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“I’m not trying to change who you are. I’m trying to reveal it. A diamond can’t shine until it’s cut.”
I have never been someone of value. Not to anybody. Not even to my own goddamned mother, the one person on this planet who is supposed to give a fuck about me. I’ve had friends, but I was never the most important person in their life, the sun in their solar system.
The man who never cared about anyone is fixated on the girl nobody gave a shit about.
The value in horrible things is what you make of them. As long as you’re alive, you can still turn shit into gold.”
People drive their cars with one hand, scrolling on their phones like nothing can happen to them. Meanwhile, they’re terrified of some statistically improbable event like a shark attack on their vacation to Hawaii. The real dangers are all around you all the time.”
Like serial killers!!
“Whatever else I may be, I was never a man who had to tear a woman down to shine bright beside her. If you’re not as good as me, then you’re no good at all. And when I saw you, Mara … I thought, this girl is really fucking good. I don’t want to hold you down, chop you down, diminish you in any way. I already know I found something special. Now it’s time for everyone else to see it.”
Sometimes I think I could do any job better than the people employed to do it. The rest of the world is a morass of incompetence, everyone playing dress-up at their jobs. Are there any actual adults? Or just children that grew tall?
I stand on one side of a chasm. Mara has to join me. It’s the only way we can truly be together.
That’s the nature of art. You open yourself for everyone to see, to judge. You can’t make art at all unless you’re willing to lay yourself bare and risk what follows.
We always become like the people that surround us. No human is an island. We’re more like rocks in a tumbler, knocking each other’s rough edges, polishing and refining one another as we pass.
I never saw a spider kill a snake.
Not one snake but two, the black and the white. We are the same. And I like what we are.
Mara is my other half. Not my twin, but the parts of me that were missing.
Everything is better when you share it with someone else. Nothing feels insurmountable when you aren’t alone.
