The Invisible Life of Ivan Isaenko Quotes

“Two decades of observing human nature have revealed a few notable differences between the way men and women approach conflict: men will knock each other out and then hug it out, while women tend to leave deep, unresolved scars on the souls of their victims.”
― Scott Stambach, The Invisible Life of Ivan Isaenko

“Don't die before you're dead. And if you do, let it be the good kind...when the only part of you that dies is who you were supposed to be.”
― Scott Stambach, The Invisible Life of Ivan Isaenko

“You'll find, Ivan, that most of the evil in the world is done by men who are addicted to their own thoughts.”
― Scott Stambach, The Invisible Life of Ivan Isaenko

“Don't die before you're dead.”
― Scott Stambach, The Invisible Life of Ivan Isaenko

“How do you even start a book you know is going to be your last?”
― Scott Stambach, The Invisible Life of Ivan Isaenko

“Which meant that she was someone who could see my reality and reflect it back to me. She was someone who could make me feel like I was not just a ghost haunting hallways.”
― Scott Stambach, The Invisible Life of Ivan Isaenko

“The only consolation I have in my failure to bring her to life is the belief that despite my love for words, they are actually rather useless and undeniably fail to capture the essence of anything at all, let alone a creature like Polina. Consequently, if I ever meet her again in a different place, I can blame my shortcomings on Russian vocabulary and not on my inattentiveness to her details.”
― Scott Stambach, The Invisible Life of Ivan Isaenko

“I have a strongly held belief that most therapists enter the field to fix themselves, and later get sidetracked trying to fix other people.”
― Scott Stambach, The Invisible Life of Ivan Isaenko

“How are you feeling?” “Like I have new blood.” “Like a modern-day vampire.”
― Scott Stambach, The Invisible Life of Ivan Isaenko

“was acutely aware that that tiny bit of energy was the last that I had in me, and it occurred to me that people cry because it is blissful when it’s over.”
― Scott Stambach, The Invisible Life of Ivan Isaenko

“Polina makes bad white blood cells. Her white blood cells are immortal and vampiric.”
― Scott Stambach, The Invisible Life of Ivan Isaenko

“I reached over the low barriers and pinched his toes, which was the signal I developed to let him know that it was me.”
― Scott Stambach, The Invisible Life of Ivan Isaenko

“Polina was lagging, so I held the door open for her by repeatedly hitting the button with the two arrows facing away from each other, which was the most masculine thing I had ever done for someone until that moment, which inflated me like a sage grouse.”
― Scott Stambach, The Invisible Life of Ivan Isaenko

“There is a reason I won’t let you call. Would you like to know the reason?” “Not really.” “I’m not supposed to ever let you use the phone again since the time that you made a hundred long-distance phone calls in one night.”
― Scott Stambach, The Invisible Life of Ivan Isaenko

“Before I even finished the letter, Nurse Natalya and Nurse Katya barged in with a new mattress. I watched them remake my bed for three painful minutes. Then I said: “It’s because I’m bored.” “No explanation necessary,” said Nurse Natalya.”
― Scott Stambach, The Invisible Life of Ivan Isaenko

“At the Mazyr Hospital for Gravely Ill Children, the nurses appeared to be split between those who wished to see their husbands’ Hui more and those who wanted to see their husbands’ Hui less. None of them appeared to be content with the amount in which they were currently experiencing their husbands’ Hui.”
― Scott Stambach, The Invisible Life of Ivan Isaenko

“At any given time, the hospital has three to four wigs to choose from in the Green Room, which holds most of the hospital’s linens and gowns, and also hair for cancer patients.”
― Scott Stambach, The Invisible Life of Ivan Isaenko

“I notice you never look me in the eye. Didn’t Carl Rogers* say that eye contact is the key to establishing trust and rapport during the therapeutic process?”
― Scott Stambach, The Invisible Life of Ivan Isaenko

“Are you happy?” “Yes.” “But we’re all so wrong.” “You’re exactly what you’re supposed to be.”
― Scott Stambach, The Invisible Life of Ivan Isaenko

“It is their job to read our blood pressure, change our sheets, wash our clothes, clean our toilets, take our blood, change our diapers, clean our asses, cover our wounds, deliver our meds, serve our food, forge our prescriptions (there are no permanent doctors on staff), turn on our TV, take our temperatures, and diagnose viral versus bacterial infections in order to determine antibiotic needs.”
― Scott Stambach, The Invisible Life of Ivan Isaenko

“I got so good at recognizing these symptoms that Nurse Natalya once asked me to create a diagnostic assessment document (DAD) for the other nurses, in the hopes that it would streamline care and also make me feel useful.”
― Scott Stambach, The Invisible Life of Ivan Isaenko

“She was a different genus. She was the hospital void. The missing demographic. A beguiling blend of cherub and imp. She was a puerile Goddess in enough want of proper Russian literature that she stole from a convalescent. Which meant that she was someone who could see my reality and reflect it back to me.”
― Scott Stambach, The Invisible Life of Ivan Isaenko

“But my inability to imagine her without hair was hardly a problem. What really twisted my intestines in a bevy was when I slowly moved my eyes from her head down to her hands and saw that Polina was reading Dead Souls.* Reader, patients at the Mazyr Hospital for Gravely Ill Children do not read Gogol, unless their name is Ivan Isaenko.”
― Scott Stambach, The Invisible Life of Ivan Isaenko

“When I gather enough intelligence to determine that a new intake is a Non-Bleeder, I breathe freely and return to reading my book or imagining Grace Kelly’s breasts.”
― Scott Stambach, The Invisible Life of Ivan Isaenko

“There are very few frills in this place, but at the very least we all get a bathroom. One of the design flaws of our bathrooms is that they all can be locked from the inside by pressing a small button on the doorknob and then closing the door. It is entirely too easy to lock yourself out of the bathroom if you happen to be on the outside and accidentally press the lock due to limited control of your extremities (clearly the case for 97 percent of all hospital residents).”
― Scott Stambach, The Invisible Life of Ivan Isaenko

“In my head, I imagined the celebrity I might become around the asylum if I was the first to open”
― Scott Stambach, The Invisible Life of Ivan Isaenko

“Once upon a time, even I, the poster child of unsociability, made a heroic attempt. Obviously not to cultivate any lifelong friendships—I was just bored.”
― Scott Stambach, The Invisible Life of Ivan Isaenko

“She insisted on a regimen of experimental procedures that could put the soul back into her son.”
― Scott Stambach, The Invisible Life of Ivan Isaenko

“Ridick taught me about baseball for three hours that night. From then on, he brought me a signed baseball every time he came to patch hearts.”
― Scott Stambach, The Invisible Life of Ivan Isaenko

“It occurred to me that his priority was protecting my spastic head, and not the repulsive fluids that were spreading over his face. At that moment, I remember hearing Frank Sinatra singing “As Time Goes By,” which he once sang during TV hour. Perhaps all my thrashing jostled that particular memory loose. Eventually, the ambient sounds of the room fell away until nothing was left but the song and Ridick’s own Sinatra-brand blue eyes. As if it weren’t even my choice, my convulsions slowed and eventually stopped altogether, until my head fell to one side and I started to sob. Two parts shame and one part self-pity, it was the only time I felt loved by anyone besides Natalya.”
― Scott Stambach, The Invisible Life of Ivan Isaenko