Ned Vizzini, It's Kind of a Funny Story
25 quotes
"That's worst than gonerreha, man!"
"I wanted to tell people, "My depression is acting up today" as an excuse for not seeing them, but I never managed to pull it off."
"And I'm not assuming and I'm not judging. I'm just being curious."
"I can smell the sex on her. I hope she smells the love on me."
"I can't eat and I can't sleep. I'm not doing well in terms of being a functional human, you know?"
"I waste at least an hour every day lying in bed. Then I waste time pacing. I waste time thinking. I waste time being quiet and not saying anything because I'm afraid I'll stutter."
"Its so hard to talk when you want to kill yourself. That's above and beyond everything else, and it's not a mental complaint-it's a physical thing, like it's physically hard to open your mouth and make the words come out. They don't come out smooth and in conjunction with your brain the way normal people's words do; they come out in chunks as if from a crushed-ice dispenser; you stumble on them as they gather behind your lower lip. So you just keep quiet."
"I'm fine. Well, I'm not fine - I'm here.""Is there something wrong with that?""Absolutely."
"(...) Since I was a kid.""Which you refer to as 'back when you were happy.'""Right."
"You want to play video games twenty-four hours a day?""Or watch. I just want to not be me. Whether it's sleeping or playing video games or riding my bike or studying. Giving my brain up. That's what's important."
"I have a system with bathrooms. I spend a lot of time in them. They are sanctuaries, public places of peace spaced throughout the world for people like me."
"I don't-" I shake my head. (...) "What? What were you going to say?" This is another trick of shrinks. They never let you stop in midthought. If you open your mouth, they want to know exactly what you had the intention of saying."
"It’s a huge thing, this Shift, just as big as I imagined. My brain doesn’t want to think anymore; all of a sudden it wants to do."
"I wasn't going to have enough money to pay for a Good Lifestyle, which meant I'd feel ashamed, which meant I'd get depressed, and that was the big one because I knew what that did to me: it made it so I wouldn't get out of bed, which led to the ultimate thing—homelessness. If you can't get out of bed for long enough, people come and take your bed away."
"Whether it's sleeping or playing video games or riding my bike or studying. Giving my brain up. That's what's important."
"It's not a mental complaint-it's a physical thing, like it's physically hard to open your mouth and make the words come out. ... you stumble on them as they gather behind your lower lip. So you just keep quiet."
"I'll fail.""At schoool.""Failing at school is failing at life."
"I ask the nurse wrapping up her dispensing duties if I need any meds, and she says I'm not scheduled for any. I ask her if I can have some. She asks what I need them for. I tell her, to deal with this crazy place. She says if they had pills for that, they wouldn't need places like this in the first place, would they?"
"When you mess something up, you learn for the next time."
"I shrug. I don't really need to explain this to Aaron. He's been demoted from most important friend to friend, and he's going to have to earn that, even. And you know what else? I don't owe people anything, and I don't have to talk to them any more than I feel I need to."
"It's not a big thing, but I guess it's true- big things are often just small things that are noticed."
"I didn't want to wake up. I was having a much better time asleep. And that's really sad."
"Like I'm on the verge of just blowing up. All the stress and pressure and anxiety just bubbling up."
"After college, I went through my own shit and decided that all physical suffering in the world couldn't compare to mental anguish. And when I got myself, I decided to help other people."
"I am a guy," I say."And I hate boys," she says."But a guy's different," I say."Maybe a little," she says."