Turtles All The Way Down Aza Quotes

You're both the fire and the water that extinguishes it. You're the narrator, the protagonist, and the sidekick. You're the storyteller and the story told. You are somebody's something, but you are also your you.

To be alive is to be missing.

Nobody gets anybody else, not really. We're all stuck inside ourselves.

Like, the world is billions of years old, and life is a product of nucleotide mutation and everything. But the world is also the stories we tell about it.

You'd think solving mysteries would bring you closure, that closing the loop would comfort and quiet your mind. But it never does. The truth always disappoints.

We squeeze his hand. He squeezes back. You stare up at the same sky together, and after a while he says, I have to go, and you say, Good-bye, and he says Good-bye, Aza, and no one ever says good-bye unless they want to see you again.

Dr. Karen Singh liked to say that a unwanted thought was like a car driving past you when you're standing on on the side of the road, and I told myself I didn't have to get into that car, that my moment of choice was not whether to have the thought, but whether to be carried away by it. And then I got in the car.

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 if she goes to this school or that school? Or am I only a set of circumstances? -Aza

Even though I laughed with them, it felt like I was watching the whole thing from somewhere else, like I was watching a movie about my life instead of living it.

But you give your thoughts too much power, Aza. Thoughts are only thoughts. They are not you. You do belong to yourself, even when your thoughts don’t.

I, a singular proper noun, would go on, if always in a conditional tense.

I wasn't possessed by a demon. I was the demon.

I could still be anybody.

Holmesy, you okay?" Daisy asked. I nodded. Sometimes I wondered why she liked me, or at least tolerated me. Why any of them did. Even I found myself annoying.

The problem with happy endings, I said, is that they're either not really happy, or not really endings, you know? In real life, some things get better and some things get worse. And then eventually you die.

But I was beginning to learn that your life is a story told about you, not one that you tell. Of course, you pretend to be the author. You have to.

And if you can't pick what you do or think about, then maybe you aren't really real, you know? Maybe I'm just a lie that I'm whispering to myself.

You seemed locked inside of your mind, and I can't know what's going on in there, and it scared me.

I think therefore I am, right?" "No, not really. A fuller formation of Descartes's philosophy would be Dubito, ergo cogito, ergo sum. 'I doubt, therefore I think, therefore I am.' Descartes wanted to know if you could really know that anything was real, but he believed his ability to doubt reality proved that, while it might not be real, he was.

I felt like I might end up anywhere, and imagining all the futures I might have, all the Azas I might become, was a glorious and welcome vacation from living with the me I currently was.

I knew how disgusting I was. I knew. I knew now for sure. I wasn't possessed by a demon. I was the demon.

Be kind to yourself.

Thoughts are just a different kind of bacteria, colonizing you. I thought about the gut-brain information axis. Maybe you're already gone. The prisoners run the jail now. Not a person so much as a swarm. Not a bee, but the hive.

Me gustan los poemas cortos con rima extraña, porque así es la vida. -¿Así es la vida? -Sí. Rima, pero no como esperas.

Partly, I kept forgetting, but also there was something else I couldn't quite identify, some way-down fear that taking a pill to become myself was wrong.

It sucked having a dead person in your family, and I knew what he meant, about seeking solace in the old light. Three years from now, I knew, he'd find a different favorite star, one with older light to gaze upon. And when time caught up with that one, he'd love a farther star, and a farther one, because you can't let the light catch up with the present. Otherwise you'd forget.

Felt myself slipping, but even that's a metaphor. Descending, but that is, too. Forged in the smithy of someone else's soul. Please just let me out whoever is authoring me, let me up out of this. Anything to be out of this.

Yes, well, in that respect and many others, American high schools do rather resemble prisons.

For the record, he who does fear death also dies only once, but whatever.

Okay, well, I feel more like seven things than one thing.

If taking a pill makes you different, lie, if it changes the way-down you...that's just a screwed-up idea, you know? Who's deciding what me means - me or the employees of the factory that makes Lexapro? It's like I have this demon inside of me, and I want it gone, but the idea of removing it via pill is...I don't know...weird. But a lot of days I get over that, because I do really hate the demon.

My children are grown-ups., so you and Noah are my only little boys I have left.

