When You Reach Me Forgiveness and Compassion Quotes

"Don't call him Quack," Mom said. "That's an awful name for a human being."

"Even a human who's quackers?"

"I don't care it's still awful."

"Well what do you call him?"

"I don't call him anything," she said, "but I think of him as the laughing man." (5.3-7)

"But first you have to learn the V-cut," he told us. "Very important. Except he said "Velly important," stretched his eyelids back with two fingers, and bowed down low – it was the classic fake-Chinese act. I had never seen a grown-up do it before. If Mom had been there, she would have whacked him on the head with a plastic tray. (18.2)

Her bringing the chips and cookies is supposed to help somehow. It's not really the cookies, she says. It's the fact that someone brings them. (26.16)

I thought about what Louisa had said, about how old people can't get enough heat. Maybe I felt sorry for him. Maybe he reminded me of Mr. Nunzi from upstairs. Or maybe I wanted to do something good, to make up for being kind of a jerk to Annemarie, even if she didn't really know it. Anyway, I spoke to him. (33.26)

"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)

"So she goes back there, to Camazotz, and her brother is totally under ITs control, and he's saying all these awful things to her. And IT is trying to suck her in too, to take over her brain. She's trying to resist, but it's hard. And then, at the last second, she figures out that there's only one thing that can defeat IT: love. IT doesn't understand love."

"Ooh," Belle said. "That's deep." (43.12-13)

44. You saved Sal's life.
45. You were the laughing man.
46. You were the heap of something awful.
47. You are dead. (45.44-47)

"Anthony told me, 'One day, you're gonna have to hit someone. And get hit yourself. Then you'll see. Maybe you'll understand life a little better.' And I wanted to understand life better. To understand people better." (48.68)

We pass Belle's. We cross the last street, to your old corner, where the mailbox is still scratched up with your words.

And when we are safely across, Sal always gives a little salute. And sometimes I look up, and shake my fist at the sky. (54.4)