chanell :o( > Recent Status Updates

the only trick of friendship, I think, is to find people who are better than you are—not smarter, not cooler, but kinder, and more generous, and more forgiving-and then to appreciate them for what they can teach you, and to try to listen to them when they tell you something about yourself, no matter how bad-or good-it might be, and to trust them, which is the hardest thing of all. But the best, as well” (p. 240).

“They were his friends, his first friends, and he understood that friendship was a series of exchanges: of affections, of time, sometimes of money, always of information. And he had no money.
He had nothing to give them, he had nothing to offer” (p. 111).

“Could you have a real friendship if some part of you was always expecting betrayal?” (p. 144).

“…—but in those moments he would at times find himself thinking, This is enough. This is more than I hoped. To be in New York, to be an adult, to stand on a raised platform of wood and say other people's words! — it was an absurd life, a not-life, a life his parents and his brother would never have dreamed for themselves, and yet he got to dream it for himself every day” (p. 63).

“…sometimes the only way to learn is to live” (p. 67).

“This life will someday have to end, so until that final day arrives,
Do what you want to do, do it, do all you can,
That's how you face tomorrow” (p. 5).

“To live means to cry, to shout, to love, to do silly things, to feel sadness and joy, to laugh, even to experience horrible, frightening things. Beautiful songs, beautiful scenery, nausea, people singing, planes flying across the sky…” (p. 80).

“Do not be afraid of what you feel. Never forget what you have been through. Allow your passions to build inside you rather than diminish over time” (p. 430).

“Believe in what you have done because anything executed with all your will and Craft is something that cannot go wrong” (p. 477).

“You can't beg the world to do what you want. You can't ask it nicely. You must force the world. You must bend it to your will” (p. 151).

“You’re supposed to make people think you’ve got a lot of friends, you’re supposed to make people think you’re happy — content in your work and connected to others, with a family who have become real friends, and friends who’ve become real family” (p. 127).

“You have to have a purpose in life if you want to survive!” (p. 253).
“…We don't get to control the people we love. We only get to forgive them or forgive ourselves if we can't” (p. 269).

“You worry too damn much about pleasing everyone else. You never make choices for yourself. You've got to learn to stand alone. Have the courage to become an individual” (p. 194).

“A nascent realization rose in my brain: Mom had an inferiority complex with whites like Dad did with Navajos. As a small girl, I donned both versions of this oppression, and that's why I was always nervous in public. I had developed a "less than" perspective about Navajo people, yet I also feared that I wasn't as "good" as whites” (p. 141).

“I hated that question. It was such a white way of looking at the world, that a person is judged by their job, not their character” (p. 180).