Francesca Zappia Quotes

I made Monstrous Sea because it's the story I wanted. I wanted a story like it, and I couldn't find one, so I created it myself.

It is amazing how much you can learn when you keep your mouth shut" -Eliza

You don't go looking for the truth to be happy. You go looking so that you know.

I was the big sister. I was supposed to set and example and lead the way so people would say, 'Hey, you're Alex's sister, aren't you? You two look exactly alike!' instead of 'Hey, you're Alex's sister, aren't you? Are you crazy, too?'

The only example I was ever going to set for her was to always check her food before she ate it.

If you want the motivation back, you must feed it Feed it everything. Books, television, movies, paintings, stage plays, real-life experience. Sometimes feeding simply means working, working through nonmotivation, working even when you hate it.
We create art for many reasons - wealth, fame, love, admiration - but I find the one thing that produces the best results is desire. When you want the thing you're creating, the beauty of it will shine through, even if the details aren't all in order. Desire is the fuel of creators, and when we have that, motivation will come in its wake.

We create art for many reasons - wealth, fame, love, admiration - but I find the one thing that produces the best results is desire. When you want the thing you're creating, the beauty of it will shine through, even if the details aren't all in order. Desire is the fuel of creators, and when we have that, motivation will come in its wake" -Olivia Kane

Six: everyone - and when I say everyone, I mean absolutely,positively everyone, from the librarians to the students to the staff to the oldest, cruiser janitor - was piss-down-their-legs scared of Miles Richter.
Of all the crazy things I heard about East Shoal, that was the only thing I couldn't believe.

Monstrous Sea is mine.
I made it, not the other way around.
It's not a parasite, or an obligation, or a destiny.
It's a monster.
It's mine.
And I have a battle axe waiting for it.

Eliza. I need to borrow you for a little while." Mrs. Grier has a bad habit of grabbing the first student who walks through her door when she needs something, and today I'm the unlucky plebe she gets her happy teacher hands on. She beams at me, looking the picture of joy in an unseasonal yellow sundress and earrings shaped like bananas.

I ease my arm out of her hand so it doesn't seem like I don't want her to touch me. I don't mind Mrs. Grier. Most days I like her. I wish I had her for an actual class instead of just homeroom, because she doesn't make me talk if I don't want to, and she counts showing up to class as your entire participation grade.

How is she already asleep?" Sully whispers. "At home she stays up until like two a.m."

"She probably was tired," Church whispers back.

"What, from climbing a hill?"

Church doesn't respond. They get into their sleeping bags and whisper for half an hour about the outdoor soccer season about to start. I hadn't even realized the indoor season was over - Mom and Dad just told me when I needed to take them to practice or pick them up. I didn't know how they'd done. Were there any tournaments? Trophies?

After a long stretch of silence, Sully says, "So did you really try out for the spring musical?"

Church doesn't respond for a second. "Yes. Why?"

"Just wondering. Why didn't you tell me?"

"Because you would have made it about Macy Garrison."

"It - it's not?"

"No."

"Oh. But you're not going to try out forchoir?"

"Maybe."

"Why?" Just the smallest bit of mocking enters Sully's tone.

"Because I like it," Church snaps back. "We don't have to do all the same things. Try out for mathletes or something. You like math. You'd be good at it."

"Mathletes is for nerds."

"Sull, there's something you should know."

"Don't say it."

"You are a nerd."

"I'm not a nerd. Eliza's a nerd."

"Actually, I think Eliza's a geek. I've seen her grades. Compared to us, she's horrible at school."

"Yo

Truth is the worst monster, because it never really goes away" -Eliza

I do have friends. Maybe they live hundreds of miles away from me, and maybe I can only talk to them through a screen, but they're still my friends. They don't just hold Monstrous Sea together. They hold me together.
Max and Emmy are the reason any of this exists.

Right now he's working! And later on, guess what - he'll be at his computer, writing something. Probably his transcription of this, which a lot of people are waiting for, just like they're waiting for this. And we'll be talking on the computer. I don't understand why it's such a difficult concept to grasp.

Sometimes I think people take reality for granted.

My first-ever friend was a hallucination: a sparkling entry on my new resume as a crazy person.

Creators shouldn't feel this way about their fans. I shouldn't want them to disappear. They're the reason I have . . . the reason I have anything.

