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you can’t help someone who doesn’t want to be helped.
“Maybe that’s all growing up is. Knowing in real time that you don’t know anything.”
“Maybe happiness is overrated,” Evan said. “Freedom, too. Maybe the only way to get anywhere worth being is to pick up the heaviest thing you can carry. And carry it.”
Do not hide unwanted things in the fog.
“Yeah, well, unless you’re the lead sled dog, the view never changes.”
“If you have to tell people you’re important,” Evan said, “then you’re not important.”
DON’T PICK A FIGHT WITH REALITY,
Evan thought about when he’d worked on Joey’s shoulder, how it had been tender to the point of intolerability. It struck him that the same law of physics applied to any injury, physical or emotional. If you babied it, it stiffened even more, spreading the pain through you. But if you yielded, if you were willing to endure the white-hot agony of making vulnerable what you sought to protect, you had a shot at releasing it.
“But you took your own insecurity and put it on her. That weakens her. And it weakens you. You treat a young woman like that with respect. If nothing else it’ll teach you about yourself, teach you who you want to be whenever you’re ready to be that person. Understand?”
“You spend your whole damn life proving that you’re different from everyone else. What a great relief at the end to find out that you aren’t.”
