A little talent is a good thing to have if you want to be a writer. But the only real requirement is the ability to remember every scar.

And I believe that in the moment of acceptance, between winner and loser, between killer and killed, there is love.

Write about what disturbs you, particularly if it bothers no one else.

Do those scars cover the whole of you, like the stars and the moons on your dress? I thought that would be pretty too, I ask you right here please to agree with me that a scar is never ugly. That is what the scar makers want us to think. But you and I, we must make an agreement to defy them. We must see all scars as beauty. Okay? This will be our secret. Because take it from me, a scar does not form the dying. A scar means, ‘I survived’.

It is so hard to leave — until you leave. And then it is the easiest goddamned thing in the world.

Nobody worries about kids listening to thousands, literally thousands, of songs about broken hearts and rejection and pain and misery and loss. The unhappiest people I know, romantically speaking, are the ones who like pop music the most; and I don’t know whether pop music has caused this unhappiness, but I do know that they’ve been listening to the sad songs longer than they’ve been living the unhappy lives.

But I didn’t understand then. That I could hurt somebody so badly she would never recover. That a person can, just by living, damage another human being beyond repair.

You haven’t healed, I can tell from how cruel you are.

I opened my mouth, almost said something. Almost. The rest of my life might have turned out differently if I had. But I didn’t.