"There are few things more instinctively terrifying to a 20-something girl than being alone. It is crippling and demoralizing, forcing you to resort to a desperate defensiveness. “I choose to be alone, I wanted this.” But, as with all things that seem incredibly difficult at this age, when it is forced upon you, you will learn to adapt to it. You adopt it as a part of your nature. You get used to it and it stops bothering you so much.

The first and hardest lesson you have to learn is that there are different dimensions of aloneness, and the loneliest ones of all are the least expected. While waking up by yourself when you have a secret want for morning warmth will be felt acutely, being alone with company is a whole different animal. You will learn a specific, biting type of alienation that is drunken aloneness when you are surrounded by a room full of strangers you pretend to know, and that will make you an in-your-bones kind of tired. This is the kind of tired that you will wish you could un-know."

"That’s what separates us from a lot of folk, and not because we’re better but because we’ve decided to listen to that inner voice, and a lot of people don’t. People fail a lot of times doing that. Whereas we just trained ourselves to say “You know what, let me entertain the idea” and exhaust all the possibilities to make sure that it doesn’t make sense because something good may come out of that and for every time that someone has ever told you ‘no’, you’ve always had the willingness to explore it."