Noteworthy Passages: Crazy Beautiful

Crazy Beautiful by Lauren Baratz-Logsted
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Pub. Date: September 29, 2009
Pages: 193
Age Level: 15+

Synopsis
In an explosion of his own making, Lucius blew his arms off. Now he has hooks. He chose hooks because they were cheaper. He chose hooks because he wouldn’t outgrow them so quickly. He chose hooks so that everyone would know he was different, so he would scare even himself.

Then he meets Aurora. The hooks don’t scare her. They don’t keep her away. In fact, they don’t make any difference at all to her.

But to Lucius, they mean everything. They remind him of the beast he is inside. Perhaps Aurora is his Beauty, destined to set his soul free from its suffering.

Or maybe she’s just a girl who needs love just like he does.

Noteworthy Passages

Aurora; pg. 27-28
I have, of course, read about love at first sight. My dad and I are great readers, after all, and he had me reading Shakespeare's comedies, which are always romances too, while my friends were still reading Nancy Drew. So I know all about two people meeting, being instantly attracted, rejecting that attraction and the evidence of their own senses, Cupid wreaking havoc with everything and everyone somehow ending up in a forest somewhere and getting married before the final curtain. Let me just go on record as saying, my respect for Shakespeare notwithstanding: hogwash. It doesn't happen like that in real life. You don't fall in love with people you've just met for the first time when you don't even know the first thing about them.

Aurora's Mom to Aurora; pg. 42
"There are two reasons for being nice to the underdogs in this life. One, because if the underdog grows up to be the kind of person that starts shooting, you'll have a chance at survival. Two, because it is the right thing to do."

Lucius; pg. 50
But I've learned that I can be very persuasive when I want to be. Plus it's amazing how flustered administrators get when you use the words "discrimination" and "lawsuit" in the same sentence. Toss in a few "my civil rights are being violated here," and it's a walk to getting your own way.

Misty (Lucius' 12yr old sister) to Lucius; pg. 70
"I told him if he didn't shut up about it, I'll sic you on him and then he'd see how crazy you really were. Was that okay?"

Lucius; pg. 126
This is, I think, what it must mean to be human: to want something good for someone else.

Exchange between Lucius and Jessup; pg. 189
"You sonofabitch!" Jessup shouts at me, swinging the tire iron at my other side.
"Actually,"........."my mother is a fine woman."
I don't even mean it to be funny. But if I am to die tonight, I will not have this cretin defaming my mother before fate and circumstance turn out the lights on my life.

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Ok, so this is a new feature that I'm doing that will follow every review. It is basically just a compilation of some of my favorite quotes or passages that I would like to share and that would maybe even make you read the book if you haven't already.

I was inspired to do Noteworthy Passages by this very book, Crazy Beautiful (See review here). When there were so many parts that I found I wanted to read my mom, I thought, "Why not write them down and then share them with everyone?"

PLEASE NOTE: This is a feature hosted here at my blog in which I present you with selected passages or quotes that I deem Noteworthy from a book I've just reviewed. My hopes are of course, that these passages will make you want to pick the book up and read it. This feature was started and created by me in January in hopes of making my blog more unique. That being said, I would like to kindly request that you do not use this feature as it was intended to be for my blog only and is not a meme. If you see some one else using it, please know it is without my permission. Thank you.