Have you ever seen it in your parents? That moment when they become people? I think you have. It sneaks up on you, doesn't it? One day they're parents, and the next they say something racist, or get a cut that takes too long to heal, or make a simple mistake driving, and a facade falls away and they become mortals like the rest of us. After the facade is gone, it can never come back" -Wallace

It's a strange feeling to like someone so much and yet be terrified to have them in your space, touching you. It isn't that I don't like it when we touch- when we brush arms or when he taps me on the shoulder or when I pick a piece of lint off his shirt. I like it too much. My body gets excited without my permission, and it's not okay. It's out of control.

People say teenagers think they're immortal, and I agree with that. But I think there's a difference between thinking you're immortal and knowing you can survive. Thinking you're immortal leads to arrogance, thinking you deserve the best. Surviving means having the worst thrown at you and being able to continue on despite that. It means striving for what you want most, even when it seems our of your reach, even when everything is working against you.

So where's your house at?" I ask, swinging our hands between us. "I want to properly Google Maps creeper-stalk you before agreeing to meet your family."

He laughs again.

Sure, I hung out around Red Witch Bridge in the middle of the night, but that was in the cover of the trees with an urban legend and a baseball bat as weapons.

You know a school is run by stuck-up sons of bitches when it doesn't even have a bike rack.

The rest of the year, I wondered if the point of Christmas was just spending money and getting fat and opening gifts. Indulging.
But when Christmas finally comes, and that warm, tingly, mints-and-sweaters-and-fireplace-fires feeling gathers in the bottom of your stomach, and you're lying on the floor with all the lights off but the ones on the Christmas tree, and listening to the silence of the snow falling outside, you see the point. For that one instance in time, everything is good in the world. It doesn't matter if everything isn't actually good. It's the one time of the year when pretending is enough.

Broken people don't hide from their monsters. Broken people let themselves be eaten.

He wants me to go to a party. I haven't been to a party since Kenny Smith from next door invited me to his birthday when we were eight, and that ended with me getting pushed into his pool and laughed at all the way home.

Can I think about it?

Yeah, of course.

I'm not going. I like to tell myself I might go - I like to tell myself I might do a lot of things - but I and my brain and everyone else know that I'm going to chicken out in the end and barricade myself in my bedroom with a plate of pizza rolls and my Netflix subscription.

She drew so many monsters that she became a monster herself.

Our stories have lives of their own-and it's up to us to make them mean something.

Lobsters fascinated me. Everything from their name to their claws to their magnificent red had me hooked.

My hair was that read, the kind of read that looks okay on everything but people, because a person's hair is not supposed to be red. Orange, yes. Auburn, sure.

But not lobster red.

I took my pigtails, pressed them against the glass, and stared the nearest lobster straight in the eye.

Dad said my hair was lobster red. My mother said it was Communist red. I didn't know what a Communist was, but it didn't sound good. Even pressing my hair flat against the glass, I couldn't tell if my dad was right. Part of me didn't want either of them to be right.

"Let me out," said the lobster.

He always said that. I rubbed my hair against the glass like the tank was a genie's lamp and the action would stir up some magic. Maybe, somehow, I could get these lobsters out. They looked so sad, all huddled on top of one another, antennae twitching, claws rubber-banded together.

Was there some kind of law about drop-kicking assholes in the face? Probably. They always had laws against things that needed to be done.

Made you breakfast. Are you feeling okay? You look a little gray." I grunt. Morning is the devil's time.

The small flame in my chest flickers for a few hours, waiting for more firewood. If I feed it, the interest continues. If I starve it, the interest wanes.

If you want the motivation back, you must feed it. Feed it everything. Books, television, movies, paintings, stage plays, real-life experience. Sometimes feeding simply means working, working through nonmotivation, working even when you hate it" -Olivia Kane

Hey!"

"What is it, Eggers?" Dad walks out of the kitchen in his windbreaker and running shorts and looks up the stairs.

"Do I have to walk around with Church and Sully for Halloween this year?"

Dad frowns. "Church and Sully are doing Halloween this year? Are they too old for that yet?"

He asks it honestly, because he really doesn't remember. He knows they're in the same grade, and that they're under fourteen because they play on all U-14 sports teams, but anything beyond that is details. Sully is fourteen, Church is thirteen; born elevenmonths apart exactly, and most people think they're twins.

"They're kind of too old for it, yeah," I say.

"Oh. Well, ask your mom."

"Is she home right now?"

"No, she took Davy for her quick 10K with her marathon students."

"What? Davy can't run a 10K!"

He holds his hands up in surrender. "They're jogging, and the slow students always take care of him anyway. He's fine.

