“I Like To Listen. I Have Learnt A Lot From Listening Carefully. Most People Never Listen.”

"I just need to go out 'cause I can sleep when I'm dead"

-Machine Gun Kelly, Kiss Kiss

If they don't see the value of having you, don't try to convince them.

“A beautiful thing is never perfect.”

— Egyptian Proverb

Bring Me The Horizon - in the dark

“I just want someone to love me hardest when I least deserve it.”

— Javson Johnson, “Building”

One thing I’ve learned about writing is ”give everything a face”. It’s no good to write passively that the nobility fled the city or that the toxic marshes were poisoning the animals beyond any ability to function. Make a protagonist see how a desperate woman in torn silks climbs onto a carriage and speeds off, or a two-headed deer wanders right into the camp and into the fire. Don’t just have an ambiguous flock of all-controlling oligarchy, name one or two representatives of it, and illustrate just how vile and greedy they are as people.

it’s bad to have characters who serve no purpose in the story, but giving something a face is a perfectly valid purpose.

Help in Time (Charles Verlat, 1872)

Bessel van der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score

You hate everything about me, why do you love me?

Three Days Grace's "I Hate Everything About You" (2003)