That's the problem with life. You never get enough time to stare at your ceiling and try to figure out what's going on.

Sometimes you just have those days where everything goes wrong. But sometimes, and totally unexpectedly, something can go right.

I didn’t know. I feel sometimes like…there are all these rules. Just to be a person. You know? You’re supposed to carry a shoulder bag, not a backpack. You’re supposed to wear headbands, or you’re not supposed to wear headbands. It’s okay to describe yourself as likeable, but it’s not okay to describe yourself as eloquent. You can sit in the front of the school bus, but you can’t sit in the middle. You’re not supposed to be with a boy, even when he wants you to. I didn’t know that. There are so many rules, and they don’t make any sense, and I just can’t learn them all

Sometimes people think they know you. They know a few facts about you, and they piece you together in a way that makes sense to them. And if you don't know yourself very well, you might even believe that they are right. But the truth is, that isn't you. That isn't you at all.

Sometimes you get everything you ever wanted, only it doesn't look like what you wanted anymore.

What really happened doesn't matter. What matters is how we agree to remember it.

We shouldn't be doing this." Dan broke the silence, his voice low. "We would both get in trouble." He stood up. "Let's go back.""We shouldn't be doing what?" I scrambled to my feet. "What exactly are we doing?""This.""You mean consorting?""Sure, consorting. Cavorting. Carousing." He paused to take a deep breath."Kissing." Then he leaned in and pressed his mouth to mine.

If there's one common thread throughout all of history, it's that people have always fallen for the wrong people.

I think love without heartbreak is a myth. A pretty myth, but the kind of myth that ultimately makes us feel worse about ourselves because we're somehow not able to make it come true.

When you die, you just die. No ghost, no reincarnation, no heaven. People want to believe that their souls live on or whatever, but that's only because they can't handle the idea of the world going on without them.

You may wonder how I managed to make these friends. Well, I will tell you. Making friends is actually not that hard when you drop every single one of your standards.

People are who they are and, try as you might, you cannot make them be what you want them to be.

Why did you do this?" He was shaking. "Just tell me why."I tried to muster up some of the righteous indignation that I'd felt on Friday night as I said, "You knocked over my gravestone!" But even to my ears the words sounded tinny and pathetic.Dan's face was pale. "It was just a gravestone, Chelsea. And it was a mistake. I told you that already, and I meant it. I've never lied to you. My God, can't you tell the difference between a gravestone and a person you love? Can't you tel which one matters?"But if I had to point to the real problem in my life, it's that I've never known the difference between a gravestone and a person I love. I have never known which is which until it's too late. "All's fair in love and war," I reminded him, aiming for Tawny's tone. But my voice came out sounding just like me."Oh, yeah? And which is this?" he asked. "Love or war?

If you're going to have the tortured soul of an artist, then you might as well create some art while you're at it.

History doesn't intend to have some particular emotional value, or any particular moral. History doesn't have any intentions at all. It's just a never-ending web of events that can have pretty much any meaning at all. But we, in retrospect, make this web into a story that makes sense. We superimpose onto it a beginning, middle, and end. We decide who the main characters are, the good guys and the bad guys. We decide what the moral of the story is, and how everyone is supposed to feel about it.""But history is facts," I said. "It's not a matter of opinion.""To a certain extent," Dad granted. "The facts matter, to a certain extent. You can't create a story without some facts to base it on. But what 'really happened' doesn't matter. What matters is how we agree to remember it.

I believe that a person's taste in music tells you a lot about them. In some cases, it tells you everything you need to know.

This wasn't how I imagined things going. But imagination is so often no match for the absurdity, the randomness, the tragedy of reality.

Tonight the Internet seemed filled with versions of me, like a fun house filled with mirrors. Some of them made me look prettier, and some of them made me look uglier, and some of them chopped me right in half, but none of them were right.

You think it's so easy to change yourself. You think it's so easy, but it's not True, things don't stay the same forever: couches are replaced, boys leave, you discover a song, your body becomes forever scarred. And with each of these moments you change again, your true self spinning, shifting positions - but always at last it returns to you, like a dancer on the floor. Because throughout it all you are still always, *you*: beautiful and bruised, known and unknowable. And isn't that - just you - enough?

Throughout it all, you are still, always, you: beautiful and bruised, known and unknowable. And isn't that - just you - enough?

I had never killed myself before, so I had no idea what would I want to listen to when it was too late for me to skip to the next song. Like, maybe when you're dying, you actually want to hear something really upbeat.

Throughout it all, you are still, always, you: beautiful and bruised, known and unknowable.

Well, you can't have heartbreak without love," Dan pointed out. "If your heart was really broken, then at least you know you really loved him.

Because before the time when you're heartbroken, you get to be in love, and that's worth it.

Some people were nice to you simply because they liked you.

People have to create some sort of art so they have something to think about other than their shitty lives.

I have a theoryd that the first person you fall for creates a model for how you approach relationships going forward. Like, it frames how you'll look at every person who you date after that.

The thing about being an artist," Dad said, folding his newspaper and setting it down on the table, "is that there are always going to be people who want to stop you from doing your art. But this usually says more about them and their issues than it does about you and your art. Trust me.

Don't you ever want to have just one thing that no one else knows about, so no one can ruin it for you?

I liked projects where I could take things apart and figure out exactly how they worked. The problem is, you can't do that with people.

This should have been a red flag, I realize in retrospect. Working really hard on anything is, by definition, not cool.

There were people in this world who didn't know how to take care of others. There were people who walked away even when they'd made a promise to stand by you. There were people who threw around the word love but only acted on it when it was convenient for them.

But you know better than anyone how the Internet sees everything and nothing, all at the same time.

Nobody is so busy that they can't make time for the people they really care about.

In Bio last year, I learned that blood is actually a dark maroon when it's inside your body. It's the exposure to oxygen that turns it bright red. And there must have been a lot of oxygen in my bathroom, because that blood was bright, bright red.