How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
Mama won't let me diet anymore. Just between us, I don't really know why it's any of her business. It's true I have had a cold for the last couple of weeks, but I know it's not the diet that is causing it. […] I don't know why she can't let me live my own life. […] She says I'm going to have to start eating dinner again too, and just when I'm getting down where I want to be and I've quit fighting the hunger pangs. (14.2)
It sounds like Alice is hearing what her mom is saying, seeing the sense in what she's laying down, and being contrary for the sake of it. Obviously her diet is a wee bit too extreme if she's fighting hunger pangs, and maybe she's looking for a reason to stop that doesn't feel like quitting.
Quote #2
I've tried to bury myself in books and my studies and my music and pretend I don't care. I guess I don't really care, and besides what difference could it possibly make if I did? I've gained five pounds and I don't care about that either. (25.1)
Alice doth protest too much, or something like that. She does care, that's why she's writing about it in her diary and trying to convince herself that she doesn't care. We can see right through your charade, Alice.
Quote #3
It was fun! It was ecstatic! It was glorious! But I don't think I'll ever try it again. I've heard too many frightening stories about drugs. […] And besides, the whole experience is over and past and I'll never think of it again. (45.13)
Here's the thing about vowing to never think about something: It doesn't work. You can't really control your thoughts, and when it comes to something huge like your newfound love for hallucinogens, you can bet your sweet bottom it'll pop up in your subconscious before you can stop it.
Quote #4
For two days now I've tried to convince myself that using LSD makes me a "dope addict" and all the other low-class, unclean, despicable things I've heard about kids that use LSD and all the other drugs […]. All the things I've heard about LSD were obviously written by uninformed, ignorant people like my parents who obviously don't know what they're talking about; maybe pot is the same. (46.2)
Alice is totally trying to justify her drug use to herself. She knows it's not a great thing to get into, and yet she's trying to convince herself that everyone who told her drugs are bad are full of bologna.
Quote #5
I don't know why I shouldn't use drugs, because they're wild and they're beautiful and they're wonderful, but I know I shouldn't, and I won't! I won't ever again. I hereby solemnly promise that I will from this very day forward live so that everyone I know can be proud of me and so that I can be proud of myself! (49.4)
Yeah, nice try Alice. If they're so beautiful and wonderful and wild, do you really think you'll never do them again? It sounds like a bunch of empty promises to us, but you keep doing you, girlfriend.
Quote #6
Chris and I are thinking about quitting our jobs because it's getting so that we don't have any time for what we want to do. I'm deeply in love with Richie, and Chris is in love with Ted, and we want to spend as much time with them as we can. The b**** is that none of us ever seem to have enough money, so Chris and I have both had to push a little pot. Of course we only sell to the kids who are heavy users and who would just buy it from someone else if they didn't get it from us. (76.1)
This is where Alice starts to really get delusional. She has to justify so much of her own behavior to herself, you'd think her subconscious would be raising some red flags—but alas, she lacks the self-awareness to see how wrong she is. The whole "we're only selling drugs to heavy users" and "they'd get it from somewhere else if not me" is classic self-deception.
Quote #7
I really wish we could be together stoned every night, but he only lets me come over when he restocks my acid supply and gives me enough grass and barbs to last me until I see him again. I know he's studying very hard so I try to content myself with what he can give me of himself which seems to be getting less and less. Maybe I am oversexed, at least I seem to be a lot more interested in it than he is. But that's only because he worries so about me. (78)
Oh man, Richie is playing Alice like a fiddle. Sure he's studying—studying Ted's handsome anatomy. He's found himself a naïve little minion, and Alice has bought every line.
Quote #8
But all the Christmas things in the windows and the stores make us both a little lonely inside although neither one of us says anything. I was even trying to pretend to myself that I wasn't affected, but I guess to you dear Diary I can tell the truth. (113.1)
When will Alice learn that it's not possible to deceive oneself? She's lonely. Why is that so bad to admit?
Quote #9
I wish there were some way to literally and truly and completely and permanently blot my for real nightmares out, but since there isn't, I must poke them way back into the darkest and most inaccessible corners and crevices of my brain, where perhaps they will eventually be covered over or become lost. (124.1)
Oh man, Self-Deception 101: We all know pushing feelings deep down doesn't erase them, it makes them manifest in other, more insidious ways. Sure, sometimes you have to pull a Scarlett O'Hara and think about it another day, but there's no way to just forget that those things happened.
Quote #10
I have just read the stuff I wrote in the last few weeks and I am being drowned in my own tears, suffocated, submerged, inundated, overpowered. They are a lie! A bitter, evil cursed lie! I could never have written things like that! I could never have done things like that! It was another person, someone else! It must have been! It had to be! Someone evil and foul and degenerate wrote in my book, took over my life. Yes, they did, they did! But even as I write I know I am telling even a bigger lie! Or am I? Has my mind been damaged? (170.1)
Alice is obviously distraught—the stuff she did on her druggie walkabout was pretty bad—but telling herself they're lies won't help her process what happened. But then she loses track of the truth, and frankly, she's not in good shape.
Quote #11
I don't know why I worry about her, she's a few months older than I am, but I just think boys are the root of most problems. At least, they've been at the root of most of mine, which is probably a big lie. (283.1)
Yeah, boys are not her biggest problem. But at least she can finally admit she's lying to herself… Winning?