26 Quotes from Turtles All the Way Down by John Green
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First published in 2017, Turtles All The Way Down is inspired by John Green’s own experiences of living with OCD. It was well received by readers, instantly hitting number one on the New York Times bestsellers list and nominated for the Best Young Adult Fiction category in the Goodreads Choice Awards 2017.
In case you can’t remember, here’s what the book’s about.
Synopsis:
“Aza Holmes never intended to pursue the disappearance of fugitive billionaire Russell Pickett, but there’s a hundred-thousand-dollar reward at stake and her Best and Most Fearless Friend, Daisy, is eager to investigate. So together, they navigate the short distance and broad divides that separate them from Pickett’s son Davis.
Aza is trying. She is trying to be a good daughter, a good friend, a good student, and maybe even a good detective, while also living within the ever-tightening spiral of her own thoughts.”
But what does turtles all the way down mean?
The phrase is to do with something called infinite regress, basically representing the endless continuation of something. For the protagonist, Aza, this relates to her OCD, which sees her experience looping thoughts and spirals, and is something that she may never recover from but instead must learn to live with.
Here are 26 quotes that I love from John Green’s Turtles All the Way Down, separated into three categories: life, mental health, and love.
Quotes about life
“It's quite rare to find someone who sees the same world you see”
“True terror isn’t being scared; it’s not having choice on the matter”
“I was beginning to learn that your life is a story told about you, not one that you tell”
“What I love about science is that as you learn, you don't really get answers. You just get better questions”
“I was so good at being a kid, and so terrible at being whatever I was now”
“In the best conversations, you don't even remember what you talked about, only how it felt”
“If only I were as good at life as I am at the internet”
“We're such language-based creatures that to some extent we cannot know what we cannot name”
“Most adults are just hollowed out. You watch them try to fill themselves up with booze or money or God or fame or whatever they worship, and it all rots them from the inside until nothing is left but the money or the booze or God they thought would save them. Adults think they are wielding power, but really power is wielding them”
“People always talk like there's a bright line between imagination and memory, but there isn't, at least not for me. I remember what I've imagined and imagine what I remember”
“Nobody gets anybody else, not really. We're all stuck inside ourselves”
“We are both astonishments, the closest thing in the know universe to a miracle.”
“Break hearts, not promises”
Quotes about mental health
“The thing about a spiral is, if you follow it inward, it never actually ends. It just keeps tightening, infinitely”
“Actually, the problem is that I can’t lose my mind,” I said. “It’s inescapable”
“There is hope, even when your brain tells you there isn’t”
“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 would never slay the dragon, because the dragon was always me”
“You can’t ever know someone else’s hurt, not really—just like touching someone else's body isn’t the same as having someone else’s body”
“Thoughts are only thoughts. They are not you, you belong to yourself even when your thoughts don't”
“Your now is not your forever”
“Worrying is the correct worldview. Life is worrisome”
“I couldn't make myself happy, but I could make people around me miserable”
Quotes About Love
“It’s a weird phrase in English, in love, like it’s a sea you drown in or a town you live in. You don’t get to be in anything else—in friendship or in anger or in hope. All you can be in is love”
“Our hearts were broken in the same places. That's something like love, but maybe not quite the thing itself”
“You remember your first love because they show you, prove to you, that you can love and be loved, that nothing in this world is deserved except for love, that love is both how you become a person and why”
Not read it yet? You can buy a copy on Amazon here.
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