“He had the chance. The chance not only to leave the old Elliott behind, but to invent a new Elliot. An Elliot built from scratch.”

This is the moment that Elliot decides to commit to the idea he has been mulling over since moving to a new area. He decides to steer his own fate by reinventing himself at the new school where no one knows him or his past. Previously, Elliot had let nature take its course, which resulted in him being the target of bullies because he is small, slight, and gentle. Not willing to passively repeat the past, Elliot leaps at this chance to become someone else.

“It's a question of putting your mind to it […] If you're serious about something, you put your mind to it, and if you put your mind to it, you get it done. That's the way—that's the only way.”

Elliot’s father used to say this often to Elliot and his mother, usually at the dinner table when taking about his new venture. The repetition of it was a running joke for the three of them, but his father believed in the message. Elliot thinks about this quote often as he sees that his father unable to recover, blaming his father for not following his own advice, not “putting his mind” to getting better.

“The person he wanted to die was the man who sat there and said and did nothing; the man who stared silently, blankly into space; the man who wasn't his dad, however much he might look like him.”

Elliot has the thoughts expressed in this quote—that he wishes his father was dead—several times throughout the book. Each time they fill Elliot with guilt, but the reader understands that this anger is Elliot expressing his grief over losing the father he had and loved.