ago, like it was some totally different group of kids. You know what I was afraid of right then? I was afraid of admitting to Tom that I hadn't made the team. That was as scary as life got back then. Five minutes later, life got a lot scarier.”

“I've always believed that to some extent you get to decide for yourself what your life will be like. You can either look at the world and say "Oh, isn't it all so tragic, so grim, so awful." Or you can look at the world and decide that it's mostly funny. If you step back far enough from the details, everything gets funny. You say war is tragic. I say, isn't it crazy the way people will fight over nothing? People fight wars to control crappy little patches of empty desert, for crying out loud. It's like fighting over an empty soda can. It's not so much tragic as it is ridiculous. Asinine! Stupid! You say, isn't it terrible about global warming? And I say, no, it's funny. We're going to bring on global warming because we ran too many leaky air conditioners? We used too much spray deodorant, so now we'll be doomed to sweat forever? That's not sad. That's irony.”

“Rachel anaknya jangkung, cantik, rambutnya pirang, dan tak kenal takut. Yah, jauh di dalam lubuk hati sih ia juga merasa tidak aman, cemas kalau-kalau ia tak bisa beradaptasi, dan tertekan karena harus hidup memenuhi standar tinggi yang ditentukannya sendiri. Tapi semua itu tersembunyi jauh di dalam. Jauh sekali, sehingga jika kau berusaha mencapainya, ia akan mencincangmu sebelum kau bahkan bisa mendekat.”

“You needed love to win at the game of music...I played of sadness. I played of loneliness. Despair. Love found and lost. I played of tragic misunderstanding and weary cynicism and defeat. I played of perseverance, endurance beyond all suffering. Endurance in the face of hopelessness, hope when even hope was a betrayal...And yet, though I played so much sadness, the music at the same time denied despair. How could anyone despair while music was being played?”