“There is hope and when I feel like there isn't hope, my brain is lying to me.”— John Green, youtube.com
“When you have a mental illness, you don’t get a manual from the doctor about how to cope. Sure, in the clinical sense, you might get an idea of what to do or anticipate but it does not always match the unique, individual experience.”— Jamie Berube, thoughtcatalog.com
“We’re taught to push through everything. We’re taught that in the ‘real world’ at a job it wouldn’t fly, you’d still have to get up and go to work, even if you were upset, and that we’re just being prepared for the ‘real world.’ But in the ‘real world’ you get sick days. You get time off when you’re…”— Becca Martin, thoughtcatalog.com
“And then he broke down, just for one moment, his sob roaring impotent like a clap of thunder unaccompanied by lightning, the terrible ferocity that amateurs in the field of suffering might mistake for weakness.”— John Green, Hazel, amazon.com
“And only now that I loved a grenade did I understand the foolishness of trying to save others from my own impending fragmentation. I couldn't unlove Augustus Waters. And I didn't want to.”— John Green, Hazel, amazon.com
“Much of my life had been devoted to trying not to cry in front of people who loved me, so I knew what Augustus was doing. You clench your teeth. You look up. You tell yourself that if they see you cry, it will hurt them, and you will be nothing but A Sadness in their lives, and you must not become a…”— John Green, Hazel, amazon.com
“I'm like a grenade, Mom. I'm a grenade and at some point I'm going to blow up and I would like to minimize the casualties, okay?”— John Green, Hazel, amazon.com
“It always hurt not to breathe like a normal person, incessantly reminding your lungs to be lungs, forcing yourself to accept as unsolvable the clawing scraping inside-out ache of underoxygenation. So I wasn't lying, exactly. I was choosing among truths.”— John Green, Hazel, amazon.com
“It was an amazing sight, that splendor alongside death. I felt something like the surge hit me, a wave of sorrow followed by an even bigger wave of exhilaration and gratitude. I felt alive in a way I hadn’t in years.”— Mary Taugher, narrativemagazine.com
“Hospital time takes place in another dimension, in a subterranean sort of zone where the world outside feels unreal and remote, where it can feel like you’re wading through hip-high waves, salt water screwing up your vision and clogging your ears.”— Mary Taugher, narrativemagazine.com
“When a doctor’s prognosis is bad, we want to seek a second opinion. But when a prognosis is good we’re somehow okay with it.”— Neil deGrasse Tyson, twitter.com
“A love like that was a serious illness, an illness from which you never entirely recover.”— Charles Bukowski, amazon.com
“The French called this time of day “l’heure bleue.” To the English it was “the gloaming.” The very word “gloaming” reverberates, echoes—the gloaming, the glimmer, the glitter, the glisten, the glamour—carrying in its consonants the images of houses shuttering, gardens darkening, grass-lined rivers s…”— Joan Didion, amazon.com