Jonathan Friesen > Quotes

“Wanting and wishing are very different”
― Jonathan Friesen, Both of Me

“How easy it was to slip through the cracks alongside him. To fall in the very same trap I had committed to free him from.”
― Jonathan Friesen, Both of Me

“We’re lied to all our lives. We teach lies to the children, and they pass them on to theirs.”
― Jonathan Friesen, Aquifer

“My world had become his, or his mine; it was hard to say”
― Jonathan Friesen, Both of Me

“Names are important, you know”
― Jonathan Friesen, Both of Me

“No, no. Not a genius. This is like what reading is like for you. You look at the squiggles and loops, and the puzzle opens until suddenly nothing means something, something more than the sum of the parts, right? I see one hunk of metal and then another, and the puzzle opens. They turn in my mind and just make sense. Together they all mean something.”
― Jonathan Friesen, Both of Me

“Frightened that you'll be overcome by yourself? That a gentle monster inside of you might take over and never let go?”
― Jonathan Friesen, Both of Me

“What's wrong with me? I lose my footing, in here.' He touched his head. 'When a neuro-typical looses their footing, they yell or escape to the TV, or maybe the doctor throws them on depression meds. But when I slip, I fall all the way through. I feel the ground give way and I'm gone. It's a crack -- a crack in what's real, and beneath there I'm stuck. Then, I guess I become someone else. Mom says I still know my name, but I walk a different world. The shrink calls it DID -- Dissociative Identity Disorder -- with a little added autism to spice up my other personality. I suppose he's right, but only I know how it feels to slip through the cracks. Then the monster shows up.”
― Jonathan Friesen, Both of Me

“The moment was surreal. A sometimes-autistic young man with two identities lecturing a room full of zombies on feelings and realities.”
― Jonathan Friesen, Both of Me

“Glorious failures are often much more wonderful than easy victories.”
― Jonathan Friesen, Aldo's Fantastical Movie Palace

“I slowly climbed the porch steps while wondering, what exactly did Elias know about my life in London; what precisely was wrong with his mind...
And what was the heaviest item in my bag.”
― Jonathan Friesen

“We are often reminded how peaceful our world has become, a world without a police force or prison, where crimes and uprisings have nearly disappeared. But we’ve paid a price. The emotional root of all conflict — fear, anger, love, especially love — is prohibited. The goal of our schooling is to master a life of total self-control. A life without wrinkles, without feeling, without soul.”
― Jonathan Friesen, Aquifer

“Even the safest of books are useless without reading.”
― Jonathan Friesen, Aquifer

“Someone once used that precise same line on me”
― Jonathan Friesen, Both of Me

“My whole life, I prepared to come down in order to save the world above.. Now I have to ascend to save the world below..”
― Jonathan Friesen, Aquifer

“I miss home. I miss ignorance. I've seen a beauty I can't fathom in the Aquifer, and met a girl who moves my heart.”
― Jonathan Friesen, Aquifer

“I belong everywhere and nowhere, and I alone can save two worlds.”
― Jonathan Friesen, Aquifer

“I've known three men in my life. One's dead. One's cruel. And one belches.”
― Jonathan Friesen, Jerk, California

“Have you __ have you ever been so angry and scared and confused that your brain shuts down and your heart shrivels up and all you want is to disappear?”
― Jonathan Friesen, Jerk, California

“Read the book: All the good people go. Only monsters remain.”
― Jonathan Friesen, Mayday

“We're all here. We're close to the truck, and we met Kenton, a fine citizen of Salem. We rescued Izzy and found our way through a very sad darkness, dangers that we knew from Izzy's Orion interpretation would be waiting for us. We're definitely on the right track.”
― Jonathan Friesen, Both of Me