There's beauty in the breakdown.

1. It will get better. I promise all these problems will be stories one day and you’ll laugh at them thinking how silly you were. 2. Don’t make promises you can’t keep. If their laugh isn’t music to your ears or you don’t see the whole world in their eyes, don’t promise to love them forever. 3. Your grades don’t define you. The test you almost failed won’t matter in 10 years, what will matter is how good of a person you are. 4. However, don’t ignore your education. Education is one of the most powerful weapons you can ever have. Read as many books as you can and never ever stop learning. 5. Listen to your mother, I promise whatever she advises you is probably the best for you. No one truly wants the absolute best for you as much as your mother. 6. Never ever comment on anyone’s appearance, if they can’t fix it in 5 minutes. Criticisms stick and they will see that there’s something wrong with them everytime they look in the mirror, even if it for a split second. 7. Compliment people as much as you can, kindness goes a long way in such a cruel world. 8. Never ever forget where you came from no matter how high you reach, be as humble as you can, because you can lose everything in a second and you won’t have anywhere to go except back home. 9. If they want to leave for no reason, hold the door open for them. If they think you don’t deserve an explanation for why they’re leaving, then they don’t deserve a second of your time. 10. Love yourself, love yourself, love yourself. I can’t stress this enough, it is a long process, but every time you see a flaw in yourself, learn to love it, then watch yourself slowly change it.

I won’t glorify or romanticize heartbreak, for me it was a kind of death and I was forced to keep living.

I wish I had the courage not to fight and doubt everything. I wish, just once, I could say: ‘This. This is good enough.‘

Do I contradict myself? Very well, then, I contradict myself; I contain multitudes.

If you haven’t already noticed, all my books are about a lonely person looking for some way to connect with other people. In a way, that is the opposite of the American Dream: to get so rich you can rise above the rabble, all those people on the freeway or, worse, the bus.

“Intellectual controversies tend to be like dog fights without the teeth, in which the barking not the biting does the damage.