Theja shree

“My Mum says "Plans don’t always work out how we expect them to.”

“I’m learning that…” I say, resting my head against the window. “Don’t put too much effort into things. You’ll only end up being disappointed.”

“That’s a bit pessimistic,” my mother says. “Sure, life ends up more complicated than we want. But you figure it out.”

I sigh. “You’d think at least one thing would work out, though,” I say. “Sometimes I wish I could skip a few years into the future to see where I end up. So I don’t waste all this time planning things out, only to have none of it go right.”

“That’s not a way to live life,” my mother says, her hands gripping the wheel. “Always worrying about what comes next, instead of living in the moment. I see this in a lot of my students. And I’m seeing it in you…” She looks at me. “You’re living ahead of yourself, Julie. Making decisions, and wanting things done, only to set up the future.”

“What’s so wrong with that?” I ask

“Life will pass right by you,” she says, her eyes focused on the road. “And you end up missing the little things, the moments you don’t think matter—but they do. Moments that make you forget about everything else. Just like with your writing,” she adds out of nowhere. “You don’t write to get to the end. You write because you enjoy doing it. You write and don’t want it to end. Does that make some sense?”
― Dustin Thao, You've Reached Sam

“You have two choices when you’re confronted with your every last fear:
Give up or fight like hell.”
― Alex Finlay, Every Last Fear

“These are no dark magicians. They have no special skills. People seem to forget that we know their names because they got caught. In fact, the only remarkable thing about them is what they took from the world: their victims. It’s their names we should know.”
― Catherine Ryan Howard, The Nothing Man

“The world keeps moving, no matter what happens to you.”
― Dustin Thao, You've Reached Sam