Turtles All the Way Down

by John Green

The thing about a spiral is, if you follow it inward, it never actually ends. It just keeps tightening, infinitely.

We are about to live the American Dream, which is, of course, to benefit from someone else’s misfortune.”

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.

“The problem with happy endings,” I said, “is that they’re either not really happy, or not really endings, you know? In real life, some things get better and some things get worse. And then eventually you die.”

You pick your endings, and your beginnings. You get to pick the frame, you know? Maybe you don’t choose what’s in the picture, but you decide on the frame.”

I would always be like this, always have this within me. There was no beating it. I would never slay the dragon, because the dragon was also me. My self and the disease were knotted together for life.

The first few days, I kept checking my phone, waiting for him to reply, but slowly I understood that we were going to be part of each other’s past. I still missed him, though. I missed my dad, too. And Harold. I missed everybody. To be alive is to be missing.

You remember your first love because they show you, prove to you, that you can love and be loved, that nothing in this world is deserved except for love, that love is both how you become a person, and why.

no one ever says good-bye unless they want to see you again.

It can be a long and difficult road, but mental illness is treatable. There is hope, even when your brain tells you there isn’t.