"What is it," title="Francesca Zappia Quotes: Hey!"

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Over time, the real remained in the photo while the hallucinations faded away. I discovered what sorts of things my mind liked to make up.

I grab the gifts I've been meaning to send Max and Emmy - a copy each of the newest Monstrous Sea graphic novel compilation and a pack of Twizzlers for Max and Starburst for Emmy - and pack them up. Max lives in Canada; Emmy goes to school in California. Max's shipping is usually a killer, but whatever, I can write it off as business expense.

Wallace: What's the point of being alive if you don't do what makes you happy? What good is a career that makes you money if you hate yourself every day you do it?

He has dimples. Sweet Jesus, dimples. I want to stick my fingers in them.

I feel like someone told a joke and I missed the punchline, and now everyone's laughing without me.

I pushed myself back up. He kept staring at me. I realized I wanted to kiss him.

I didn't know why. Maybe it was the way he looked at me like I was the only thing he wanted to look at.

He had to be real. Out of everything, he had to be real.

Oh god, a winky face. The most provocative of all emoticons. A blush creeps over my face and I rub my cheeks to hide it, even though there's no one here to see. What a confident, cocky bastard. Boys at school never do this to me - I don't know if it's because I can see their faces or because they can see mine or what.

Survivors. What better word for people who made it out of this place alive?" -Alex

What you loved as a child, you will love forever.

I work at the deli counter. Have to give people their succulent, chemical-ridden salami and whatnot.'

I pictured Miles in a dark room, standing at a butcher's block with a large knife in one hand, a blood cow's leg steadied under the other, a huge Cheshire grin spreading over his face--

'I bet the customers love you,' I said.

Nature doesn't care if we feel so heavy we might sink into the ground and never be able to pull ourselves out again.

The first thing I noticed about East Shoal High School was that it didn't have a bike rack. You know a school is run by stuck-up sons of bitches when it doesn't even have a bike rack.

I shoved Erwin behind the blocky green shrubs lining the school's front walk and stepped back to make sure the tires and handlebars were hidden. I didn't expect anyone to steal, touch, or notice him, since his rusty diarrhea color made people subconsciously avert their eyes, but I felt better knowing he was out of harm's way.

If nothing's real, then what does it matter?" he said. "You live here. Doesn't that make it real enough?

Is something wrong?" he asked.

"You seem to have forgotten that someone cut my bike in half."

"And you seem to have forgotten that I have a truck," said Miles. "I can give you a ride. To school, at least."

"No thanks," I said.

"Really. I'm not joking. Unless you're that against having anything to do with me. I don't care. You can get in line."

He turned onto the main road. The line from the notebook felt like a dead weight in my stomach.

"No, not against it." I realized with a strange sort of happy dread that we were falling back into the easy conversation we'd had at the bonfire. "But I'd like to know why you're offering."

"What do you mean?" Honest confusion crossed his face. "Isn't that the good thing to do?"

I burst out laughing. "Since when have you been good? Are you feeling guilty or something?"

"A little sentimental, maybe. My first idea was to drive up and down in front of you a few times to prove I had a car and you didn't." His tone was light and he was smiling.

Holy crap, he was smiling. A real, teeth-showing, nose-scrunching, eyes-crinkling smile.

The smile slipped off his face. "What? What's wrong?"

"You were smiling," I said. "It was kind of weird."

"Oh," he said, frowning. "Thanks."

"No, no, don't do that! The smile was better." The words felt wrong coming out of my mouth. I shouldn't say things like that to

When sushi-suit girl calls up entrants to show off their costumes, Cole manages to pull Wallace out of his seat to stand awkwardly out there, but I refuse when my name is called.

"It's just for a second," Cole says, motioning me out with his hands. "Come on. Just a second."

"I don't . . . I don't really want to."

Wallace gently pushes Cole out of the way so he can get back to his seat and grab his phone.

If she doesn't want to, don't make her do it.

Cole sighs so overdramatically he must be joking, then turns to tell sushi girl I won't be participating after all. A few more people from other groups around the room go up. There's a panel of teenaged judges stationed behind one short bookcase like it's a desk, and at the very end they get together to deliberate before they announce one of the Hogwarts students as the winner.

"Oh, come on!" Cole cries. "The Harry Potter people always win! They've had like twelve years to put their costumes together!"

"I've done my waiting," Megan says to Hazel, pulling up the little girl's arms. "Twelve years of it! In Azkaban!

There is no force in high school more powerful than one person's blunt disagreement.

