“sometimes I feel like everyone else is carrying a bucket of water but I’m trying to carry an ocean. its very hard. sometimes I would rather not carry my ocean, even if it meant I couldn’t be alive.”
― Heidi Cullinan, quote from Carry the Ocean
“Depression is having a crowd of dementors live in your head twenty-four/seven.”
― Heidi Cullinan, quote from Carry the Ocean
“Frankly, I’m awesome, and anybody who doesn’t agree should get out of my way.”
― Heidi Cullinan, quote from Carry the Ocean
“I am normal. I belong. I have a friend who can kick ass from a wheelchair. I live independently and get good grades. I'm an excellent lover.
Like I said. I'm awesome. I'm Emmet David Washington. Train Man. The best autistic Blues Brother on the block.”
― Heidi Cullinan, quote from Carry the Ocean
“Sometimes I liked him for his smile. Sometimes I liked him because he didn’t smile. Sometimes I got an erection because of the way he brushed his hair away from his face. It didn’t matter to my brain that these were odd reasons to care for someone. My brain, my body, my everything wanted to be Jeremey’s boyfriend.”
― Heidi Cullinan, quote from Carry the Ocean
“No one is normal. Normal is a lie.”
― Heidi Cullinan, quote from Carry the Ocean
“That's my ocean. I have to pretend as best I can to be like people on the mean so people don't call me a robot. I'm not a robot. I'm real and I have feelings the same as everyone else. And I want a boyfriend. Except my ocean doesn't make me want to be dead. It makes me want to fight. I want you to fight too, Jeremey. I want us to carry our oceans together.”
― Heidi Cullinan, quote from Carry the Ocean
“I really am Super Emmet, and like the comic book Superman, I have a powerful secret weapon. My mom.”
― Heidi Cullinan, quote from Carry the Ocean
“my emotions feel loud and big. its hard for me to keep hold of them. they weigh me down. make me heavy and tired and overwhelmed. sometimes I feel like everyone else is carrying a bucket of water but I’m trying to carry an ocean. its very hard. sometimes I would rather not carry my ocean, even if it meant I couldn’t be alive.”
― Heidi Cullinan, quote from Carry the Ocean
“Remember having a panic attack isn’t a failure, and not having one isn’t a success. Success is not letting the attacks run your life”
― Heidi Cullinan, quote from Carry the Ocean
“It’s like Elwood Blues says: everybody needs somebody to love. I’m an everybody. I get a somebody.”
― Heidi Cullinan, quote from Carry the Ocean
“I don’t think people understand about suicidal thoughts. They act as if everyone who makes an attempt is looking for attention.”
― Heidi Cullinan, quote from Carry the Ocean
“People are good medicine, but they can’t be your foundation of functionality. You must build that yourself.”
― Heidi Cullinan, quote from Carry the Ocean
“There is no normal, not really. Not a right and a wrong way to be. But there is belonging. That day in Bohemia with Jeremey and David and the girls, I belonged. I belonged as much as anybody on the mean. Maybe even a little bit more.”
― Heidi Cullinan, quote from Carry the Ocean
“There is no normal. There is not an invisible bar you must meet to be acceptable to society.”
― Heidi Cullinan, quote from Carry the Ocean
“I can't live in the dorms and I can't stop people from calling me a freak, but I can always solve for X.”
― Heidi Cullinan, quote from Carry the Ocean
“Mental illness is no different than a heart condition. In the same way a faulty valve can cause harm to the body and require medication and care, so does a malfunctioning brain. Insanity is a crude, culturally loaded term setting the sufferer apart in a way which will not aid the patient’s recovery. The way we regard those whose brains hinder them with fault or injury is a prejudice, not a diagnosis.” Dr. North”
― Heidi Cullinan, quote from Carry the Ocean
“My anger and sadness was my ocean, and I couldn’t carry it. Not anymore. No one could really love me. Not when they could love somebody else instead.”
