"Your life is not an episode of Skins. Things will never look quite
as good as they do in a faded, sun-drenched Polaroid; your days are not
an editorial from Lula. Your life is not a Sofia Coppola movie, or a
Chuck Palahniuk novel, or a Charles Bukowski poem. Grace Coddington
isn’t your creative director. Bon Iver and Joy Division don’t play
softly in the background at appropriate moments. Your hysterical teenage
diary isn’t a work of art. Your room probably isn’t Selby material.
Your life isn’t a Tumblr screencap. Every word that comes out of your
mouth will not be beautiful and poignant, infinitely quotable. Your pain
will not be pretty. Crying till you vomit is always shit. You cannot
romanticize hurt. Or sadness. Or loneliness. You will have homework, and
hangovers and bad hair days. The train being late won’t lead to any
fateful encounters, it will make you late. Sometimes your work will
suck. Sometimes you will suck. Far too often, everything will suck - and
not in a Wes Anderson kind of way. And there is no divine consolation -
only the knowledge that we will hopefully experience the full spectrum -
and that sometimes, just sometimes, life will feel like a Coppola
film."
Letters From Nowhere
