I need quotes for an english project! Like, you know those quotes they put on the back of the jacket, that in a vague way, manage to tell you absolutely nothing about how good the book really is? Yeah. I need a few of those for my creative writing project. Here's the story... comment me some good quotes!



The Reformed Cynic
A story of a girl for whom it took an alien invasion
to bring about a complete attitude overhaul.

There is a little town down in the southwestern United States where not much happens on a day-to-day basis. Most of the residents are older; they’ve seen everything by now, and they know that most things will happen in their own sweet time, so why try to hurry life along? The faster you go, the sooner you get to the end, and that’s not something you generally want in life.
So it was natural that when something as monumental as a pan-galactic invasion occurred there, it happened quietly.

Cornelia Farrow slumped in her chair, bored out of her skull.
Her ears were stuffed with the cotton drone of the highway, the fly in the window, the teacher’s voice dithering on about eleventh grade physics. At times it would have been relaxing, a cure for insomnia, but not today. Today her eyes, glazed over and lethargic, merely glossed over the generic furniture and décor of the classroom. Even the students seemed like they could have been wrapped in cellophane and shipped from a factory; they each wore identical expressions of concentration, each right hand moving in sync as they all took the same notes.
When a shrill bell tore the monotonous atmosphere, Nel jumped about a foot in her chair and almost fell out. The blonde girl groaned a little and collected her things, then lurched into an upright position and trudged out the door. She walked in the general direction of the library, and though they stepped aside for her, she went unnoticed by just about everyone in the hallway.
Nel had a demeanor like an electric, barbed-wire fence; the way she walked and the dispassionate expression Nel wore at all times told everyone, even total strangers, that this was a girl who, above all things, wanted to be left alone. But it was her eyes, those green eyes that held a piercing intelligence sharper than swords, that spoke of the consequences should one dare to breach that boundary of solitude. Nel’s intimidating glare usually worked on everyone, but was particularly effective on the freshmen whom she towered over.
Though very few things amused Nel more than intimidating ninth graders, logic problems managed to do it. Math, sudoku, word problems, anagrams, debates; even the rubix cube fascinated her to no end. She was actually playing with the cube she kept in her bag when some foolish stranger deigned to interrupt her solitude, for the first time in… well, she was hard pressed to remember how long it had been since someone had tried to talk to her.
“Excuse me?”
At first Nel ignored the dark-haired girl, thinking that she had spoken to someone else, but the awkward silence indicated that she was talking to her. Nel looked up, her face oozing haughty disdain with just the ghost of a sneer etched onto her mouth; the girl was undeterred. There was something about her, something in her vacant smile and unusually glassy eyes that struck Nel as odd. But she was still just an annoyance; a distraction in Nel’s daily routine.
“Do you need something?”
“No, I just-“
“Then leave me alone.” Nel glared up at her with pursed lips and irritated eyes; the girl seemed a little confused.
“But I-“
Nel didn’t hear the rest of the sentence. She quickly grabbed her things and was out the door, preferring to just leave rather than explain to the girl, in explicit detail, why in the future she would do well not to bother Nel short of fire or flood.
When Nel returned home that evening, in her customarily foul mood, the first thing she did was drop her shoes at the door and head upstairs to start her homework, leaving her mother’s tentative “Welcome home, dear…” from the kitchen in the dust. Nel only appeared downstairs again for dinner.
Mrs. Farrow was tall, with proud features and a large mass of curly, blonde hair; you could see the family resemblance in their faces and height, but that was were the similarities ended. Her father was also tall, and though his hair was dark, he shared Nel’s bright green eyes. She never spoke more than a few words at a time to her parents these days, and for the most part it was just half-hearted grunts anyway. As far as Nel was concerned, she was related to people she couldn’t relate to.
When she took her seat at the table, Nel immediately noticed that her father had become unusually talkative. Normally the Farrow’s meals were passed in relative silence, broken only for short bits of small talk or news that always failed to start any sort of conversation. Today he was just gabbing away, smiling and engaging. Nel noticed that her mother too was a veritable chatterbox, and that both of them seemed to be positively glowing with... well, she wasn’t quite sure what it was. In addition, though she regarded it of little consequence at the time, Nel saw that her father’s eyes had taken on a shiny, wet quality. Towards the middle of the meal she noticed that her mother’s eyes had also been more sparkly than usual; she had just been shut up in her room most of the evening, and had not had a chance to notice.
Whenever her parents attempted to include Nel in their trivial conversation, she simply glared at the offender until they gave up. Nel was thrown off by the change in mood; she finished her soup as soon as possible, and immediately fled back upstairs.
That night, Nel had trouble getting to sleep. The day had shaken up her routine of drab solitude by throwing in people who actually tried to include her in their lives. It was a change she was disturbed by; it produced both feelings of revulsion and the possibility that maybe this was how things should be.
