What happens just happens.

It's so much easier to lie on the phone.

I wanna fall at a million miles per hour with people and little picture radios. And I'm smiling, but I'm trying hard not to smile at all. And I crave for the little conversation and the way you toss your hair back. You're beautiful, and it suits me fine.

"Playing hard to get is easy when you don't really like someone. When you're testing the theory to see if it works and of course it does, because the victim of your game in an ugly bastard, so when he keeps calling and wanting to see you, you laugh to yourself because your mother was right after all - treat them mean and they really do stay keen. But when you meet someone who makes your heart stir, and you think, I will try and play hard to get, but what this really means is when they ask can I see you tonight, you say you're busy. But you can see them later, you add hopefully, after the dinner party you had been so looking forward to before you met them. It won't finish late you say, just so they don't think you're changing your arrangements for them. So you go out for the dinner and you sit there quite seperate from the conversation around you. Every five minutes you check your watch, and at 10 o'clock you excuse yourself and rush back to your new lover. This is how we play hard to get. And then we wonder why they feel threatened, suffocated, why they disappear."

--Jane Green, 'Strait Talking'

And the other habit I still have, which I hate, is that I'm always apologizing. I'll be standing in the supermarket and someone will step on my foot. "Sorry" I say. Or someone's blocking my way walking down the steet, and sure enough, the bloody word comes out again. Am I really so pathetic? Please tell me I'm not the only one who does this.

You can’t exist in this world without leaving a piece of yourself behind. There are concrete paths, like credit card receipts & appointment calendars & promises you’ve made to others. There are microscopic clues, like fingerprints, that stay invisible unless you know how to look for them. But even in the absence of any of this, there’s scent. We live in a cloud that moves with us as we check our e-mail & jog & carpool. The whole time, we shed skin cells--forty thousand per minute--that rise on currents up our legs & under our chins.

Which came first: the addict or the drug? You can’t have an addiction unless there’s something to crave; by the same token, a drug is nothing but a plant or a drink or a powder until someone wants it badly. The truth is, the addict & the drug came together & therein lies the problem.

Bad is not an absolute, but a relative term. Ask the robber who used the cash he stole to feed his infant; the rapist who was sexually abused as a child; the kidnapper who truly believed he was saving a life. Just because you break the law doesn’t mean you have intentionally crossed the line into evil. Sometimes the line creeps up on you, & before you know it, you’re standing on the other side.

I start to think that maybe the math is not reciprocal; maybe depriving a mother of a child is greater than depriving the child of the mother. Maybe knowing where you belong is not equal to knowing who you are.

There is a reason the word belonging has a synonym for want at its center; it is the human condition.

It was stupid to be scared. But you could reason with yourself all day and still have butterflies in your stomach.

It would solve a thousand problems if I rolled the Jeep over an embankment. It's not like I haven't thought about it, you know. On my license, it says I'm an organ donor, but the truth is I'd consider being an organ martyr. I'm sure I'm worth a lot more dead than alive--the sum of the parts equals more than the whole. I wonder who might end up walking around with my liver, my lungs, even my eyeballs. I wonder what poor asshole would get stuck with whatever it is in me that passes for a heart. 

We are not special. We are not crap or trash, either. We just are. We just are, and what happens just happens.

"Then the time came when the risk it took to remain tight in a bud, was more painful than the risk it took to bloom."

--Anais Nin

"I guess that's the thing about diamonds -- they're the most valuable things in the world, but what really makes them priceless is the people that give them to you. They may signify wealth, but they can actually mean so much more -- like commitment, family, and love. And there's nothing like a perfect diamond to remind you that you'll never be perfect -- the truth is all you can do is try."

--Nicole Richie, 'The Truth About Diamonds'

It's amazing how far we'll go just to maintain some measure of control. The world spins a circle within a circle and we grip so tight it makes our knuckles white. When all we really want to do is let go, lose control, fall, see where we land.

It's been said that seeing is believing. But the fact is, we all have our blind spots...Sometimes we recognize them ourselves. Sometimes others recognize them for us...Distance has a way of distorting the things we see. But what appears as an obstacle may in fact be an opportunity. The trick is having enough faith to carry through.

It's a big deal when you finally get the chance to do the one thing you want to do--need to do--more than anything. It can kind of scare the crap out of you.

But now I feel like anybody can think the world is beautiful when it's all going their way. That's just like untested faith. But when you've got one eye swollen shut and you still know that it's better than it is bad, then you're onto something. I hope I'm making any sense here at all. My conclusion is this: It's a beautiful world, but also a scary one. I used to think that something couldn't be both.

I could learn photography. That could be something to want. I could photograph children. I could have my own children. I would give them yellow roses. And if they got too loud, I would just put them some place quiet. Put them in the oven. And I would kiss them every day, and tell them you don't have to be anybody, because I would know that being somebody doesn't make you anybody anyway.

I understand we are all young and trying to decide who we are but I hope this isn't what he has decided on.

So, it's like you hear a song on the radio, but you've just gotta see what else is playing before you decide you actually want to listen to that song. What happens if a great song comes on and you missed it though? So you flip back, but all you get is the news and then you went from something to nothing.

You know how people look at you when they think it's their last time? I've started collecting these looks.

You don’t need to know any of this. But the things I don’t reveal are the things I hold closest and fear losing the most. I work overtime keeping them veiled and camouflaged. You don’t need to know that I walk around all day fearing the things that make me happy, and that I have been doing that for my entire life. You don’t need to know that growing up has come late to me. I’m the last one at the party. But at least I’ve shown up.

It wasn't supposed to be this way. The artists, and the scientists, and the poets... none of them fit in at seventeen. You're supposed to get past it. Adults, they see kids killing kids and they know its a tragedy because they used to be those kids. The bullies and the beaten and the loners. You're supposed to get past it. You're supposed to live long enough to take it back. Just take it all back.

After all, you can only be in a bad mood for so long before you have to face up to the fact that it isn’t a bad mood at all. It’s just your sucky personality.