“Even without him, you can bring down monsters. Believe me. You can still bring down monsters.”

Did the girl choose magic, or does magic choose the girl?

Does a heart that is rotted cease to be called a heart?

I will not give up the flowers in my heart for stones just because the world is a hard place. The world is only hard because it needs more flower hearted people.

Nothing will come of forcing yourself to compete your way out of trauma.

Even the day must let go of the sun and allow the light to disappear, so the darkness can live for a while. The only way out of grief is through it.

There is no justice in the world. You have to make your own, because believe me, the cosmos that gifted you the chaos, also created you with care.

You are not his princess. You are your own queen.

Girlhood is confronting the parts of you that you think are too dark for anyone to love.

If he truly loves you, he will love you when you are an ocean breeze but also when you are a summer storm. You were not made to be loved in parts. You were meant to be loved as a whole.

What do you do when you see a love so pure, so completely unwavering other than bow to it?

Burn every memory that does not help you grow. Destruction, too, can be necessary.

There is a difference between holy and pure. Holy is also the way the anger boils inside our throats.

There is a knowing in her, she hears them say, that makes her untamable. She has known since she was a child that she is observant in a way that makes them uncomfortable.

Anxious people are resorceful, they need to know how to keep the sea of panic at bay so they do not drown.

When I was a little girl, I had a friend and sometimes I wondered if he was born on the day the Titanic sank.

I know how to handle noise better than I can handle silence.

Knowledge is knowing that Frankenstein is not the monster. Wisdom is knowing that Frankenstein IS the monster.

It can speak to people who have themselves felt like monsters and say: you are not alone, this is not monstrous. It can disturb and enrapture.

A thinking woman sleeps with monsters.

I was watching Monster’s Ball, which is a fabulous movie. It’s just a little gem: beautifully shot, and shot in a way I never would have done.

What is a monster? A being whose survival is incompatible with the existing order.

And when you’re a perfectionist little monster, it makes it even harder.

To exclude anything that appears in your universe is not love. Love joins with everything. It doesn’t exclude the monster. It doesn’t avoid the nightmare – it looks forward to it.

Focus on the moment, not the monsters that may or may not be up ahead.