Eventually, Nel managed to clear these thoughts. There were several different types of people in the world, and Nel knew them to be set in their ways; some people were needy, some were leaders, some were superficial. Nel was a cynic, a pessimistic recluse, and she would stay that way the rest of her life.
With her misgivings quelled by the absolute certainty of a future marked by a negative attitude, Nel finally managed to drop off to sleep.
--------------------
I awoke that morning, groggy as usual, to the noise of my alarm and smacked the clock to turn it off. As I stumbled out of bed my limbs felt odd, almost like they weren’t under my control; although, that’s not exactly unusual in the early morning, is it?
But as I approached the bathroom, I did notice something else that was strange. My eyes had acquired the same glassy look I had noticed on that dark girl and my parents the day before. I thought it odd, but that was nothing, nothing at all, compared to the rest of my day.
After I had showered and gotten dressed, I walked downstairs. My mother was in the kitchen, cooking bacon; my father was at the front door, getting his tie straight. I mimicked their smiling faces and greeted them with hugs and Good Mornings before wishing Father a good day, and remarking on the wonderful smell of Mother’s cooking.
And it was in that instant that I knew something was horribly, frighteningly wrong.
My mind fell into a state of panic, but my body continued its disgustingly cheerful charade. It said “yes-please” and “thank-you-very-much” and “my-that-was-delicious,” all in a happy, pleasant tone.
This was not me! What on earth was going on? Why didn’t my own mother, of all people, think it was odd that her normally quiet, reserved (okay, downright surly) daughter had suddenly adopted a Shirley Temple-like attitude?
I went on, mentally raging about my situation as my body walked out the door with a spring in its step, carrying a home-packed lunch made with love. Ugh.
It wasn’t until I was two blocks away from school that I recalled the glassy stare. By that time, I was finished with my silent tantrum. I knew a few facts about my situation; one, my body was no longer under my control. Two, whatever was going on was causing my body to act friendly, kind, and generally very unlike Cornelia Farrow. It seemed as though I wasn’t the only one; my parents, as well as a good chunk of the community, also seemed to be affected the same way. I noticed several more vacant, glassy stares on the street and in school.
But what could be causing this? I was now in class. I had just said “Hello” and complemented my teacher on his shirt. Whatever was happening clearly needed to stop; my reputation was on the line.
This affliction, it wasn’t like anything I had ever heard of. It might have been some sort of chemical warfare, but I thought that unlikely; why would anyone target such a boring, unimportant town? Why would they be making us be kind to one another? All through first period I went through countless scenarios, trying to think of what in the world could create hundreds of pleasant zombies, and to what end, for that matter.
Slowly, it dawned on me that maybe, just maybe, it was not “in the world”. What if this was some sort of alien experiment? As ridiculous as that sounded-
Got me.
I had heard a voice. This was just too much; first I lose my body, now my mind too?
You are not crazy.
Sure. No one who is crazy thinks they are nuts, right?
You were correct. I am not from here; I come from very, very far away… let me show you what I mean…
Suddenly, I felt an enormous pressure in my head; it felt like another mind was crowded in against mine.
And it was unimaginably vast.
I felt distance, mind-boggling distances, between worlds, stars, even galaxies. Just the sheer hugeness of it all set me reeling, and I found my self, just a little, believing the strange voice in my head.
It was silent for now, but as my body worked equations, I worked logic. If whatever this presence was told the truth, and it certainly seemed that way to me, then it could very well be the affliction that had descended upon my town. And if I accepted that, then I knew it had the power to move our bodies, to reach into our brains and take our control from us.
But the big question here, as it always had been, was why? Why would it be doing this to us? What purpose could it possibly serve, to use us as fancy meat puppets in a charade of niceties?
I have studied humans for what would seem to you a very long time. I have watched them born, growing, leaning, playing, reading, loving; I have seen them live, and I have seen them die. And I came to know that most of them are not good people. They are morally lacking, and that tortures them. So I decided to experiment; if the humans seemed so unhappy with themselves the way they were, what would happen if I helped them in the right direction?
Well then. Besides struggling to grapple with the concept that we had been under the scrutiny of an alien species for perhaps thousands-
Only hundreds, really.
Hundreds of years, I was shocked that it had done this to us. I supposed that its logic made some sense, but to go into people’s brains and take from them that which they had had since they were born… it just seemed wrong, to me. My body stood, and I figured it was heading to lunch.
How can it be wrong?
The perturbed tone in its voice unsettled me; up till now, it had acted like all the aliens in just about every sci-fi made since the dawn of time: stoic, serene, and authoritative.
Oh, here we go again… this is about my ‘unprofessional’ attitude, right?
