“Are you high, Wes Bennett?”

"I'll answer that if you answer this: Were you playing Beyoncé on the piano last night?"

Her green eyes went wide, and her mouth dropped open. "You heard me?"

"The windows were open," I said, shrugging like it was the first time I'd ever heard her, "and I was having a smoke out back. So was it 'Halo'?"

"You smoke?" She was looking at me like I was a puzzle, like she couldn't figure me out.

"No. Was it?"

The crinkle in her forehead grew somehow. "Yes. So ... do you or don't you?"

"Like Beyonce? Fucking love her."

She rolled her eyes. "Why do I even bother trying to have a conversation with you?"

"Because you're fascinated and want to know more."

She snorted.

"Because you find me wildly attractive and need some insight into my soul?"

"Try again."

"Because you want to reconcile the data you've entered into your diary about me with the real-life, actual facts?"

"So you are high.”
― Lynn Painter, Better Than Before

“The rest of the world just disappears for you when you're reading, doesn't it?"
"Yes, thank God.”
― Lynn Painter, Fake Skating

“everything was wrong if she wasn't happy. because dani was sparkling eyes and contagious laughter. dani was happiness.”
― Lynn Painter

“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion.”
― Henry David Thoreau