Trin > Trin's Quotes

“In his suicide note, Kurt Cobain wrote, "It's better to burn out than to fade away." He was quoting a Neil Young song about Johnny Rotten of the Sex Pistols. When I was twenty-four, I interviewed John Lennon. I asked him about this sentiment, one that pervades rock and roll. He took strong, outraged exception to it. "It's better to fade away like an old soldier than to burn out, " he said. "I worship people who survive. I'll take the living and the healthy.”
― David Sheff, Beautiful Boy: A Father's Journey Through His Son's Addiction

“An alcoholic will steal your wallet and lie to you. A drug addict will steal your wallet and then help you look for it.”
― David Sheff, Beautiful Boy: A Father's Journey Through His Son's Addiction

“Anyone who has lived through it, or those who are now living through it, knows that caring about an addict is as complex and fraught and debilitating as addiction itself.”
― David Sheff, Beautiful Boy: A Father's Journey Through His Son's Addiction

“How can both Nics, the loving and considerate and generous one, and the self-obsessed and self-destructive one, be the same person?”
― David Sheff, Beautiful Boy: A Father's Journey Through His Son's Addiction

“We deny the severity of our loved one's problem not because we are naive, but because we can't know.”
― David Sheff, Beautiful Boy: A Father's Journey Through His Son's Addiction

“Fortunately I have a son, my beautiful boy
Unfortunately he is a drug addict.
Fortunately he is in recovery.
Unfortunately he relapses.
Fortunately he is in recovery again.
Unfortunately he relapses.
Fortunately he is not dead.”
― David Sheff, Beautiful Boy: A Father's Journey Through His Son's Addiction

“A world of contradictions, wherein everything is gray and almost nothing is black and white.”
― David Sheff, Beautiful Boy: A Father's Journey Through His Son's Addiction

“It's like if the music is loud enough I won't be able to listen to my own thoughts. ”
― Nic Sheff, Tweak: Growing Up On Methamphetamines

“they say suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem. the problem with being human isn't really so temporary.”
― Nic Sheff, Tweak: Growing Up On Methamphetamines

“And though I have done many shameful things, I am not ashamed of who I am. I am not ashamed of who I am because I know who I am. I have tried to rip myself open and expose everything inside - accepting my weaknesses and strengths - not trying to be anyone else. 'Cause that never works, does it?

So my challenge is to be authentic. An I believe I am today. I believe I am.”
― Nic Sheff, Tweak: Growing Up On Methamphetamines

“I feel so completely crazy sometimes. I don't know which way I'm facing. All I can do is just shove all this shit to the side and try to move forward. ”
― Nic Sheff, Tweak: Growing Up On Methamphetamines

“I feel just, you know, defeated. ”
― Nic Sheff, Tweak: Growing Up On Methamphetamines

“We only have this one moment: NOW.”
― Nic Sheff, Tweak: Growing Up On Methamphetamines

“They say suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem. he problem with being humas isn't really so temporary”
― Nic Sheff, Tweak: Growing Up On Methamphetamines

“Now is now. There is nothing but now... This, right here, is all there is.”
― Nic Sheff, Tweak: Growing Up On Methamphetamines

“Again, fix the outsides and maybe my insides won't be such a dark place.”
― Nic Sheff, Tweak: Growing Up On Methamphetamines

“Whenever my environment had failed to support or nourish me, I had clutched at books...”
― Richard Wright, Black Boy

“I would hurl words into this darkness and wait for an echo, and if an echo sounded, no matter how faintly, I would send other words to tell, to march, to fight, to create a sense of the hunger for life that gnaws in us all.”
― Richard Wright, Black Boy

“Reading was like a drug, a dope. The novels created moods in which I lived for days.”
― Richard Wright, Black Boy

“I was not leaving the south to forget the south, but so that some day I might understand it”
― Richard Wright, Black Boy

“It was not a matter of believing or disbelieving what I read, but of feeling something new, of being affected by something that made the look of the world different.”
― Richard Wright, Black Boy

“I knew that I lived in a country in which the aspirations of black people were limited, marked-off. Yet I felt that I had to go somewhere and do something to redeem my being alive.”
― Richard Wright, Black Boy

“If you possess enough courage to speak out what you are, you will find you are not alone.”
― Richard Wright, Black Boy

“Fearlessness in those without power is maddening to those who have it.”
― Tobias Wolff, This Boy's Life

“It is curious how people take it for granted that they have a right to preach at you and pray over you as soon as your income falls below a certain level.”
― George Orwell, Down and Out in Paris and London

“The stars are a free show; it don’t cost anything to use your eyes”
― George Orwell, Down and Out in Paris and London

“Within certain limits, it is actually true that the less money you have, the less you worry.”
― George Orwell, Down and Out in Paris and London

“Poverty frees them from ordinary standards of behaviour, just as money frees people from work.”
― George Orwell, Down and Out in Paris and London

“We want perfection without practice. Yet everyone is harmed if no one is trained for the future.”
― Atul Gawande, Complications: A Surgeon's Notes on an Imperfect Science

“we need practice to get good at what we do. There is one difference in medicine, though: it is people we practice upon.”
― Atul Gawande, Complications: A Surgeon's Notes on an Imperfect Science