I chuckled mentally. This alien was expecting me to reprimand it, as it forced a tasty sandwich into my mouth? It acted just like I did when my parents tried to talk to me. Was this alien an angsty teenager as well?
In a manner of speaking, ah… yes. This is terribly awkward, you know; but it looks like I had better explain…
I am young, in comparison with the rest of my species. To come of age, we must observe a lower life form and influence their civilization in a positive manner. I was assigned to Earth. If we should fail, the civilization usually collapses, and we go back to our galaxy in shame. Only a few have been assigned to Earth before, though each of them had failed; you do recall the dinosaur’s extinction? The bubonic plague you have called the Black Death?
Had I any connection to my circulation at that moment, I would have blanched. This simply wasn’t right; the stakes were far too high for failure, and this certainly was not the way to make people happy-
What do you mean? If I show you people how to act, you will see how much better things are when everyone is kind and considerate. It is really very simple.
In a perfect world, that would work. Humans are far from perfect, however; the moment they were released, they would become a mass of confusion and terror, looking to place the blame somewhere, and they would fall to fighting amongst themselves. The only way I could see out of this was if the alien could somehow make them forget that they hadn’t been controlling themselves-
That I could do; however, any effects of my experiment would also be erased, and I would be left with no result. And I still don’t see why this would not work. Besides, what would you know about happiness anyway? You, Cornelia Farrow, are a rude, pessimistic, angry recluse who has not said more than five words in a row to anyone for years. How could you lecture me on happiness?
The voice had mounted to an unbearable pitch; I could not think for several minutes, though I felt no pain. It was an odd sensation, rather like the alien’s conscious had pulsed with every word, blocking out all my own thoughts. My body completely disregarded my mind’s discomfort; it merely skipped down to class, not a care in the world. I envied it.
I was confused, caught in the net of thought and action and dire consequence. If I made the wrong choice now, said the wrong word, humanity would be pitched into chaos. And the alien was right; how could I, possibly the sourest person in town, talk to anyone about happiness? How could I hope to save us all when I was facing a being more than ten times as old, ten times smarter than myself? What did I have that it didn’t?
Stop that. Despair is unbecoming.
All you need to do is convince me that what I am doing is wrong, and I will leave you. You already know that I am wrong; tell me why.
Why… with that question, I felt more like myself. This was no longer an impossible quest; it was now a question, a problem to be solved. And that I knew I could do.
So I set to work, mulling over everything about the situation. My body went on through the school day; I got better grades on my quizzes than I ever had before. Of course, the alien was taking the quiz for me and had probably written it too, being that it had the teacher in its grasp.
It was a difficult question, full of ethical quandaries that I rarely considered as any of my business. But at last, after my body had eaten its dinner and finished off its homework and was lying in its bed, I had my answer. It was difficult for me to say, since the nature of the answer went against everything I stood for, but I would simply have to adjust my life from now on. Both the alien and I agreed that it was undeniably, unquestionably right.
Yes… I am convinced… and if things play out the way I hope, everyone’s needs shall be fulfilled. Good night, Cornelia Farrow, and good bye.
--------------------
Nel awoke the next morning and cautiously opened her eyes. She gingerly stepped out of bed onto her carpet, and when everything seemed normal, rushed into the bathroom.
One hand shakily flicked the blonde strands of hair out of her eyes, while the other gripped the sink for support. As she stared into the mirror, Nel gave a deep sigh of content.
The glassy eyes were gone, as was the pressure on her mind. Nel also had total control of her limbs, and used it to finish dressing and to take her shower.
Fully clothed, she tramped down the stairs to a scene eerily similar to the one from yesterday. Her father stood at the door, flipping through a file before replacing it in his brief case; her mother stood in front of the fridge, replacing the milk. Nel entered the kitchen and fixed herself a bowl of cereal while her parents pecked each other on the cheek and her father opened the door to leave.
“Have a good day, Nel”
She started to shrug and voice her customary grunt, but stopped herself.
“You too, Dad.”
Nel smiled into her breakfast as her parents exchanged confused glances. Her father left for work and her mother went back to cleaning the stove. When Nel finished her breakfast she said good bye to her mother, earning a slightly perplexed look and a hug, and started her walk to school.
As Nel stepped out onto the sidewalk, she smiled into the morning. She was surprised at how good she felt, just from being a little polite; that feeling confirmed the soundness of her answer the other day.
All her life, Nel had thought that she was just one of those people who were unhappy, who didn’t have a choice about their mood or how they acted. Now she knew better. Now Nel understood that happiness was a decision: people were happy because they choose to make others happy, who in turn made them happy, and so forth. It was difficult to describe, like both a chain and a cycle. But she now knew that happiness begins when you want it to.
And starting now, Cornelia Farrow chose to be happy.
So in one small way, the alien succeeded; humanity was now one billionth better.