Our neighbors turned to stare at us, because Miles Richter laughing was one of those things that the Mayans had predicted would signal the end of the world. He wasn't particularly loud about it, but it was Miles laughing, a sound no mortal had ever heard before.

Yeah, we never said we liked you," said Ian, smiling. "We just prefer that you don't die.

You are never as great or as pitiful as you think you are.

Of course, there are crude messages. Vile ones. Ones that don't seem like they cam from a real human being at all, but some computer program designed to say things no person should say to another person. I read all of those too, like Pringles- they might be terrible for you, but once you pop, you can't stop. This is a rollercoaster that only goes down. Near the end I feel like a hollow shell clicking a mouse, scanning words with aching eyes.

Great. He really does like Monstrous Sea. I don't know if that should be flattering or terrifying. With the sheer number of people that go to my school, I figured at least one of them would be a Monstrous Sea fan, but I also figured I'd never end up talking to them. Ever. Ever in my life. Why now? I only had to survive another seven months without something like this happening. Why now, O cruel universe?

rainmaker: Weird, I didn't know you had such a thing for timid guys.

MirkerLurker: Really does it for me when a guy is paralyzed with fear on a regular basis
.
rainmaker: Aw. Sad.

MirkerLurker: What's sad?

rainmaker: That it would never work between us. I'm too courageous.

It looks so peaceful."
"Peaceful, huh? Haven't you heard? There are monsters in the sea.

I couldn't think of anyone else.

I think you're an improvement on my imagination," I said, flipping back through the pages.
"You, too," he said. "My imagination - well, what little imagination I have - doesn't quite live up to the real thing."
"Agreed," I said. "The real thing is much better.

People are too much sometimes. Friends, acquaintances, enemies, strangers. It doesn't matter; they all crowd. Even if they're all the way across the room, they crowd. I take a moment of silence and think: I am here. I am okay.

Creating art is a lonely task, which is why we introverts revel in it, but when we have fans looming over us, it becomes loneliness of a different sort. We become cage animals watched by zoo-goers, expected to perform lest the crowd grow bored or angry. It's not always bad. Sometimes we do well, and the cage feels more like a pedestal

The story is at once very easy and very hard to explain. I've never tried to do it in person, but I imagine if I did, I would end up vomiting on someone's shoes. Explaining something online is as simple as pasting a link and saying, "Here, read this." They click. Read the intro page. If they like it, they keep reading. If not, oh well, at least I didn't have to talk.

If I did have to explain the story without the very handy reference of the story itself, I imagine it would sound something like this:

"On distant planet Orcus, a girl and boy fight on opposite sides of a long war between the natives and colonists from Earth. The girl and boy are hosts to parasitic energy creatures whose only weakness is each other. There's lots of ocean, and there are monsters in that ocean. Stuff happens. Colors are pretty."

There's a reason I'm an artist and not a writer.

He remembers you," said June, and my stomach gave an odd stunted flop.
"Remembers me?"
"The girl who wanted to set the lobsters free. That was the day we left for Germany. I was shopping for a few last-minute things, and he wanted to talk to you. He liked your hair.

Monstrous Sea Private Message

2:54 p.m. 28 - Oct -16

rainmaker: Hey, it's Wallace. Please tell me I blew your mind again. You make the best face when your mind is being blown.

MirkerLurker: Whoa that sounded dirty.

rainmaker: Too much?

MirkerLurker: Ummmmmmmmmm

rainmaker: Too much. Noted.

MONSTROUS SEA FORUMS

USER PROFILE

rainmaker *

Fanfiction Moderator

AGE: Not telling you

LOCATION: NO

INTERESTS: MS. Writing things.Campfires. Sweaters. Sleeping in. Dogs.

Followers 1,350,199 | Following 54 | Posts 9,112

[Unique Works 144]

UPDATES

View earlier updates

Oct 20 2016

The next chapter of the Auburn Blue fanfic will probably be a little late. Just started at the new school. So, that's fun.

Oct 21 2016

Thanks to @joojooboogee for my new avatar! #DallasRainerForever

Oct 23 2016

If math homework were a real person, I'd be doing 25 to life. #Mathslaughter

Oct 24 2016

There might actually be other MS fans at this school. THANK JESUS I'M SAVED.

Oct 26 2016

Life is destroying me today. No time to write. Stupid math. #Mathslaughter

Oct 27 2016

Definitely another MS fan at this school. Pros: Awesome; Not alone; Pretty girl. Cons: Pretty girl. #Fuuuuuuuuck

Oct 28 2016

A feeling erupted in my stomach, like nothing would ever be the same again. Like good karma was catching up with me. Like someone had opened up the lid to my lobster tank and I was finally breathing in the shockingly fresh air.

