Emily

“I wanted to tell her that I was getting better, because that was supposed to be the narrative of illness: It was a hurdle you jumped over, or a battle you won. Illness is a story told in the past tense.”
― John Green, Turtles All the Way Down

“Him: And the thing is, when you lose someone, you realise you'll eventually lose everyone
Me: True. And once you know that, you can never forget it.”
― John Green, Turtles All the Way Down

“Nobody speaks. And the tree stands just ahead of us. I walk towards it, trancelike, and I am glad that no one is following me. It towers over me with a defiant agelessness. Branches gnarled and threatening, some thin enough to snap in two. Others that are thick enough to throw a rope over. I touch its bark. Dad said once that you can tell the story of a tree by cutting it open. I sometimes feel that way. I can't always express what I am feeling out loud. But with paper and pen, I can make sense of everything. There would be no paper without trees, even cursed ones like this.”
― Elle McNicoll, A Kind of Spark

“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.”
― John Green, Turtles All the Way Down