Turtles All the Way Down

by John Green

“I don’t want to calm down. I want you to stop being in pain.”

She sighed. “All I want in this world is to keep you. Keep you from hurt, keep you from stress, all that.” I hugged her. “You know I love you.” I smiled. “Yeah, Mom. I know you love me. You definitely don’t have to worry about that.”

“But that’s not the point of the story, Holmesy. The point of the story is they built the city anyway, you know? You work with what you have. They had this shit river, and they managed to build an okay city around it. Not a great city, maybe. But not bad. You’re not the river. You’re the city.”