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I have a system with bathrooms. I spend a lot of time in them. They are sanctuaries, public places of peace spaced throughout the world for people like me.
Ned Vizzini -
deep down I believe my year was a special year: it produced me.
Ned Vizzini
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But some people have to get lucky just to live. And I never knew I could make anybody lucky.
Ned Vizzini -
I'm still a nobody, when am I not going to be a nobody?
Ned Vizzini -
You want to play video games twenty-four hours a day?" "Or watch. I just want to not be me. Whether it's sleeping or playing video games or riding my bike or studying. Giving my brain up. That's what's important.
Ned Vizzini -
People don't make good Anchors, though, Craig. They change.
Ned Vizzini -
Of course I wasn't abused. If I were; things would be so simple. I'd have a reason to for being in a shrinks office. I'd have a justification and something to work on. The world wasn't going to give me something that tidy.
Ned Vizzini -
I wasn’t gifted. Mom was wrong. I was just smart and I worked hard. I had fooled myself into thinking that was something important to the rest of the world. Other people were complicit in this ruse. Nobody had told me I was common.
Ned Vizzini
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My family shouldn't have to put up with me. They're good people, solid, happy. Sometimes when I'm with them I think I'm on television.
Ned Vizzini -
And when you say the truth you get stronger.
Ned Vizzini -
A working brain is probably a lot like a map, where anybody can get from one place to another on the freeways. It's the nonworking brains that get blocked, that have dead ends, that are under construction like mine.
Ned Vizzini -
I don't-" I shake my head. (...) "What? What were you going to say?" This is another trick of shrinks. They never let you stop in midthought. If you open your mouth, they want to know exactly what you had the intention of saying.
Ned Vizzini -
Its so hard to talk when you want to kill yourself. That's above and beyond everything else, and it's not a mental complaint-it's a physical thing, like it's physically hard to open your mouth and make the words come out. They don't come out smooth and in conjunction with your brain the way normal people's words do; they come out in chunks as if from a crushed-ice dispenser; you stumble on them as they gather behind your lower lip. So you just keep quiet.
Ned Vizzini -
Sometimes I just think depression's one way of coping with the world. Like, some people get drunk, some people do drugs, some people get depressed. Because there's so much stuff out there that you have to do something to deal with it.
Ned Vizzini
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The Shift hasn't happened yet, maybe it never will, but sometimes-just enough times to give me hope-my brain jars back into where it's supposed to be.
Ned Vizzini -
It’s tough to get out of bed; I know that myself. You can lie there for an hour and a half without thinking anything, just worrying about what the day holds and knowing that you won’t be able to deal with it.
Ned Vizzini -
If there is a next life, I hope it's in the past; I don't think the future will be any more handleable. I think it's a little harsh how the END button is red.
Ned Vizzini -
So why am I depressed? That's the million-dollar question, baby, the Tootsie Roll question; not even the owl knows the answer to that one. I don't know either. All I know is the chronology.
Ned Vizzini -
I should be a success and I'm not and other people- younger people- are. Younger people than me are on TV and getting their lives in order. I'm still a nobody. When am I going to not be a nobody?
Ned Vizzini -
I wasn't going to have enough money to pay for a Good Lifestyle, which meant I'd feel ashamed, which meant I'd get depressed, and that was the big one because I knew what that did to me: it made it so I wouldn't get out of bed, which led to the ultimate thing—homelessness. If you can't get out of bed for long enough, people come and take your bed away.
Ned Vizzini
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I owe her everything and I love her and I tell her these days, although every time I say it, it gets a little diluted. I think you run out of I love yous.
Ned Vizzini -
I just want to not be me.
Ned Vizzini -
Some days I woke up and got out of bed and brushed my teeth like any normal human being; some days I woke up and laid in bed and looked at the ceiling and wondered what the hell the point was of getting out of bed and brushing my teeth like any normal human being.
Ned Vizzini -
And that was the closest I've ever come to an epiphany.
Ned Vizzini