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The only trick of friendship, I think, is to find people that are better than you are—not smarter, not cooler, but kinder, and more generous and more forgiving—and then to appreciate them for what they can teach you, and to try to listen when they tell you something about yourself, no matter how bad—or good—it might be, and to trust them, which is the hardest thing of all. But the best, as well. —A Little Life, Hanya Yanagihara
Maybe she and I failed each other by allowing each other the freedom to be ourselves, and maybe that was the inevitable consequence of true friendship. —Trouble, Kate Christensen
Sometimes you just need to be around someone who loved you before you were a fully formed person. It’s like finding your favorite sweatshirt in the back of the closet, the one you forgot why you stopped wearing and once you find it again you sleep in it every night.
the biting fear that everything you’ve worked for can disappear in a second, that you can bust your butt, do everything right, and it won’t matter one bit. I know it all too well.
Some nights I’m wrenched awake at 3 a.m. with the unsettling sensation that time is speeding past me and I’m so behind I’ll never catch up.
It’s one thing to feel distant from your best friend when you live in different states; it’s another when you’re a few miles apart.
I’m sure you think you can trust her, but you never know about people.”
Life doesn’t give you many miracles or second chances, so I promised myself I’d make the most of this one.
But somehow, we always come back together, the ups and downs eventually balancing like a seesaw.
How much tragedy can one woman bear?
Focusing on my job helps me to push aside the complicated sorrow.
If there’s one thing my dad always wants, it’s for me to be prepared, for anything, everything in life.
sometimes we need to swallow our pride and reach out. Even when we don’t know what to say and we’re afraid of messing everything up by saying the wrong thing. It doesn’t matter if you don’t know how to talk about something. All that matters is that you try. The longer you let something go, the easier it is to stay silent, and the silence is where the resentment starts to fester and rot.”
Sometimes you can’t think your way out of a thing. You have to feel it. And sometimes you just have to let it out. You can’t just push it away and pretend it’s not happening.
How can you have a friendship if you can’t be honest with each other?
Remember, what’s done in the dark always comes to light.
For all the ways I want to be different from my mother, there are many more we’re alike.
Maybe it’s what we all want from the people we love: to be seen for exactly who we are.
There are no easy choices, no safe choices, you can’t plan your way to happiness.
It seemed easier to forgive my mother than to hold on to the anger that’s lived inside me like blood and bone since I was a little girl.
Their silence will form a communion stronger than words. After all, what can words do?
They taught me by word and example that it doesn’t matter how smart or successful or popular you are, the one thing you should work really hard at above all else is being a good person.