You feeling scared?" "Kinda." "Of what?" "It's not like that. The sentence doesn't have, like, an object. I'm just scared." "I don't know what to say, Aza. I see the pain on your face and I want to take it from you." I hated hurting her. I hated making her feel helpless. I hated it. She was running her fingers through my hair. "You're all right," she said. "You're all right. I'm here. I'm not going anywhere." I felt myself stiffen a little as she kept playing with my hair.

squeeze his hand. He squeezes back. You stare up at the same sky together, and after a while he says, I have to go, and you say, Good-bye, and he says, Good-bye, Aza, and no one ever says good-bye unless they want to see you again.

You give your thoughts too much power, Aza. Thoughts are only thoughts. they are not you. You do belong to yourself, even when your thoughts don't.

Aza, du gibts deinen Gedanken zu viel Macht. Gedanken sind bloß Gedanken. Sie sind nicht du. Du gehörst dir, auch wenn deine Gedanken nicht dir gehören.

às vezes eu não entendia como daisy gostava de mim, ou sequer me aguentava. não entendia como alguém podia me aguentar. até eu me achava irritante.

a questão da espiral é que, se a seguimos, ela nunca termina. só vai se afunilando, infinitamente.

You're imprisoned within a self that doesn't feel wholly yours...But also, to you that self often feels deeply contaminated." I nodded. "But you give your thoughts too much power, Aza. Thoughts are only thoughts. They are not you. You do belong to yourself, even when your thoughts don't." "But your thoughts are you. I think therefore I am, right?" "No, not really. A fuller formation of Descartes's philosophy would be Dubito, ergo cogito, ergo sum. 'I doubt, therefore I think, therefore I am.' Descartes wanted to know if you could really know that anything was real, but he believed his ability to doubt reality proved that, while it might not be real, he was. You are as real as anyone, and your doubts make you more real, not less.

At the time I first realized I might be fictional, my weekdays were spent at publicly funded institution on the north side of Indianapolis called White River High School, where I was required to eat lunch at a particular time - between 12:37 P.M. and 1:14 P.M. - by forces so much larger than myself that I couldn't even begin to identify them.

It sounds to me like you're being cruel to yourself." After a moment, I said, "How can you be anything to your self? I mean, if you can be something to your self, then your self isn't, like, singular." "You're deflecting." I just stared at her. "You're right that self isn't simple, Aza. Maybe it's not even singular. Self is a plurality, but pluralities can also be integrated, right? Think of a rainbow. It's one arc of light, but also seven differently colored arcs of light.

Kalian menatap langit bersama-sama, dan setelah beberapa saat, dia berkata, Aku harus pergi, dan kau berkata, Selamat tinggal, dan dia berkata, Selama Tinggal, Aza, dan tak seorang pun mengucapkan selamat tinggal, kecuali mereka ingin bertemu denganmu lagi

But you don't now any of that yet. We squeeze his hand, He squeezes back. You stare up at the same sky together, and after a while he says, I have to go, and you say, Good-bye, and he says, Good-bye, Aza, and no one ever says good-bye unless they want to see you again.

The greatest weapon against stress is our ability to choose one thought over another.” —WILLIAM JAMES I don’t know what superpower William James enjoyed, but 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 catalog of my consciousness, but a refutation of it. When I was little, I used to tell Mom about my invasives, and she would always say, “Just don’t think about that stuff, Aza.” But Davis got it. You can’t choose. That’s the problem.

The way he talked about thoughts was the way I experienced them --- not as a choice but as a destiny. Not a catalog of my consciousness, but a refutation of it. When I was little, I used tell Mom about my invasives, and she would always say, "Just don't think about that stuff, Aza." But Davis got it. You can't choose. That's the problem.

Você da poder demais aos seus pensamentos, Aza. São apenas pensamentos. Eles não são você. Você pertence a si mesma, mesmo quando seus pensamentos não pertencem.

(...) yo intentaba explicarle que hay algo enormemente extraño y triste en la idea de que solo puedes llegar a ser tú mismo ingiriendo una medicación que cambia tu yo.

El problema de los finales felices es que o no son de verdad felices, o no son de verdad finales, ¿sabes? En la vida real, unas cosas van mejor y otras peor. Y al final mueres.

But you give your thoughts too much power, Aza. Thoughts are only thoughts. They are not you.

imagining all the futures I might have, all the Azas I might become, was a glorious and welcome vacation from living with the me I currently was.

But you give your thoughts too much power, Aza. Thoughts are only thoughts. They are not you. You do belong to yourself, even when your thoughts don't.

