Insignificant Events In The Life Of A Cactus Quotes
"You'll have to do this differently from other people, but you can manage."
"Coloring this picture with my hands is okay, but if only I could color it with my feet like Aven. Now that would be fantastic."
"The only person I know who can pick their nose with their toes is Aven. She sure is a special little girl."
"If it was real, do you think I’d be here letting you dig it up?"
"You'd be surprised what you can do with your feet when that's all you have."
"Tourette syndrome is a neurological disorder that causes involuntary motor or oral tics."
"It was awful," I went on. "Him just hanging up there holding some arms, blood showering the screaming audience. It was all over the news. Didn’t you see it?"
"Keep it down, Conner," a librarian said as she walked by with a stack of books. "This is still a library."
"No, that’s my newest story. I was born like this. The truth is totally boring so I make up stories for fun. I have lots of them if you’d like to hear."
"I once Googled ‘excessive blushing’ and found out there’s a terrifying name for my condition: idiopathic craniofacial erythema."
"It hurts, though. It’s really, really hard to hold them in like that, and then when I’d get home it would be a tic explosion like you can’t imagine."
"People act like that around me, too. Except I think it’s that they don’t know whether to laugh or not. Like they’re not sure if they’re being mean or whatever."
"Just go ahead and look, for goodness sake. Look and ask questions if you want."
"I’m pretty unobservant and it only took me about a minute."
"I don’t think I would do an arm transplant, even if it were possible. Could have some scary side effects."
"I guess it’s thirteen years of practice that makes me such a pro."
"I wish I could grow arms and pretend to be normal."
"It’s like when you have a bad cough. You know, when you get that tickle in your throat and you really want to cough. You can concentrate really hard on holding it in, but it’s so uncomfortable and eventually you just have to cough."
"You shan’t worry! We shall solve this highly mysterious mystery ourselves."
"I’m better at games when I can mostly use the joy stick."
"You absolutely would not believe what Bob did now."
"How can there be pits when there are no arms? They’re more like . . . flats."
"No one wants to listen to a dog barking while they try to watch a movie."
"I knew the moment I saw her she was my daughter."
"That’s right—it’s princess-parking for this girl everywhere I go."
"I don’t want to fix you," I said. "I don’t think you’re broken or anything. I just want to help you. Friends help each other, don’t they?"
"It’s so important you all live your lives as normally as possible, and feeling comfortable when going out in public is a big part of that."
"But you don’t have to allow it to get out of control."
"Well, it looks like this is all we have today," Andrea said. "Why don’t we go ahead and get started."
"At some point, Andrea said we should all have a goal we were working toward. It didn’t need to be big, but something easily attainable—like my parents had always taught me: one small goal at a time."
"I swear if I had arms right now I’d punch you right in the face!" I cried. "I’m not disabled! I’m . . . abled!"
"We’re supposed to encourage each other, Connor. That’s what friends do."
"I can’t change it. No arm transplant can be done. I am who I am and it’s all I’ve known and all I’ll ever know. No big deal."
"I don’t ever want to be seen just as a disabled person. I don’t want to just be Aven Green, that girl with no arms. I don’t want to be labeled like that."
"I don’t think anything’s impossible for you."
"You should be building him up when he gets down on himself."
"Those lights up there... they’re not like anything else in the sky. But they shine the brightest."
"I see two of the best friends I’ve ever had."