Ava > Ava's Quotes

“None of us are entirely well, and none of us are irrecoverably sick.”
― Mark Vonnegut

“Art is lunging forward without certainty about where you are going or how to get there, being open to and dependent on what luck, the paint, the typo, the dissonance, give you. Without art, you're stuck with yourself as you are and life as you think life is.”
― Mark Vonnegut

“If you take good care of any disease by eating well, sleeping well, being aware of your health, consciously wanting to be well, not smoking, et cetera, you are doing all the things you should be doing anyway, but somehow having a disease makes them easier to do. A human without a disease is like a ship without a rudder.”
― Mark Vonnegut

“Note to self: being Kurt's son, being an ex-mental patient, getting into Harvard, having written a book, and being a doctor are all things that in and of themselves do not make a life. If you lean on them too hard, you'll find that there's not much there. But if you add up a lot of things that aren't in and of themselves enough, it almost starts to add up to something....”
― Mark Vonnegut

“The other day a patient told me that he had gotten into what was a very good college. 'It's not Harvard,' he said.
'Harvard's not Harvard either,' I answered.”
― Mark Vonnegut

“A world without prejudice, stigma, and discrimination against those who have or are thought to have mental illness would be a better one for everyone. What so-called normal people are doing when they define disease like manic depression or schizophrenia is reassuring themselves that they don't have a thought disorder or an affective disorder, that their thoughts and feelings make perfect sense.”
― Mark Vonnegut

“Feeling gratitude and not expressing it is like wrapping a present and not giving it.”
― William Arthur Ward

“But the Hebrew word, the word timshel—‘Thou mayest’— that gives a choice. It might be the most important word in the world. That says the way is open. That throws it right back on a man. For if ‘Thou mayest’—it is also true that ‘Thou mayest not.”
― John Steinbeck, East of Eden

“But in a solitary life, there are rare moments when another soul dips near yours, as stars once a year brush the earth. Such a constellation was he to me.”
― Madeline Miller, Circe