had believed that writing would give me freedom, liberate me from myself, shatter the limits of the world I inhabited, but reality proved to be the opposite. I was always pressed for cash, struggled to land tutoring gigs or jobs at cram schools, and grew touchy about money.

Because to live a long life was to see your loved ones go before you and get left behind for a long time, to suffer that ordeal then once again stand up and eat and walk your path alone.

You couldn’t judge him as an incompetent, worthless person just because the work he did made no money.

She must have felt it, too. That I’d become mentally stronger, tougher than her. I was watching someone who’d had a piece of her mind shattered and found myself basking in an odd sense of superiority.

Over time, whenever a relationship came to an end, I pondered who had left and who was left behind. Sometimes I was the one who left, sometimes the one left behind, but when a relationship I especially cherished broke down, I wasn’t sure who left whom. Both sides left at times, both were left behind at others, the line between leaving and being lef

What I only cared about at the time was meaning, and I comforted myself in thinking that by following my dream, I was living a meaningful life.

The moment untalented people clutch at the mirage of dreams, it slowly eats away their lives.

Some people break up after a big fight, but there are also people who drift incrementally apart until they can’t face each other anymore. The latter stay longer in your memory.

Her twenties had taught her that knowing what was wrong didn’t mean you could change it. Her dad once said that what ruined the world was the apathy of the good-hearted majority. He was right, but she didn’t want to fight a world like that. She didn’t want to step into a boxing ring that guaranteed defeat. To her, the world was a place she had to b