Irina

“These illness narratives are often not just a strategy for conceptualizing the pain of others, but also a way of reassuring ourselves that we’ll never feel that pain.”
― John Green, Everything Is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection

“Nothing is so privileged as thinking history belongs to the past.”
― John Green, Everything Is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection

“re-examine all you have been told in school or church or in any book, and dismiss whatever insults your own soul; and your very flesh shall be a great poem, and have the richest fluency, not only in its words, but in the silent lines of its lips and face, and between the lashes of your eyes, and in every motion and joint of your body.

[From the preface to Leaves Grass]”
― Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass

“When you write a novel, you are alone in it. I wrote that book alone, sitting in airports and coffee shops and lying in bed. But when writing, there is always for me a hope that one day I will not be alone—not in this work and not in this world. It is a bit like that old children’s pool game Marco Polo, where one person closes their eyes and swims around the pool trying to tag someone else. “Marco,” the person with eyes closed says, and the other pool-goers have to answer, “Polo.” “Marco, Marco, Marco,” cries one kid, and the others reply: “Polo. Polo. Polo.” Writing is like that for me, like I’m typing “Marco, Marco, Marco” for years, and then finally the work is finished and someone reads it and says, “Polo.”
― John Green, Everything Is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection