Ali Pahl

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

“Knowing your true emotions and thoughts probably felt dangerous if it threatened to distance you from the people you depended on. You learned that your goodness or badness lay not only in your behavior, but in your mind as well. In this way, you may have learned the absurd idea that you can be a bad person for having certain thoughts and feelings, and you may still hold that belief.”
― Lindsay C. Gibson, Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents: How to Heal from Distant, Rejecting, or Self-Involved Parents

“, trying to comprehend exactly what it is that I’m feeling. Parents of addicts learn to temper our hope even as we never completely lose hope. However, we are terrified of optimism, fearful that it will be punished. It is safer to shut down. But I am open again, and as a consequence I feel the pain and joy of the past and worry about and hope for the future. I know what it is I feel. Everything.”
― David Sheff, Beautiful Boy

“And I kept thinking about how sky is a singular noun, as if it's one thing. But the sky isn't one thing. The sky is everything. And last night, it was enough.”
― John Green, Turtles All the Way Down