14 Quotes by Kayla Rae Whitaker

Your life is the people who fill it," Mel says. "And nothing's good without them.

Art is too often discounted as a secondary priority. The writer is necessary to society.

You’re gonna let the world happen to you, and you’re gonna love it.

It is strange and ultimately insulting how, when someone you love dies, just expires without warning, time does not stop. For weeks after the funeral, everything is in limbo. Obligations disappear, routines crumble. It is enough to shuffle along the edge of one’s life. When the call back to normality comes, I ignore it.

Anything that makes you in that way, anything that makes you hurt and hungry in that way, is worth investigating. No matter how disgusting the source.

We sank into a cozy little vacuum, Mel and I, watching. I don’t know if it was the cartoons themselves, or watching them with Mel, but that night was the closest I had felt to knowing what I wanted from my life. She was the first person to see me as I had always wanted to be seen. It was enough to indebt me to her forever.

Toddling with pants down into our uncertain future.

I spent years trying to outrun myself, Mel says. Trying to make enough noise to drown myself out. It makes me ashamed to admit this. But it’s okay to let yourself catch up. It’s okay if you work to catch up to the things that have happened to you. You do it for yourself. But also for the people around you. The people who deserve to experience you, undiluted, honest. Your genuine self, given to them.

We have to start from wherever we are.