Nenia Campbell

Men who thought of themselves as gods fell the farthest, and the hardest.

Books make the best ersatz friendships.

Everyone needs to escape sometimes, and retreating into somebody else's fantasy isn't nearly as satisfying as slipping into your own.

There's a saying that you can't put a price on a human life, but that saying is a lie because we have. We have, and it's so much lower than you would think. Yes, human life has its price like anything else, and will continue to do so for as long as it doubles as a commodity.

Nobody should have to choose between a cold heart and a dead heart.

Power is a fickle mistress, easy to seduce, but even easier to lose. That's how it works. One moment she is your closest confidant, whispering the secrets of the universe into your ear; the next, she is your vilest oppressor__nd once her ears close to your plights you are well and truly screwed.

The Lord teaches forgiveness, but some things are unforgivable.

When we mated I felt your heart stop beating and it was as if the world had stopped turning. It was only while surrounded by death that I realized I had never felt more alive.

Knowing and doing are two separate things, and don't always sync up in life.

Once upon a time, there was a naïve and innocent girl who thought she could tame the beast and live happily ever after. But the beast did not want to be tamed, for he was a beast and beasts care not for such things, and the girl died along with her dreams.From childhood's grave sprang a young woman, jaded before her years, who knew that beasts could wear the skins of men, and that evil could exist in sunlight, as well as darkness.Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.

Words were the bane of her existence. She drowned in them when all she wanted was silence, only to have them recede when one desperately-sought phrase would be the key to her salvation. Most things were like that: excess in times of abundance, and shortages in times of dearth. Life, she realized, was an unbalanced scale, and would never weigh in one's favor, struggle as one might.

Being depressed and suicidal doesn't mean wanting to kill yourself every moment of every day. It may be a fixed obsession, but sometimes it gets relegated to the back of your head. Rather, it means the world takes on the very cut and dry, black and white, unilateral aspect of a flowchart.

I finally understood what could drive kids to show up with guns and shoot up their schools.

It wasn't that she was sad__adness had very little to do with it, really, considering that most of the time, she felt close to nothing at all. Feeling required nerves, connections, sensory input. The only thing she felt was numb. And tired. Yes, she very frequently felt tired.

Maybe in a way all living things are like flickering flames in a precarious night, always on the verge of being extinguished. Whether we kindle slowly but steadily, or go out in a brilliant burst of light and color, is our choice. Perhaps the most important choice we'll ever have.

Now she knew living was just a brief hiatus, a blip really, in the infinite line of nothingness that composed that shadowy realm of the unknown. It could stop at any time.

So you thought you could shit and eat at the same time. How disgustingly convenient.

If the whole world seems like it's against you, it helps to know that you've still got home. A safe place. It just takes one person__ teacher, a friend, a parent. If I didn't have you and Dad, if you hadn't made it so clear you loved me as much as you did, or if you'd said, 'yeah, why don't you do it, and put yourself out of our misery, just shut up,' I would have killed myself. I really would have. I spent most of those days wishing I were dead anyway, and what always stopped me was the fact that doing so would destroy the lives of the only people who ever cared about me.