I felt like I might end up anywhere, and imagining all the future I might have, all the Azas I might become, was a glorious and welcome vacation from living with the me I currently was.

You stare up at the same sky together, and after a while he says, I have to go, and you say, Good-bye, and he says, Good-bye, Aza, and no one ever says good-bye unless they want to see you again.

Sentía la tensión en el aire, y sabía que él estaba buscando la manera de volver a alegrarme. Su cerebro daba vueltas al lado del mío. Yo no podía alegrarme, pero podía entristecer a la gente que me rodeaba.

Sentía la tensión en el aire, y sabía que él estaba buscando la manera de volver a alegrarme. Su cerebro daba vueltas al lado del mío. Yo no podía alegrarme, pero podía entristecer a la gente que me rodeaba,

It’s like I have this demon inside of me, and I want it gone, but the idea of removing it via pill is . . . I don’t know . . . weird. But a lot of days I get over that, because I do really hate the demon.” “You often try to understand your experience through metaphor, Aza: It’s like a demon inside of you; you’ll call your consciousness a bus, or a prison cell, or a spiral, or a whirlpool, or a loop, or a—I think you once called it a scribbled circle, which I found interesting.” “Yeah,” I said. “One of the challenges with pain—physical or psychic—is that we can really only approach it through metaphor. It can’t be represented the way a table or a body can. In some ways, pain is the opposite of language.” She turned to her computer, shook her mouse to wake it up, and then clicked an image on her desktop. “I want to share something Virginia Woolf wrote: ‘English, which can express the thoughts of Hamlet and the tragedy of Lear, has no words for the shiver and the headache. . . . The merest schoolgirl, when she falls in love, has Shakespeare or Keats to speak her mind for her; but let a sufferer try to describe a pain in his head to a doctor and language at once runs dry.’ And we’re such language-based creatures that to some extent we cannot know what we cannot name. And so we assume it isn’t real. We refer to it with catch-all terms, like crazy or chronic pain, terms that both ostracize and minimize. The term chronic pain captures nothing of the grinding, constant, ceaseless, inescapable hurt. And the term crazy arrives at us with none of the terror and worry you live with. Nor do either of those terms connote the courage people in such pains exemplify, which is why I’d ask you to frame your mental health around a word other than crazy.

It was so fun to imagine the possibilities - West Coast or East Coast? City or country? I felt like I might end up anywhere, and imagining all the futures I might have, all the Azas I might become, was a glorious and welcome vacation from living with the me I currently was.

There’s a moment,” she said, “near the end of Ulysses when the character Molly Bloom appears to speak directly to the author. She says, ‘O Jamesy let me up out of this.’ You’re imprisoned within a self that doesn’t feel wholly yours, like Molly Bloom. But also, to you that self often feels deeply contaminated.” I nodded. “But you give your thoughts too much power, Aza. Thoughts are only thoughts. They are not you. You do belong to yourself, even when your thoughts don’t.” “But your thoughts are you. I think therefore I am, right?” “No, not really. A fuller formation of Descartes’s philosophy would be Dubito, ergo cogito, ergo sum. ‘I doubt, therefore I think, therefore I am.’ Descartes wanted to know if you could really know that anything was real, but he believed his ability to doubt reality proved that, while it might not be real, he was. You are as real as anyone, and your doubts make you more real, not less.

In the book, Aza is really freaked out by the feeling that her thoughts seem to come from outside of her. If you can’t choose your thoughts, then who exactly are you? Who’s running the ship here? Am I really the captain of my consciousness, or are outside forces shaping my self so completely that “I” don’t really exist as a sovereign thing? For Aza, that’s not an abstract question of mere philosophy; it really is critical to her survival that she find a way to imagine herself as a coherent, integrated self despite the fact that many of her thoughts do not feel like they are hers.

All the while, I was breathing in through my nose and out through my mouth, in the manner advised by Dr. Karen Singh, exhaling at a pace “that would make a candle flicker but not go out. Imagine that candle, Aza, flickering from your breath but still there, always there.” So I tried that, but the thought spiral kept tightening anyway. I could hear Dr. Singh saying I shouldn’t get out my phone, that I mustn’t look up the same questions over and over, but I got it out anyway, and reread the “Human Microbiota” Wikipedia article. The thing about a spiral is, if you follow it inward, it never actually ends. It just keeps tightening, infinitely. Turtles all the way down