You never think it will happen to you. You think about what it would be like. You go through it over and over in your mind, changing the scenario slightly each time, but deep down, you don't really believe it would ever happen, because it's something that happens to someone else, not to you.

You did what your heart told you to do,' Brain complimented. 'It is what leaders, not followers, do.

Talk is cheap. If it wasn't, people might not toss around 'I love you' like a marked-down phrase in a sales bin.

Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep. And if I should die before I awake, I pray the popular attend my wake.

friends are like stars. You do not see all the time, but you know they are there

We all want to be stars. The idea of being revered and envied must be encoded somewhere deep in our DNA. So must the desire to revere and envy others we imagine to be better, more accepted, and more popular than we are. The only problem is that the most necessary qualities required to be a celebrity -- self-absorption, egomania, shamelessness -- are the least attractive in a friend.

Someone can have the best intentions,' Markov said, 'but offering the wrong advice, the wrong help at the wrong time, can be worse than not helping at all.