Lucas isn’t unhappy. That’s the secret.

Love isn’t powerful enough. But spite? Spite can change the world.

The lunatics are just trying to find a little thing to give their lives meaning, Lucas. Just like the rest of us. They’re just trying to be happy.”

This is when Lucas does something very, very stupid: he tries to be constructive and solve the problem. Any middle manager on the planet could of course have told him that this is a terrible decision, because the truth about problems is that the problem itself is never actually the problem. It’s always the people involved who are the problem.

with the defeated manner of a sausage that dressed itself up as a carrot to avoid being eaten by a bear, only to be found by a rabbit.

Because a funny thing about rule-loving people is that to them it seems more important to impose punishment than it is to actually solve problems, and a funny thing about rule-breaking people is that they seem to find breaking rules a lot easier to do if someone else has broken them first.

Because Lucas is making the mistake of thinking that the board wants to solve the problem. But people actually almost never want to do that.

Have you tried not having to explain to an adult individual how to clean a sink?

He has never once asked anyone “What would you like to eat tonight?” and gotten the answer “I can eat anything!” which just happen to be words that never ever in the history of humankind have been uttered by someone who will actually eat any of the FIFTEEN things then suggested to them.