"When I was little I used to pour salt on slugs. I liked watching them dissolve before my eyes. Cruelty is always sort of fun until you realize that something's getting hurt.

It would be one thing to be a loser if it meant no one paid attention to you, but in school, it means you're actively sought out. You're the slug, and they're holding all the salt. And they haven't developed a conscience.

There's a word we learned in social studies: schadenfreude. It's when you enjoy watching someone else suffer. The real question, though, is why? I think part of it is just self-preservation. And part of it is because a group always feels more like a group when it's banded together against an enemy. It doesn't matter if that enemy has never done anything to hurt you - you just have to pretend you hate someone even more than you hate yourself.

You know why salt works on slugs? Because it dissolves in the water that's part of a slug's skin, so the water insides its body starts to flow out. The slug dehydrates. This works with snails, too. And with leeches. And with people like me.

With any creature, really, too thin-skinned to stand up for itself." - Jodi Picoult, Nineteen Minutes.

Nineteen Minutes has to be one of my favourite novels. It's so thrilling and honestly, all the issues raised in the novel and the massacre that happened in Sterling High were very controversial and it actually made me think if I was in Peter's situation; what would I do if I am in his position?

I missed reading a good book, and I will do a book hunting when I'm in Malaysia.