“Don't look now, but that's my ex over there."Surely I'm not the only one who takes "don't look now" as "there's no better time than now." I looked."Bad, Ali!" Another slap to my arm. "Bad, bad, bad Ali! Have you no self control?”

“There's always another way. And that doesn't make them bad or worse than other ways. Things are bad right now, sure, but they don't have to be. Things are the way they are- it's how you handle them that determines the outcome.”

“There's no need to wait for the bad things and bullshit to be over. Change now. Love now. Live now. Don't wait for people to give you permission to live, because they won't.”

“ There's a now, a was, and a gonna be. Now is now, and after now is a was. And what comes after the was is a gonna be. It hasn't happened yet. It's gonna happen as soon as the now is over. But if you have a good now, you're bound to have a good was and a good gonna be. But after the bad now comes a bad was. But if you have a bad now and dwell on it, you're going to have a bad gonna be and you're going to have a bad cycle. If you learn from the bad was, you can turn the bad gonna be into a good gonna be. The only way you can change the cycle is after the was. If you carry the bad wases around with you, they get heavy and become should'a could'as - I should'a done this, I could'a done that. If you learn from the was, you'll have a great now; you won't repeat the same mistakes. It will bring you to a good now, which changes the cycle to a good was, and a good gonna be. You need to learn from the wases. It's all about changing your attitude.”

“Finally, she's like, "I know it looks bad right now, but parents are just people. They don't always know what to do. That doesn't mean they don't love you.”

“My grandfather was crying. The kind of quiet that is quiet and a secret. The kind of crying that only I noticed. I thought about him going into my mom's room when she was little and hitting my mom and holding up her report card and saying that her bad grades would never happen again. And I think now that maybe he meant my older brother. Or my sister. Or me. That he would make sure that he was the one to work in a mill. I don't know if that's good or bad. I don't know if it's better to have your kids be happy and not go to college. I don't know if it's better to be close with your daughter or make sure she has a better life than you do. I just don't know.”