<span style="font-size: 15px"><span style="font-family:Amaranth">Quentin sighed softly at Eliot's words. "I think if you put as much energy into being yourself as you do in hiding who you truly are, then you would actually be happy. But you won't do that. You've convinced yourself that you're happy with how things are, throwing bitchy remarks back and forth with Margo, getting drunk and high and lying and pretending to be someone that you're not. But there's just one thing you didn't count on. I'm your friend. A real friend. And I see through it. I see through your lies and your act."<br/>
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"I don't pretend to know what your life was like before Brakebills or what you went through, but it's over, El. </span></span><span style="font-family:Amaranth"><span style="font-size: 15px">You have a chance to be someone else. Someone better, someone you're happy being. But for some reason that I don't understand, you're content to just throw it away. There's already so much shitty stuff that's going on right now, and you just pretend to not care." He rubbed a hand over his face, and then dropped it to his side and looked back at the other man. "I think that you're scared."<br/>
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"No, fuck that. You're downright terrified of putting who you truly are, out on display for the whole world to see, because you think that you'll be misunderstood and rejected. Just be who you are, the real you. Whoever that person is. Don't be afraid to let your flame shine. There's nothing wrong with a person declaring their feelings for another in a broadway musical type of way, or even serenading them. I don't care if it sounds gay or not. Why do you care so much what other people think? Fuck them."<br/>
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"The only people that matter or that should matter, are you and the person you love, and those who support you. And those that have a problem with it, can fuck off. You spend so much time worrying about what other people think of you. Don't you ever get tired of it? I know that I do.  Before Brakebills, I spent so much time trying to please people. Especially trying to please my father, but it didn't help. The only thing that finally got us to actually talk and be around each other instead of just tolerating each other, was finding out about the cancer."<br/>
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"And I don't want something like that to happen to you, El. I don't want it to take someone you care about to have to be dying, before you get over your Goddamn fear and be the person that you're meant to be. Don't waste any more time. I speak from experience. I've already wasted time hiding from myself and from other people. It was a horrible and lonely way to live. And it took me a long time, but I finally figured it out. When you hide who you really are, the only person that loses in the end, is you."</span></span>