Thora Birch credited as playing...
Liz Murray
- Jean Murray: Lisa said you stopped going to school.
- Liz Murray: I am going to go back.
- Jean Murray: When?
- Liz Murray: When you get better.
- Liz Murray: I knew at that moment I had to make a choice. I could submit to everything that was happening and live a life of excuses... or I could push myself. I could push myself and make my life good.
- Liz Murray: Sometimes I feel like there is skin upon the world. And those of us who are born under it, can see threw it. We just can't get threw it.
- Liz Murray: I loved my mother, so much. She was a drug addict. She was an alcoholic. She was legally blind. She was a schizophrenic. But I never forgot, that she did love me. Even if, if she did. All the time. All the time. All the... All the time.
- Teacher at Public School: Elizabeth is a fine name. What's your problem with it?
- Liz Murray: My mom calls me Elizabeth when she is going insane.
- Liz Murray: I was 15 when I went out in the world. What's a home anyway? A roof? A bed? A place where when you go there, they have to take you? If so, then I was 15 when I became homeless.
- Liz Murray: I'm smart. I know I can succeed. I just need a chance. A chance to climb out of this place I've born in. Everyone I know are angry and tired. They're trying to survive. But I know that there is a world out there that is better, that's better developed. And I want to live in it.
- Liz Murray: I'm 17. I don't want to be 21 before I finish high school.
- David: So you're trying to do four years of high school in what, three?
- Liz Murray: Two.
- Liz Murray: My mother was dying. My father was gone. But I had to believe that their road would rise up to meet me.
- David: You're in.
- Liz Murray: But you told the others you wouldn't let them know until Friday.
- David: You're in.
- Lisa: I loved going to school so much. You never went to school. Why would they gave you a scholarship?
- Liz Murray: Because I'm homeless and I'm doing really well on school.
- Lisa: You're not homeless, Liz. You could stay here.
- Liz Murray: No, I couldn't.
- Chris: I don't want to go to school. I don't belong there and neither do you.
- Liz Murray: Yes, I do.
- Chris: You think they let people like us in to Harvard?