As Mark contemplated his future — his legacy and the coming year’s personal challenge — I think he came to this dark conclusion: if Trump can do it, so could he.

After all, not only does Mark now have Trump’s playbook, he owns the tools and sets the rules. And he has something no one else has, the ability to control the algorithm with zero transparency or oversight.

When you’re too busy to think about your life, you’re able to put off proactive decisions under the guise of responding to what seems urgent. You think you’re doing all the right things, but really you’re just keeping busy.

The final book of the Fallen Gods trilogy by Hannah Kaner.

She came to us as any apocalypse does: slowly at first, and then all at once.

It occurred to him that a spell to make one’s enemies into idiots via the power of breasts might be immensely helpful. Then again, it might not be a spell. It might have only been the breasts.

“Pain isn’t a competition,” I assure him. “There’s always enough to go around.”

And what was a home but somewhere you wouldn’t have to feel quite so alone.

ts voice was like the wind, but also like a thousand trees thinking the same thought.

A person could work and work and work, and still never “earn” their dues. Sometimes success meant determination… and sometimes, it was just luck.

Perhaps being too powerful, too unopposed, is a curse in and of itself, leading to boredom and dissipation, and the invention of imaginary enemies whose powers to torment were less limited than those of flesh and blood.

Parentified children are often referred to as “old souls” —wise and calm beyond their years. But they can pay for their precocity by harboring a squishy center of insecurity and loneliness, a wound formed in their earliest unsupported years.

Monsters and flowers aren’t much different. Sometimes they are hard to tell apart—but a good florist knows what to look for.

Sometimes, when things are broken, I find they fix themselves if you just pretend that they are fine and give them time.

There are countless things she would rather be doing. On a night like this, when the blue moon is full and bursting with light like summer fruit, she wants nothing more than to bathe in the moon water that now floods the riverbanks. She wants to sing poorly with no judgment, wearing nothing but the night sky.

I’m not a murderer, and I’m not even a killer, I simply exaggerate self-protection.

A helpful introduction to making magic easy and repeatable in your everyday life.

And that, to me, embraces the very soul of the most important commandment you’ll find anywhere in your Principles of Successful Termination: ‘Do in others as you would have others do you in.’

“How in hell is anybody supposed to help you if you won’t ask?” Because asking is dangerous, I could tell her. Because to ask is to hope that someone answers, and it hurts so bad when nobody does.

Never trust a writer who doesn’t have too many books to read. Or a reader, for that matter.

Live long enough, you realize some folks can be handed a problem and some tools, and they’ll sort it out. And I never think twice about hiring that sort of fellow.