It's Kind of a Funny Story

by Ned Vizzini

“I didn’t want to wake up. I was having a much better time asleep. And that’s really sad. It was almost like a reverse nightmare, like when you wake up from a nightmare you’re so relieved. I woke up into a nightmare.”

If you can’t get out of bed for long enough, people come and take your bed away.

I just want to not be me. Whether it’s sleeping or playing video games or riding my bike or studying. Giving my brain up. That’s what’s important.”

A person’s relationship with food is one of their most important relationships. I don’t think your relationship with your parents is that important. Some people never know their parents. I don’t think your relationships with your friends are important. But your relationship with air—that’s key. You can’t break up with air. You’re kind of stuck together. Only slightly less crucial is water. And then food. You can’t be dropping food to hang with someone else. You need to strike up an agreement with it.

But I find God to be an ineffectual shrink. He adopts the “do nothing” method of therapy. You tell him your problems and he, ah, does nothing.

I found myself jealous of the people who wrote the books. They were dead and they were still taking up my time.

Here in the real world, all equals are created animal, but some are more animal than others.

I work, Monica, and I think about work, and I freak out about work, and I think about how much I think about work, and I freak out about how much I think about how much I think about work, and I think about how freaked out I get about how much I think about how much I think about work. Does that count as a hobby?

A working brain is probably a lot like a map, where anybody can get from one place to another on the freeways. It’s the nonworking brains that get blocked, that have dead ends, that are under construction like mine.

I’m done with those; regrets are an excuse for people who have failed.

I don’t owe people anything, and I don’t have to talk to them any more than I feel I need to.