Take a Hint, Dani Brown

The thing about mental health was, you couldn’t take a course of antibiotics and be magically healed. Some people’s brains just thought too much or felt too much or hurt too much, and you had to stay on top of that.

The world wasn’t split into unhappy endings and happily ever afters. There were blessings everywhere and a thousand shades of joy all around him.

Anything you want to do, you can. Hurdles were made to be jumped. Glass ceilings were made to be smashed. But all that can be exhausting, so make sure you care for yourself too. There's great value in the things that bring you joy.

Loving you is the easiest thing I've ever done.

What you get out of being loved, it’s supposed to be worth the compromise. When it’s good, it makes you want to compromise.

Because he knew her well enough to realize she'd rather be holed up in here like Gollum, stroking books and murmuring, "My precious.

If something keeps you human when pressure makes you feel like a volcano, hold onto that thing by whatever means necessary.

At the time, it was romance novels that reminded me. Since you’ve never read one, that probably sounds weird. But it’s all about emotion, Dan—the whole thing, the whole story, the whole point. Just book after book about people facing their issues head on, and handling it, and never, ever failing—at least, not for good. I felt like my world had already ended unhappily, but every book I read about someone who’d been through the worst and found happiness anyway seemed to say the opposite. Like my story didn’t need to be over if I didn’t want it to. Like, if I could just be strong enough to reclaim my emotions, and to work through them, maybe I’d be okay again. That’s kind of what inspired me to, er, keep going. To make good choices, even when feeling better seemed impossible.

People shouldn't be changed - but perhaps they should grow.

Putting golden frames around my scars, that's who I am.

There she is, the one who puts the moon to shame.

I'm leaking masculine pain from my eyeballs.

She was the sweetest person on Earth, only she wasn't used to getting any of that sweetness back.

What are you doing, Danika?” “Being beautiful for my people.

A family. A broken one, true, but broken didn’t mean ruined.

you're brave. Most people, when something scars us, we hide it. When you started Tackle It, you framed a scar in gold.

Then he slid one big, warm hand over the nape of her neck, squeezed, and said, “Don’t look so surprised. You know I love your brain.

Dani was starting to realize she'd treated the opinion of everyone who'd ever left her as an irrefutable truth: Danika Brown is not worthy of love. The trouble was, building a conclusion based on irrelevant or unreliable sources never worked. And when it came to Dani's worthiness, the only source she should really value was herself.

Hey Eeyore, why don't you take a second to be proud of yourself? You can poke holes in it later.

After a while, she whispered in his ear, “Sweetie, are you crying?” “No,” he said. “I’m leaking masculine pain from my eyeballs.

He always stumbled over that part. Not because it hurt—although it really fucking did—but because it seemed so…small. So simple and flat and anticlimactic a phrase for something as monumental as death. You told people 'they died,' and hell was folded up inside those two short words. Some people got it. Some people didn't.

Of course, she couldn’t let him know she was melting, since he was a handsome man, and handsome men must never be allowed to know the full extent of their sexual appeal. They couldn’t be trusted with the knowledge.

Hurting a loved one was like running over someone’s foot; you rarely meant to do it, but the bones still broke.

There were lines and boxes and sensible paths, and Dani was over the line and out of the box and in the middle of the woods,

You'd never tell an athlete to just get over a sprain; you'd give them time to recover, physical therapy, whatever they needed. Why are mental health conditions any different?

I know I didn’t have to do this, Zaf. I never have to do anything with you. But you make me want to. You make me feel like myself, and you make me feel like I’m enough, and you even make me feel like I would be just fine without you. The thing is, I don’t want to be without you, and so I don’t ever plan on it. We are going to have many more anniversaries, and you will continue to make me dinner, and I will continue to make you smile, and I believe that is what they call—” He arched an eyebrow. “Living happily ever after?” She nodded. “Sounds about right.

Major or minor, if something keeps you human when pressure makes you feel like a volcano, hold on to that thing by whatever means necessary.

She was wearing her glasses now, at least, along with an enormous pink dressing gown and a pair of equally enormous bunny-ear slippers. The slippers surprised him until he remembered that Chloe used cuteness to disguise her inner evil. Sort of like Professor Umbridge.

People think anxiety makes you nervous all the time, and it can, but no one ever talks about how it makes you angry.