“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.”
― Turtles All the Way Down
― Turtles All the Way Down
“One of the challenges with pain—physical or psychic—is that we can really only approach it through metaphor. It can’t be represented the way a table or a body can. In some ways pain is the opposite of language.”
― Turtles All the Way Down
― Turtles All the Way Down
“You're both the fire and the water that extinguishes it. You're the narrator, the protagonist, and the sidekick. You're the storyteller and the story told. You are somebody's something, but you are also your you.”
― Turtles All the Way Down
― Turtles All the Way Down
“The problem with happy endings is that they're either not really happy, or not really endings, you know? In real life, some things get better and some things get worse. And then eventually you die.”
― Turtles All the Way Down
― Turtles All the Way Down
“You remember your first love because they show you, prove to you, that you can love and be loved, that nothing in this world is deserved except for love, that love is both how you become a person and why.”
― Turtles All the Way Down
― Turtles All the Way Down
Emma’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Emma’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
More friends…
Favorite Genres
Biography, Fiction, Memoir, Non-fiction, Poetry, Psychology, Romance, Self help, Young-adult, and feminism
Polls voted on by Emma
Lists liked by Emma




































