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What you need to know about me and Amanda is that no friendship like ours had ever existed. We basically redefined the medium, elevated it to an art form. Seriously, that’s how we felt. We were like all young people in that way, in full belief that we were revolutionizing the human experience. Those older models, all failures; let us show you how real living is done!
She was a confident person. But like all confident people, it was only about 87 percent authentic. Doubt just lived on the outskirts of town instead of in the center, like it does for everyone else.
People say power is intoxicating; you say you’ll be the first to stay sober. But let me tell you, everyone gets drunk.
“Honestly, I bet that happens to everyone one time or another. I think we’re all just pretending to not be freaking out and you’re just having a harder time pretending right now.”
Tears were dripping, but I wouldn’t say she was crying. Crying is an action. This felt passive—she was leaking.
Of course, most things in life are conveyed without using precision, which is why I loved books so much. The people in them were scared and rarely said what they meant, but the best authors used words like swords to slice through it all.
some terrible music started playing, because silence terrifies people. I’m always noticing the little ways society protects us from the menace of silence, like with Muzak in elevators. Humans: we built the Pyramids and made all the world’s information instantly accessible, but apparently if we stand together quietly, we’ll short-circuit and melt.
What many people don’t understand about serious injury or illness is that what you’re really coming to grips with isn’t the physical limitations (although there is that); it’s how the physical limitations alter your interactions with the world.
Love didn’t always mean staying.
Even as a kid my mom would stop people and say, “Oh, Sidney can figure it out on her own.” She was always telling people I was so competent she’d never have to worry about me. But sometimes it’s nice to be worried about.
Making decisions with my heart thrashing like a caged animal was a terrible habit I couldn’t seem to break.
we’re lost together and that feels better than being found alone.
“I just think,” continued the woman who had pounced, “that the world—and maybe more accurately, society—is always trying to convince us that work will make us happy, that our ambition is healthy, pursuing it satisfying. That’s the great capitalist brainwashing, isn’t it?”
we’re all so much more, and less, than our best, or worst, moment,”
that’s why women all over the world make themselves smaller, so men can feel better about themselves?”
The brightness of the day felt rude.
“The trick of life, as I see it now, is to make what’s around you beautiful. It’ll grow from there. Took me a long time to see that.”
Broken
things are beautiful. More beautiful in the end than perfect things, which are usually an illusion of some sort. I hoped I had given her a beautiful life.
Mr. Riley just lost it, yelling out: “Ladies and gentlemen, we have got to get on top of our ducks!” And you and I slowly looked at each other and just doubled over laughing? (Those ducks, we had to get on top of them… and stay there!) We couldn’t stop, and Mr. Riley came over to us and was like, “Is something funny, ladies?” Then for the next year, or however long it was, we’d tell people struggling with anything—big, or small—to get on top of their ducks, then just walk away straight-faced.
A minor miracle, such moments—seeing your person before they see you.
“I’d tell her that only love will fill the black hole—that it’s the only thing worth chasing.”
