The Manifesto on How to be Interesting

She supposed that this was what she found interesting about people. How, as you get to know someone, it's not so much their good points that warm you to them, but the eccentricities, the confessions of self-doubt, the flaws you only realize when you get close up - like the pores on your nose in those ghastly magnifying mirrors. She didn't believe there were many great life lessons out there for her still to learn. But perhaps this was one of them. That, by letting people in, even seemingly shallow nasty people like Jassmine, you learn something. Something you can only get through intimacy.

"(...) You're smart and pretty and kind and wonderful and so much better than you've ever given yourself credit for. So people don't get you at school - so what? So you're not popular and you're a bit bitter about it - so what? None of it really matters, honey, as long as you love yourself."

If it were possible, we would cover ourselves with superglue and roll around until we were covered in love story after love story, like a protective blanket from everything else that is shit.

"I will always try to live," she told him, and her voice stopped shaking and rang out clear around the curtained walls. "From now on, I promise, I will always choose to live."

But then, just as the blackness was about to reach her, she got out of bed and went to her special bookshelf. To let the books rescue her, like they always did.