#coming-of-age

"Stop trying to be less of who you are. Let this time in your life cut you open and drain all of the things that are holding you back."

"I know that your soul is on life support and that you feel lost and like you’re completely spinning out of control, but you’re finding yourself — here, tonight… even in this darkness."

"I look out into the water and up deep into the stars. I beg the sparkling lanterns of light to cure me of myself — my past and the kaleidoscope of mistakes, failures and wrong turns that have stacked unbearable regret upon my shoulders."

"Do you think we can be friends?” I asked.He stared up at the ceiling. “Probably not, but we can pretend."

"If ever I was running, it was towards you."

"I’m going to follow this invisible red thread until I find myself again… until I finally figure out… who I’m meant to be."

"Does our purpose on Earth directly link to the people whom we end up meeting? Are our relationships and experiences actually the required dots that connect and then lead us to our ultimate destinies?"

"He’d used the amulet to read my thoughts again. I pictured smacking him in the face."

"I just want your voice aimed at me again. I want to absorb the direction of your eyes…"

"Don’t worry if people think you’re crazy. You are crazy. You have that kind of intoxicating insanity that lets other people dream outside of the lines and become who they’re destined to be."

"I had not expected the gentle, tentative surge of gratitude I began to feel...for St. Paul's School, the spring, and the early morning. I needed the morning light and the warbling birds. I needed to find a way to live in this place for a moment and get the good of it. I had tried to hold myself apart, and the aloneness proved more terrible than what I had tried to escape."

"I really believe that there is an invisible red thread tied between him and me, and that it has stretched and tangled for years — across oceans and lifetimes. I know that it won’t break because our souls are tied."

"I know that this process of ‘me changing my life’ doesn’t just end once I set fire to this list of things I hate about myself. Tonight isn’t as much of a new beginning as it is a violent end and I know the real work hasn’t even started yet."

"Everything hurts right now and nothing is helping because as the pain is getting worse — so is the love."

"I want you to trust yourself, baby. Love is all that matters and you’ve always known that. You’ve known, since you were a very little girl, what your life is meant to be about…"

"I love him in ways that I can’t explain to other people. They don’t understand… it’s not their fault."