Here's a secret: Everyone, if they live long enough, will lose their way at some point. You will lose your way; you will wake up one morning and find yourself lost. This is a hard, simple truth.
Society sometimes discovers facts that society has a hard time getting used to.
Deep experience is never peaceful.
Sometimes the truth is inflammatory.
When children are very young, you read them books that are positive to help them go to sleep. But there comes a moment when they begin to understand the difficulties of the world. They know there are problems and the books they read should reflect that, not gloss over them.
'Precious' is strangely uplifting. It goes down into the valley but it also goes to the mountain tops. A lot of difficult realities are explored in 'Precious,' but the peaks make the valleys and the valleys make the peaks.
Why is it we never get our bad medicine in small doses?
Everything does not happen according to a plan, and you learn your lessons the hard way.
You always think another time would have been ideal for you . . . the reality is there was no novocaine when you went to the dentist.
It's no good trying to keep up old friendships. It's painful for both sides. The fact is, one grows out of people, and the only thing is to face it.
There's a certain trope in young adult fiction. A young girl gets cancer and becomes this radiant person who's a fountain of insight. Everyone who encounters her is changed for the better. That doesn't happen all the time. The whole thing is much more difficult to process. Adults have trouble with it, so why shouldn't we expect teens to?
