Most people, it seems like they've only got one part of the equation down. Caring for themselves, or caring for someone else. And I'v learned how important it is to have both.

Yeah. When you want what's real and you try to find that in high school, you might as well be looking for a mossy rock beside a babbling brook on the corner of Sixth and Pine in downtown Seattle.

I began to learn the importance of lifting things up and looking underneath.

But then there are the van Goghs and Hemingways and Mozarts, those who feel a hunger so deep, so far down, that greatness lies there too, nestled somewhere within it. Those who get their inner voice and direction from the cool mysterious insides of the moon, and not from the earth like the rest of us.

We hurt each other, is the point. Hurt, annoy, embarrass, but move on. People, it just doesn't work that way. Your own feelings get so complicated that you forget the ways another human being can be vulnerable. You spend a lot of energy protecting yourself. All those layers and motivations and feelings. You get hurt, you stay hurt sometimes. The hurt affects your ability to go forward. And words. All the words between us. Words can be permanent. Certain ones are impossible to forgive.

It occurred to me then that a lot of life was either about wanting and not having, or having and not wanting.

So I forcibly shove aside my prickles of pissed-off, which is easier than it sounds when millions of little sequined caffeine dancers are doing their big Broadway number on your internal stage. (Page 173)