Turtles All the Way Down

by John Green

But I was beginning to learn that your life is a story told about you, not one that you tell.

Partly, I kept forgetting, but also there was something else I couldn’t quite identify, some way-down fear that taking a pill to become myself was wrong.

I wanted to tell her that I was getting better, because that was supposed to be the narrative of illness: It was a hurdle you jumped over, or a battle you won. Illness is a story told in the past tense.

You can kind of measure how crazy you are based on how soon they want to see you back.

I could feel the tension in the air, and I knew he was trying to figure out how to make me happy again. His brain was spinning right alongside mine. I couldn’t make myself happy, but I could make people around me miserable.

there is something intensely weird and upsetting about the notion that you can only become yourself by ingesting a medication that changes your self.

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