Au Mabel

“Have you ever been in love? Horrible isn't it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens up your heart and it means that someone can get inside you and mess you up. You build up all these defenses, you build up a whole suit of armor, so that nothing can hurt you, then one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person, wanders into your stupid life...You give them a piece of you. They didn't ask for it. They did something dumb one day, like kiss you or smile at you, and then your life isn't your own anymore. Love takes hostages. It gets inside you. It eats you out and leaves you crying in the darkness, so simple a phrase like 'maybe we should be just friends' turns into a glass splinter working its way into your heart. It hurts. Not just in the imagination. Not just in the mind. It's a soul-hurt, a real gets-inside-you-and-rips-you-apart pain. I hate love.”
― Neil Gaiman, The Sandman, Vol. 9: The Kindly Ones

“Sometimes life gets in your way.
it gets all up in your damn way.
But it doesn't get all up in your damn way
because it wants you to just give up and let it take control.
Life doesn't get all up in your damn way because it just wants you to hand it all over and be carried along.

Life wants you to fight it
Learn how to make it your own.
it wants you to grab and axe and hack through the wood.
It wants you to get a sledgehammer and break through concrete.
It wants you to grab a torch and burn through the metal and steel until you can reach through and grab it.

Life wants you to grab all the organized, the alphabetized, the chronological, the sequenced. It wants you to mix it all together,
stir it up,
blend it.”
― Colleen Hoover, Slammed

“So you keep your ocean, I'll take the Lake.”
― Colleen Hoover, Slammed

“According to the thesaurus... and according to me... there are over thirty different meanings and substitutions for
the word
mean.
(I quickly yell the following words; the entire class flinches- including Will)
Jackass, jerk, cruel, dickhead, unkind, harsh, wicked,
hateful, heartless, vicious, virulent, unrelenting, tyrannical, malevolent, atrocious, bastard, barbarous, bitter, brutal, callous, degenerate, brutish, depraved, evil, fierce, hard, implacable, rancorous, pernicious, inhumane, monstrous, merciless, inexorable.
And my personal favorite—asshole.”
― Colleen Hoover, Slammed