Josie Young

“Love is low-stakes. Feelings matter, but don't hold all the power. We infuse them with importance but can deflate them if we need to. Instead of hurting because my feelings weren't reciprocated, I began to coach myself into feeling proud for having taken the risk.”
― Brodie Lancaster, No Way! Okay, Fine.

“I know the solution isn't to allow myself to trust everyone in the hope that my trust will be rewarded, just as the approach of treating all situations and people with caution isn't an effective one. There is no right answer. All I can do is listen to my gut, trust in my instincts, rely on my fear, wear comfortable shows and believe in women when they tell me what they know or have seen. That's all the hope we can have.”
― Brodie Lancaster, No Way! Okay, Fine.

“Some of us are born rebellious. Reading the story of Zelda Fitzgerald by Nancy Milford, I identified with her mutinous spirit. I remember passing shopwindows with my mother and asking why people didn’t just kick them in. She explained that there were unspoken rules of social behavior, and that’s the way we coexist as people. I felt instantly confined by the notion that we are born into a world where everything was mapped out by those before us. I struggled to suppress destructive impulses and worked instead on creative ones. Still, the small rule-hating self within me did not die.”
― Patti Smith, Just Kids

“I genuinely admire people who can make themselves so vulnerable, the ones who don't need to work hard at chipping away their protective shields — or who haven't constructed them in the first place — like the ones I've built up so I don't have to open myself up. But being that honest, laying yourself bare like that is scary as shit.”
― Brodie Lancaster, No Way! Okay, Fine.