Anusha

“You can't just make me different and then leave," I said out loud to her. "Because I was fine before, Alaska. I was fine with just me and last words and school friends, and you can't just make me different and then die." For she had embodied the Great Perhaps—she had proved to me that it was worth it to leave behind my minor life for grander maybes, and now she was gone and with her my faith in perhaps. I could call everything the Colonel said and did "fine." I could try to pretend that I didn't care anymore, but it could never be true again. You can't just make yourself matter and then die, Alaska, because now I am irretrievably different, and I'm sorry I let you go, yes, but you made the choice. You left me Perhapsless, stuck in your goddamned labyrinth. And now I don't even know if you chose the straight and fast way out, if you left me like this on purpose. And so I never knew you, did I? I can't remember, because I never knew.”
― John Green, Looking for Alaska

“As much as I would love to romanticize that time, I can't. I was so unfinished. I asked God for a boyfriend, professional acting status, and the experience of traveling overseas, but I didn't ask for wisdom, I didn't ask for self-love, and it showed. I was with a man who never loved me. My objective the entire 7 years was earning his love.”
― Viola Davis, Finding Me

“And that's the thing about people who mean everything they say. They think everyone else does too.”
― Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner

“When you write a story, you’re telling yourself the story,” he said. “When you rewrite, your main job is taking out all the things that are not the story.”
― Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft