TurtlesAllTheWayDownQuotes

Ask Me TATWD Questions! Some of my favorite out of context quotes in chronological order (with spoilers!) from John Green's Turtles All The Way Down (TATWD) — note: all quotes have been posted three times now, will transition to rb in a non chronological order, hope that’s okay! (2019/05/07) okay hi. So I’ve rb nearly daily for over two years now (?!?!) but life’s been getting really busy so no more promises but I’ll rb when I can! (2021/09/07)

[tatwdquotes]

“My brain was quiet now that I’d done the thing it wanted me to do”

— John Green

[tatwdquotes]

“Maybe I’m just a lie that I’m whispering to myself”

— John Green (via tatwdquotes)

[tatwdquotes]

“I don’t control my thoughts, so they’re not really mine. I don’t decide if I’m sweating or get cancer or C. diff or whatever, so my body isn’t really mine. I don’t decide any of that – outside forces do. I’m a story they’re telling. I am circumstances”

— John Green

[tatwdquotes]

“I want the past back, no matter the cost. It doesn’t matter that it won’t come back, that it never even actually existed as I remember it—I want it back. I want things to be like they were, or like I remember them having been: Whole”

— John Green

[tatwdquotes]

“I apologize for the double negative, but it’s a real double negative of a situation, a bind from witch negating the negation is truly the only escape”

— John Green

[tatwdquotes]

“I can no more choose my thoughts than choose my name. The way he talked about thoughts was the way I experienced them-not as a choice but as a destiny. Not a catalogue of my consciousness, but a reflection of it”

— John Green (via tatwdquotes)

[tatwdquotes]

“God, a lot happened since you lost your mind. Is that rude to say?“ “Actually, the problem is that I can’t lose my mind,” I said. “It’s inescapable.””

— John Green

[tatwdquotes]

“I thought, It’s happening, the it too terrifying and vast to name with anything but a pronoun”

— John Green (via tatwdquotes)

[tatwdquotes]

“But what I want to know is, is there a you independent of circumstances? Is there a way-down-deep me who is an actual, real person, the same person if she has money or not, the same person if she has a boyfriend or not, the same if she goes to this school or that school? Or am I only a set of circumstances?”

— John Green

[tatwdquotes]

“Who knows what lies I believe, or you do. Who knows what we shouldn’t doubt”

— John Green

[tatwdquotes]

“I wasn’t tired, exactly, but I wasn’t too keen on consciousness, either”

— John Green

[tatwdquotes]

“When I was little, I knew that monsters weren’t, like, real. But I also knew that I could be hurt by things that weren’t real. I knew that made-up things mattered, and could kill you”

— John Green

[tatwdquotes]

“I’m sorry it’s not fun hanging out with me because I’m stuck inside my head so much, but imagine being actually stuck inside my head with no way out, with no way to ever take a break from it, because that’s my life”

— John Green

[tatwdquotes]

““You can’t control it, that’s the thing,” I said. “Life isn’t something you wield, you know?””

— John Green

[tatwdquotes]

“And we’re such language based creatures that to some extent we cannot know what we cannot name. And so assume it isn’t real”

— John Green

[tatwdquotes]

““Wealth is careless-so around it, you must be careful.” “He’s not wealth. He’s a person.””

— John Green

[tatwdquotes]

“I disgusted myself. I was revolting, but I couldn’t recoil from my self because I was stuck inside of it”

— John Green