- What kind of guy is usually interested in you?
- The kind I make up in my head.

„Wallace."
He looks up.
„I want to be happy," I say.
„Me too," he says.

He looks up.
„I" title="Francesca Zappia Quotes: „Wallace."
He looks up.
„I" width="913px" height="515px" loading="lazy"/>

Wallace has read my mind. He has divined the things I thought while drawing this comic and put them down on paper. I don't understand it, and I don't know how this chain of events happened. But Wallace Warland can do magic. Actual, real magic. With words.

My parents didn't grow up here or anything. They chose to live in this nowhere town. Why? Because it was named after Hannibal of Carthage. Their basic train of thought was this: Hannibal's Rest? And we're naming our child after Alexander the Great? MARVELOUS. Ah, the history, it tickles.

Sometimes I wanted to beat my parents over the head with a frying pan.

My heart jumps out of staccato rhythm in my chest and my stomach sloshes around like the great foaming tides of Orcus.

In a weird way, it felt like he belonged here. He belonged in the land of phoenixes and witches, the place where things were too fantastic to be real.

Four-year-old Eliza would be so disappointed in me. Four-year-old Eliza would be disappointed in me for a lot of things. For hiding, for making it most of the way through high school without anyone to sit with at lunch, for letting myself sink to this place. Four-year-old Eliza tried, at least. She wanted to be good at things. She did things because she wanted to do them, not because other people made her. She had no masters. I don't think any four-year-olds do.
But I'm not four anymore. I can't be her. I can't be my four-year-old self, I can't be LadyConstellation, I can't even be Wallace's girlfriend. Right now I can only be Eliza Mirk, human being.

I've never met a real live fan before. I didn't think about it until now, and it's a strange thing. All these people who love Monstrous Sea - they're numbers on a screen. Comments, views, likes. The bigger the numbers get, the less like people they seem. It's easy to forget they're humans like Wallace. Like me. Finding someone who likes it - who loves it - enough to make their own art about it and actually hand it to me themselves, instead of sending it to a P.O. box or emailing it, is surreal to the highest degree.

But he doesn't know I'm me. He doesn't know he handed his fanfiction to LadyConstellation. That is definitely wrong. It feels wrong. But it's not like I'm going to use it to hurt him. And what was I supposed to do? Maybe if he knew who I was, he'd have shoved it at me and forced me to read it. I've never met fans in real life, I don't know what they'll do if they meet me.

I know, if I had ever met Olivia Kane, author of Children of Hypnos, I would have probably burst into tears and collapsed on the floor at her feet. I doubt Wallace will do that, but I don't want to take the risk.

Bowling is like any sport," he says, and I think he's mostly talking to himself. "Pros make it look easy, so anyone thinks they can do it. But it's not easy. You think too much and suddenly the ball is shooting out of the gutter and flying three lanes down and you're kicked out of the alley for recklessness."

I press my lips together to hold in my laugh. "I'm not great at bowling, but I don't think I've ever thrown the ball so hard it jumped three lanes over."

Cole stares stoically down the lane. "Well, it happens."

"Have you done that before?"

"Don't worry about it.

My mother had removed my intestines and used them to tie a noose around my neck. She just hadn't kick the stool out from under me yet.

emmersmacks: E youre going to be around for the Dog Days livewatch right

MirkerLurker: Duh. The day I miss Dog Days is the day I eat my own foot.

Apocalypse_Cow: *takes screenshot*

Apocalypse_Cow: let it be known on this day that if eliza ever misses dog days, she will eat her own foot.

emmersmacks: Masterminds would love that one

emmersmacks: Creator of Monstrous Sea eats own foot over teen soap opera

Apocalypse_Cow: tacky teen soap opera.

MirkerLurker: Tacky teen soap opera? Yes. Wildly entertaining? Also yes.

emmersmacks: Amen

...

Apocalypse_Cow: but seriously tho, dog days is the worst

emmersmacks: Not worse than the second season when Chris got with Ben

Apocalypse_Cow: chris got with jason in the second season, not ben

emmersmacks: Says the guy who doesnt watch Dog Days

Apocalypse_Cow: . . .

emmersmacks: Ah how the mighty have fallen

Real people don't have concise character arcs.

