Turtles All the Way Down

by John Green

True terror isn’t being scared; it’s not having a choice in the matter.

“But your thoughts are you. I think therefore I am, right?” “No, not really. A fuller formation of Descartes’s philosophy would be Dubito, ergo cogito, ergo sum. ‘I doubt, therefore I think, therefore I am.’ Descartes wanted to know if you could really know that anything was real, but he believed his ability to doubt reality proved that, while it might not be real, he was. You are as real as anyone, and your doubts make you more real, not less.”

“Maybe you’re gonna get superpowers from his microbes. She was a normal girl until she kissed a billionaire and became . . . MICROBIANCA, Queen of the Microbes.” I just looked at her. “I’m sorry, is that not helpful?”

People always talk like there’s a bright line between imagination and memory, but there isn’t, at least not for me. I remember what I’ve imagined and imagine what I remember.