There are so many more important things to worry about than how you're perceived by strangers.

You've learned that every good lie is threaded with truth and every accepted truth leaks lies.

Waking, after all, was an almost natal state. You surfaced without history, then spent the blinks and yawns reassembling your past, shuffling the shards into chronological order before fortifying yourself for the present.

Vanity is a weakness. I know this. It's a shallow dependence on the exterior self, on how one looks instead of what one is. I know this well... Vanity and dishonesty may be vices, but they're also the first forms of protection I ever knew.

There are threads in our lives. You pull one, and everything else gets affected.

Happiness comes in moments, & then it's gone until the next time. Could be years. But sadness settles it.

Charm was the luxury of those who still believed in the essential rightness of things. In purity and picket fences.