That's the problem with having a moral code. We want to destroy the jerkish part of the jerks, but we want to save the human being underneath.

I don't even know what I'm looking for, although I hope I'll know it if I find it along the way. Sometimes I want to simplify my life into a simple bare thing. And other times I want to complicate it so thoroughly that everything I touch will become bound in some way to me. I've become quite aware of my contradictions, but there's no true resolution in that.

He was my first boyfriend, and I made him my everything - he was my new life, my new love, my new compass point. I guess that's the danger with firsts - you lose all sense of proportion.

Why is it so much easier to talk to a stranger? why do we feel we need to disconnect in order to connect? If I wrote "Dear Sofia" or "Dear Boomer" or "Dear Lily's Great-Aunt" at the top of this postcard, wouldn't that change the words that followed? Of course it would. But the question is: When I wrote "Dear Lily," was that just a version of "Dear Myself"? I know it was more than that. But it was also less than that, too

You are happy even if you are afraid to admit it.

I can see that the sadness has returned. And it's not a beautiful sadness- beautiful sadness is a myth. Sadness turns our features to clay, not porcelain.

Please may this not be a game. Please may this not be a game. Because if it’s a game, I know I’m going to lose.