“Lili keeps driving me crazy with this thing about wanting red nail polish,” Martha grumbled. “Absolutely not. She’s thirteen. A kid that young doesn’t need nail polish.”

At some point in life, something shifts.

Before that, we only cry at movies.

After that… even at a detergent commercial.

An old acquaintance once said to me, many years ago:

You should bend down for every coin — because if you don’t, someone else will.

I’m object-dependent. As the saying goes, they don’t serve me—I serve them. On bended knee, head bowed.

The snowfall had completely stopped by the time we reached the harbour. A thin, even white layer covered the boats, made to shimmer by the moonlight.

They took every one of my successes from me.

The small ones and the big ones alike.

I want to give you fifteen special minutes.

Fifteen minutes in which only you matter.

When I was a kid in school, I learned that anyone who gets bad grades is stupid.

A B could still be written off as carelessness—but it had to be fixed. Immediately. It couldn’t be left like that.

B. brought a completely different kind of inspiration into my life. She taught me the natural ease of well-being and the quiet, effortless elegance of calm. She showed me a world where we enjoy life’s beauty in silence, simply refusing to let noise or unnecessary disruption in.

She was the first real mirror I ever had. The kind of mirror that hurts to look into. When I met her, she was barely older than me, yet she seemed light-years ahead. A smart, confident woman leading a successful business — with the same degree I had.