“When you go into the ER, one of the first things they ask you to do is to rate your pain on a scale of one to ten, and from there they decide which drugs to use and how quickly to use them. I’d been asked this question hundreds of times over the years, and I remember once early on when I couldn’t get my breath and it felt like my chest was on fire, flames licking the inside of my ribs fighting for a way to burn out of my body, my parents took me to the ER. A nurse asked me about the pain, and I couldn’t even speak, so I held up nine fingers. Later, after they’d given me something, the nurse came in and she was kind of stroking my hand while she took my blood pressure and she said, “You know how I know you’re a fighter? You called a ten a nine.” But that wasn’t quite right. I called it a nine because I was saving my ten. And here it was, the great and terrible ten, slamming me again and again”
― The Fault in Our Stars
― The Fault in Our Stars
“Grief does not change you, Hazel. It reveals you.”
― The Fault in Our Stars
― The Fault in Our Stars
“You have a choice in this world, I believe, about how to tell sad stories, and we made the funny choice.”
― The Fault in Our Stars
― The Fault in Our Stars
Susannah Norris’s 2025 Year in Books
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