― Heidi Cullinan, quote from Carry the Ocean
“When you have an invisible disease, your sickness isn’t your biggest problem. What you end up battling more than anything else, every single day, is other people.”
― Heidi Cullinan, quote from Carry the Ocean
“Mrs. Samson is a bitch, Mom.”
― Heidi Cullinan, quote from Carry the Ocean
“Nothing in the world is the same as anything else, so how can anyone be normal?”
― Heidi Cullinan, quote from Carry the Ocean
“it’s okay to go slow. That everybody else’s pace and definition of success isn’t mine. What is easy for other people isn’t necessarily so for me. Though some things are easy for me and hard for other people.”
― Heidi Cullinan, quote from Carry the Ocean
“There is no normal, not really. Not a right and a wrong way to be. But there is belonging.”
― Heidi Cullinan, quote from Carry the Ocean
“Mom, stop. I have a boyfriend. Jeremey. Why do you think I’ve been hanging out with him so much? But I can’t talk about that right now. He’s upset. I have to fix it.”
― Heidi Cullinan, quote from Carry the Ocean
“Everything will change, if you wait long enough.”
― Heidi Cullinan, quote from Carry the Ocean
Heidi Cullinan
Born place: in Maquoketa, Iowa, The United States
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“She had read articles over the years about a man's supposed biological craving for young women: it was all about primeval procreation, in theory, the need to plant seed in fertile soil. Maybe. ... She thought of a line from Nabokov: "Because you took advantage of my disadvantage." Lolita. In this case, however, Kristin felt that she was at the disadvantage - not the young thing. The truth was, she feared, all men were Humbert Humbert. Maybe they weren't pedophiles lusting after twelve-year-olds, but didn't Lolita look old for her age? Older, anyway? Sure, there were MILFs in porn, but Kristin had a feeling that considerably more men wanted their porn stars to be students at Duke University than moms from the bleachers at a middle-school soccer game.”
― Chris Bohjalian, quote from The Guest Room
“A certain king had a beautiful garden, and in the garden stood a tree which bore golden apples. These apples were always counted, and about the time when they began to grow ripe it was found that every night one of them was gone. The king became very angry at this, and ordered the gardener to keep watch all night under the tree. The gardener set his eldest son to watch; but about twelve o'clock he fell asleep, and in the morning another of the apples was missing. Then the second son was ordered to watch; and at midnight he too fell asleep, and in the morning another apple was gone. Then the third son offered to keep watch; but the gardener at first would not let him, for fear some harm should come to him: however, at last he consented, and the young man laid himself under the tree to watch. As the clock struck twelve he heard a rustling noise in the air, and a bird came flying that was of pure gold; and as it was snapping at one of the apples with its beak, the gardener's son jumped up and shot an arrow at it. But the arrow did the bird no harm; only it dropped a golden feather from its tail, and then flew away. The golden feather was brought to the king in the morning, and all the council was called together. Everyone agreed that it was worth more than all the wealth of the kingdom: but the king said, 'One feather is of no use to me, I must have the whole bird.”
― Jacob Grimm, quote from Grimm's Complete Fairy Tales
“At daybreak on the first day, thousands of Cambodians are already calmly waiting outside my polling station. They squat on the ground, silent and patient. We didn't expect this at all. We thought they would fail to understand how democracy works. We thought they would be afraid of the Khmer Rouge. We thought they would passively accept their fate. We were wrong.”
― quote from Emergency Sex (And Other Desperate Measures): True Stories from a War Zone
“The terms which, in his inmost heart, each man knows. As I know mine. As all know. For that is the truth of it — that we all know, God, that we know, that we know, we know, we know.”
― Saul Bellow, quote from Mr. Sammler's Planet
“No pain that we suffer, lass, no trial that we experience is ever for naught. Hardships teach us qualities we can get in no other way. Like patience, faith, fortitude . . . and humility.”
― Jeff Wheeler, quote from The Hollow Crown
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