Turtles All the Way Down

3 min read

Author: John Green

  • You think you’re the painter, but you’re the canvas.

  • and meanwhile I was thinking that if half the cells inside of you are not you, doesn’t that challenge the whole notion of me as a singular pronoun, let alone as the author of my fate?

  • True terror isn’t being scared; it’s not having a choice in the matter.

  • We are about to live the American Dream, which is, of course, to benefit from someone else’s misfortune.”

  • I was so good at being a kid, and so terrible at being whatever I was now.

  • Like, parts of typical romantic relationships that made me anxious included 1. Kissing; 2. Having to say the right things to avoid hurt feelings; 3. Saying more wrong things while trying to apologize; 4. Being at a movie theater together and feeling obligated to hold hands even after your hands become sweaty and the sweat starts mixing together; and 5. The part where they say, “What are you thinking about?” And they want you to be, like, “I’m thinking about you, darling,” but you’re actually thinking about how cows literally could not survive if it weren’t for the bacteria in their guts, and how that sort of means that cows do not exist as independent life-forms, but that’s not really something you can say out loud, so you’re ultimately forced to choose between lying and seeming weird.

  • Holmesy. I have the soul of a private jet owner, and the life of a public transportation rider. It’s a real tragedy.

  • I have the soul of a private jet owner, and the life of a public transportation rider.

  • “Holmesy, someday you’re going to win the Nobel Prize for Being Incredibly Pedantic, and I’m going to be so proud of you.”

  • and for a few or many minutes, you feel the shivering jolt of the tension easing, the relief of giving in to the lesser angels of your nature. And then two or five or

  • and for a few or many minutes, you feel the shivering jolt of the tension easing, the relief of giving in to the lesser angels of your nature.

  • 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.

  • I tried to smile and shake my head at the right times, but I was always a moment behind the rest of them.

  • They laughed because something was funny; I laughed because they had.

  • tried to smile and shake my head at the right times, but I was always a moment behind the rest of them.

  • It seemed to me that one of the defining features of parents is that they don’t get paid to love you.

  • You don’t get to be in anything else—in friendship or in anger or in hope. All you can be in is love.

  • Reading someone’s poetry is like seeing them naked.”

  • Sekou Sundiata, in a poem, he said the most important part of the body ‘ain’t the heart or the lungs or the brain. The biggest, most important part of the body is the part that hurts.’”

Graph View