I stood there looking stupid, because that's what I do when I'm accused of something I didn't do. Forget making a case or, you know, denying that I'd done it.

Denying hadn't helped me in the past.

Blank pages are supposed to be an invitation. A challenge, even. Here is your canvas - how creative can you be? What limits can you stretch to bring to life that creature in your head? A blank piece of paper is infinite possibilities.

Do you do this all the time?' he asked.

'No,' I said. 'Just today.'

He smiled.

How could you convince people of the truth when they had already decided what version of the story they wanted to believe?

Sully and Church stuff their gangly selves in the backseat of my car so Wallace can sit in the passenger seat.
„No hanky panky up there," Sully says.
„Yeah," Church adds. „If I see a hand cross those seats, it will get smacked."
„Smacked?" Sully says. „If I see a hand cross those seats, I'll chop it off and burn it.

He was liked in the way outdoor art installations are liked: for his quirks and his reliable permanence.

But I think there's a difference between thinking you're immortal and knowing you can survive. Thinking you're immortal leads to arrogance, thinking you deserve the best. Surviving means having the worst thrown at you and being able to continue on despite that. It means striving for what you want most, even when it seems out of your reach, even when everything is working against you. "And then, after you've survived, you get over it. And you live.

I start to say no, then stop myself. I have to try. I have to try, because I'm doing it again-I'm shutting everything out because I'm frustrated and tired and because the real world is difficult and I'd rather live in one of my own making. But I can't. I am here, and I have to try.

It kind of felt like she was kicking me in the gut, and every kick said
I don't want you.
I don't need you.
I don't love you.

How could anyone go this far down the rabbit hole without realizing they needed help?

Stop calling me a Nazi." "Why should I?" Miles's hand came down on the desk. "Because the systematic slaughter of millions of people isn't funny!

Believing something existed and then finding out it didn't was like reaching the top of the stairs and thinking there was one more step.

Maybe that's normal. The things you care most about are the ones that leave the biggest holes.

It's not that I don't like the outdoors. It's that I don't see the point of the outdoors when there's so much I could be doing indoors.

How can you be mad that something doesn't happen, when it would hurt another person? If she had to quit for her health, then I'm glad she did. You shouldn't have to kill yourself for your art. No matter how many fans you have" -Wallace

You can have people who call themselves your friends and you can still be alone.

A text comes from Wallace.

An actual text too, not a message through the forum app. I gave him my number awhile back, before Halloween, but not because I wanted him to call me or anything. I wrote it on the edge of our conversation paper in homeroom and slid it over to him because sometimes I see something and think, Wallace would laugh at that, I should send him a picture of it, but the messaging app is terrible with pictures and texting is way better.

So he texts me now, and it's a picture. A regular sweet potato pie. Beneath the picture, he says, I really like sweet potato pie.

I text back, Yeah, so do I.

Then he sends me a picture of his face, frowning, and says, No, you don't understand.

Then another picture, closer, just his eyes. I REALLY like sweet potato pie.

A series of pictures comes in several-second intervals. The first is a triangular slice of pie in Wallace's hand. Then Wallace holding that slice up to his face - it's soft enough to start collapsing between his fingers. The next one has him stuffing the slice into his mouth, and in the final one it's all the way in, his cheeks are puffed out like a chipmunk's, and he's letting his eyes roll back like it's the best thing he's ever eaten.

I purse my lips to keep my laugh in, but my parents are fine-tuned to the slightest hint of amusement from me, and they both look up.

"What's so funny, Eggs?" Dad says.

"Nothing,"

...happiness trickles from the crown of my head to the soles of my feet.

I'm not normally one to take advice from my fictional characters, but there comes a point in every girl's life where she reaches a crossroads: a night alone with her sweatpants and her favorite television show, or a party with real, live, breathing people.

Did you meet your soul mate? That always happens on the first day of school, right?'

'Oh God, Charlie, she's letting you read again! You went straight to the paranormal section, didn't you?

I realized everyone around me was wearing a uniform. Black pants, white button-down shirts, green ties. Gotta love the smell of institutional equality in the morning.

Do you ever have an idea for a story, or a character, or even a line of dialogue or something, and suddenly it seems like the whole world is brighter? Like everything opens up, and everything makes sense?" -Wallace

Was everything made up? Was this whole world inside my head? If I ever woke up from it, would I be inside a padded room somewhere, drooling all over myself?

Would I even be myself?

Who isn't obsessed with the things they create, they love? Ideas are the asexual reproduction of the mind. You don't have to share them with anyone else" -Eliza