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The essay I had to read was called, An Essay on Criticism by Alexander Pope. The first challenge was that the essay was, in fact, a very long poem in heroic couplets. If something is called an essay, it should be an essay.

Maureen Johnson

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Maureen Johnson
Age: 51
Born: 1973
Born: February 16
Author
Novelist
Writer
Philadelphia
Pennsylvania
First
Challenge
Long
Criticism
Couplets
Something
Challenges
Essay
Called
Alexander
Read
Essays
Fact
Pope
Facts
Heroic
Firsts
Poem

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This is England, he explained. Tell someone it's a procedure, and they'll believe you. The pointless procedure is one of our great natural resources.
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I knew it was beautiful, but knowing something is beautiful and caring about it are two very different things, and I didn't care.
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Dr. Everest, got up and gave us a little pep talk. Mostly it boiled down to the fact that it was autumn, and everyone was back, and while that was a great thing, people better not get cocky or misbehave or he'd personally kill us all. He didn't actually say those words, but that was the subtext.
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The kids I talk to are readers, and the craziest, the most dedicated readers you will ever see.
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Spicy food and I have a close relationship—an obsessive one, in fact. If it’s spicy, I want it. I want to sweat and shake and go half blind from the searing pain . . . which, now that I put it that way, seems really suggestive. But spicy stuff is addictive. That’s a known fact of science.
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Welsh is an actual, currently used language and our next-door neighbors Angela and Gaenor spoke it. It sounds like Wizard.
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The truth was that she had managed to betray everyone by doing nothing. No one in history had ever done less and yet been so wrong. Not cheating on a non-boyfriend with the non-boyfriend of a friend. The pressure of thinking that one through made her swollen body ache.
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She firmly held the theory that everyone gets at least one very stupid superpower.
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WORTH IT and perfect are different things. No one’s perfect, yet in romance, everyone becomes WORTH IT. And that’s the trick.
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I still have a whopping bad case of what you call scag magnetism. I thought i had gotten rid of it there, but it looks like scary guys still materialize from thin air in my presence. They are drawn to me. I am the North Pole, and they are the explorers of love.
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One of them hung a pink bra from our lighting fixture. I left it there. It was a nice bra
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Irony is the word I forget the meaning of immediately after I look it up, but I kind of feel like I live in a constant state of it.
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They weren't pressed together as closely as normal, but his shoulder bumped hers, then remained there. It was very subtle, and possibly even accidental, but it was enough.
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I could envision it all to clearly: Stuart or Debbie finding the dented door off its hinges, lying in the snow. She came in, ravaged the boy, stole plastic bags, and ripped off the door in her escape, the police would say in the APB. Probably making her way to bust her parents out of jail.
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I read two mysteries a day when I was a kid. All of Agatha Christie, all of 'Sherlock Holmes.' I've seen every single British detective show ever made.
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I like to talk. Talking is kind of my thing. If talking had been a sport option at Wexford, I would have been captain. But sports always have to involve running, jumping, or swinging your arms around. You don’t get PE points for the smooth and rapid movement of the jaw.
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I like you because you were mad. And you're pretty. And pretty sane for a mad person.
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Tell me what you want, what you really, really want, he said. Braiiinnnnssss, we said in unison.
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Hey! Jack the Wanker! Over here! I want your autograph!
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Fear can't hurt you, she said. When it washes over you, give it no power. It's a snake with no venom. Remember that. That knowledge can save you.
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