Bryant A. Loney

“There is no afterlife for wilted flowers like me.”

“The weekends are too short for sleep!”

“Sleep is the only thing I stay awake for.”

“Are you afraid of the dark?” I asked.“No. Monsters aren't real. This is real. I'm scared of what could happen when the lights go out.”

“You miss a lot of a person’s life when you don’t keep in touch. Maybe that’s the point.”

“You do not need to be temperamental or upset to be a novelist. Don’t embrace the tortured artist rhetoric that any life difficulties might serve to benefit and enhance your writing. That’s damaging. Counterintuitive. Writing can be so incredibly lonely, and when you’re alone with your thoughts for long enough to produce a hundred thousand words of your own headspace, it can be scary. Suffering is not good for your art. Mental health care is. So talk to someone other than your future readers about the problems you are facing. Someone you know and trust. There is no shame in asking for help.”

“Some people were simply created with the right genes and the proper social skills, I figured. They ended up at a lunch table with a group of good-looking individuals, like them, who did what all good-looking individuals managed: making the rest of us feel both envious of them and sad for ourselves, intentional or not. They had activities outside of school and followers online—people of social necessity who sat at home on Friday nights and 'liked' popular posts in hopes that they, too, might one day be as attractive and personable.”

“Strict parents create sneaky kids.”