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1 " It’s strange how easy it was, once we tried, to just spend time being broken together. "
― Rasmenia Massoud , Tied Within
2 " How nice that must be, to blend in with unexceptional people in that banal, work-a-day banter. Like regular people. "
3 " Her metamorphosis, once complete, would let her belong. Her superficial cocoon. An escape route from awkward. A life boat to acceptance. "
4 " Then a thought occurs to me that nice can turn to annoying or dull if a person isn’t careful, or stops paying attention. "
5 " I don’t know how to find the future, or where to start looking for it. "
6 " It’s the way people look at you when they know you’re damaged, but don’t know how to react to knowing a thing like that. "
7 " There’s nothing the dead can tell you that the living can’t,” he’d said to me. “World is indifferent to your feelings. World has no responsibility and no reasons why a serial killer can randomly create orphans and then disappear, and no antipathy for assholes who get drunk and kill, then go free a couple of years later. You gotta look for joy, not reasons and explanations. "
8 " It isn't fair the way memory twists up the things it shows you. "
9 " Home never has enough distractions, only walls and mirrors. "
10 " We just didn’t want to go home, where we would be surrounded by what we truly are and all that we pretended to be, facing what we might never reach. "
11 " I don’t know how to be any version of me, much less a new and improved me. "
12 " When I start something, I can never finish it. I just can’t dedicate myself to wanting or doing a thing for an extended period of time like that. I get started doing and before I reach the halfway mark, I’m wanting something else. But, really, it’s not me, it’s everything moving around me, changing and wreaking havoc on my wants. I decided it's easier to stop starting things because it’s impossible to keep up with the world, the way it constantly throws new stuff at you. "
13 " It’s too hard to forget the weight of shame that a pair of eyes can put down on you. "
14 " People like to put their paranoia on you to keep you from having the fun they’re afraid to have themselves. "
15 " Then I recognize the feeling I have way down underneath my scoffing and head shaking. Not doubt. Not skepticism. Only cold jealousy. Nothing is my bag. Nothing ever called out to me. If it did, I’m deaf to it, or don’t know how to listen. That’s the kind of realization that makes me too sad to speak. "
16 " That’s the cool thing about the past,” Bronwyn says, “It’s temporary. If you don’t like the one you have, you can just keep making new ones until you find one that’s a good fit. "
17 " Most of the time, when a bum on the street asks you for money, it’s not too hard to just walk away, but these fun guys, with their jokes, banjos and cute animals, they make it impossible to dismiss them. It makes me wonder what they know that I don’t. "
18 " It’s hard to explain to people who already know who they are and what they like that you have no fucking idea what you want to do with your time because you don’t know how to like or dislike a thing, or how to do anything. "