When You Reach Me Identity Quotes

I used to think of Sal as being a part of me: Sal and Miranda, Miranda and Sal. I knew he wasn't really, but that's the way it felt. (5.9)

When I had gotten us into the lobby, Sal went straight to his apartment and closed the door on me. I knocked for a while, but Louisa wasn't home from work yet and he wouldn't let me in.

If I'm not wrong, this is the beginning of the story you wanted me to tell. And I didn't know it yet, but it was also the end of my friendship with Sal. (7.15-16)

In my book, Meg is looking for her father. When she finally gets to Camazotz, which is a planet somewhere near the Big Dipper where he's being held prisoner, this evil man with red eyes asks her why she wants him, and she says, "Didn't you ever have a father yourself? You don't want him for a reason. You want him because he's your father."

So I figure it's because I never had a father that I don't want one now. A person can't miss something she never had. (9.5-6)

There are differences. Their kitchen floor is yellow and orange linoleum squares instead of the white with gold flakes that we have, and Sal's bed is up against a different wall in the bedroom. But we have the same bathroom floor – these white hexagonal tiles. If I look at them long enough, I can see all kinds of patterns in those hexagons: lines, arrows, even flowers. They kind of shift into these different pictures. It's the sort of thing a person would never try to explain to anyone else, but once, when we were little, I told Sal about it, and then we went into his bathroom to stare at the floor together. Sal and Miranda, Miranda and Sal. (11.3)

The first time I brought Annemarie home to our apartment after school, I wished for two things. First, I wished that the boys wouldn't be in front of the garage. They'd just recently started saying things to me, different things, some of which included the words "sweet" and "baby." Mom said this happened to girls after a certain age, and that what the boys wanted was a reaction, any kind of reaction. (19.1)

Upstairs, a weird thing happened. After living there almost every day of my life, I saw our apartment as if it were the first time. I noticed all sorts of things that were usually invisible to me: the stuffing coming out of the sofa in two places, the burns from Mr. Nunzi's cigarettes, the big flakes of paint hanging off the ceiling, and the black spot next to the radiator where dripping water had stained the wood floor. (19.24)

Mr. Tompkin had left a book on my desk. He was always trying to get me to read something new. This one had a picture of a spunky-looking girl on the cover, and some buildings behind her. I pushed the spunky girl aside, pulled my book out of my desk, and opened it randomly to see where I would land. (23.24)

"I just gave a sandwich to a homeless guy! You're the one who works for criminals and hangs around with pregnant jailbirds." (34.13)

Sometimes you never feel meaner than the moment you stop being mean. It's like how turning on a light makes you realize how dark the room had gotten. And the way you usually act, the things you would have normally done, are like these ghosts that everyone can see but pretends not to. It was like that when I asked Alice Evans to be my bathroom partner. I wasn't one of the girls who tortured her on purpose, but I had never lifted a finger to help her before, or even spent one minute being nice to her. (41.8)

"I thought you left me." Alice was standing in front of the bathroom looking all wounded.

"Me?" I said. "No way."

She smiled. People seemed to like the new me. (42.9-11)

Sal and I don't wait for each other these days. Not purposely. But if we happen to be leaving school at the same time, if he isn't going to a friend's, or to basketball practice, and I'm not going to Annemarie's or Julia's – or Colin's – then Sal and I walk home together. And we are better this way, together because we want to be. He understood that before I did. (54.1)