“I didn't want to wake up. I was having a much better time asleep. And that's really sad. It was almost like a reverse nightmare, like when you wake up from a nightmare you're so relieved. I woke up into a nightmare.”
― Ned Vizzini, quote from It's Kind of a Funny Story
“I can't eat and I can't sleep. I'm not doing well in terms of being a functional human, you know?”
― Ned Vizzini, quote from It's Kind of a Funny Story
“People are screwed up in this world. I'd rather be with someone screwed up and open about it than somebody perfect and ready to explode.”
― Ned Vizzini, quote from It's Kind of a Funny Story
“I waste at least an hour every day lying in bed. Then I waste time pacing. I waste time thinking. I waste time being quiet and not saying anything because I'm afraid I'll stutter.”
― Ned Vizzini, quote from It's Kind of a Funny Story
“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, quote from It's Kind of a Funny Story
“I don't know how I can be so ambitious and so lazy at the same time.”
― Ned Vizzini, quote from It's Kind of a Funny Story
“I'm done with those; regrets are an excuse for people who have failed.”
― Ned Vizzini, quote from It's Kind of a Funny Story
“Things to do today:
1) Breathe in.
2) Breathe out.”
― Ned Vizzini, quote from It's Kind of a Funny Story
“I'm fine. Well, I'm not fine - I'm here."
"Is there something wrong with that?"
"Absolutely.”
― Ned Vizzini, quote from It's Kind of a Funny Story
“Dreams are only dreams until you wake up and make them real.”
― Ned Vizzini, quote from It's Kind of a Funny Story
“I don't owe people anything, and I don't have to talk to them any more than I feel I need to.”
― Ned Vizzini, quote from It's Kind of a Funny Story
“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, quote from It's Kind of a Funny Story
“I just want to not be me.”
― Ned Vizzini, quote from It's Kind of a Funny Story
“I'm smart but not enough--just smart enough to have problems.”
― Ned Vizzini, quote from It's Kind of a Funny Story
“Life's not about feeling better, it's about getting the job done.”
― Ned Vizzini, quote from It's Kind of a Funny Story
“See, when you mess something up, you learn for the next time. It's when people compliment you that you're in trouble. That means they expect you to keep it up.”
― Ned Vizzini, quote from It's Kind of a Funny Story
“I’m not better, you know. The weight hasn’t left my head. I feel how easily I could fall back into it, lie down and not eat, waste my time and curse wasting my time, look at my homework and freak out and go and chill at Aaron’s, look at Nia and be jealous again, take the subway home and hope that it has an accident, go and get my bike and head to the Brooklyn Bridge. All of that is still there. The only thing is, it’s not an option now. It’s just… a possibility, like it’s a possibility that I could turn to dust in the next instant and be disseminated throughout the universe as an omniscient consciousness. It’s not a very likely possibility.”
― Ned Vizzini, quote from It's Kind of a Funny Story
“That's all I can do. I'll keep at it and hope it gets better.”
― Ned Vizzini, quote from It's Kind of a Funny Story
“Life can't be cured, but it can be managed.”
― Ned Vizzini, quote from It's Kind of a Funny Story
“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, quote from It's Kind of a Funny Story
“Some of the most profound truths about us are things that we stop saying in the middle.”
― Ned Vizzini, quote from It's Kind of a Funny Story
“(...) Since I was a kid."
"Which you refer to as 'back when you were happy.'"
"Right.”
― Ned Vizzini, quote from It's Kind of a Funny Story
“What happened when you woke up?"
"I was having a dream. I don’t know what it was, but when I woke up, I had this awful realization that I was awake. It hit me like a brick in the groin."
"Like a brick in the groin, I see."
"I didn't want to wake up. I was having a much better time asleep. And that's really sad. It was almost like a reverse nightmare, like when you wake up from a nightmare you're so relieved. I woke up into a nightmare."
"And what is that nightmare, Craig?"
"Life."
"Life is a nightmare."
"Yes.”
― Ned Vizzini, quote from It's Kind of a Funny Story
“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, quote from It's Kind of a Funny Story
“No," mom says, looking at me in the eyes. "What's a triumph is that you woke up this morning and decided to LIVE. THAT'S a triumph. that's what you did today.”
― Ned Vizzini, quote from It's Kind of a Funny Story
“I wanted to tell people, "My depression is acting up today" as an excuse for not seeing them, but I never managed to pull it off.”
― Ned Vizzini, quote from It's Kind of a Funny Story
“The absolute worst part of being depressed is the food. A person's relationship with food is one of their most important relationships. I don't think your relationship with your parents is that important. Some people never know their parents. I don't think your relationship with your friends are important. But your relationship with air-that's key. You can't break up with air. You're kind of stuck together. Only slightly less crucial is water. And then food. You can't be dropping food to hang with someone else. You need to strike up an agreement with it.”
― Ned Vizzini, quote from It's Kind of a Funny Story
“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, quote from It's Kind of a Funny Story
Ned Vizzini
Born place: in Brooklyn, New York, The United States
Born date April 4, 1981
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“what is sought by means of free choice is to make room for merits.”
― Martin Luther, quote from The Bondage of the Will
“But we love the Old Travelers. We love to hear them prate and drivel and lie. We can tell them the moment we see them. They always throw out a few feelers; they never cast themselves adrift till they have sounded every individual and know that he has not traveled. Then they open their throttle valves, and how they do brag, and sneer, and swell, and soar, and blaspheme the sacred name of Truth! Their central idea, their grand aim, is to subjugate you, keep you down, make you feel insignificant and humble in the blaze of their cosmopolitan glory! They will not let you know anything. They sneer at your most inoffensive suggestions; they laugh unfeelingly at your treasured dreams of foreign lands; they brand the statements of your traveled aunts and uncles as the stupidest absurdities; they deride your most trusted authors and demolish the fair images they have set up for your willing worship with the pitiless ferocity of the fanatic iconoclast! But still I love the Old Travelers. I love them for their witless platitudes, for their supernatural ability to bore, for their delightful asinine vanity, for their luxuriant fertility of imagination, for their startling, their brilliant, their overwhelming mendacity!”
― Mark Twain, quote from The Innocents Abroad
“He had volunteered early, rather than waiting to be conscripted, for he felt a duty and an obligation to serve, and believed that ... being willing to fight for his country and the liberty it represented, would make some small difference. ... His idealism was one of the casualties of the carnage [of Verdun].”
― Iain Pears, quote from The Dream of Scipio
“Abby_Donovan: Heathcliff was a misogynistic asshole.
MarkBaynard: Could you explain that to my Lit 101 class? I hate to see all those impressionable young females swoowing over him like he's Edward Cullen.
Abby_Donovan: I've always been Team Jacob myself. And Team Mr Rochester.”
― Teresa Medeiros, quote from Goodnight Tweetheart
“Mr Whitworth’s nose was a different shape”
― Winston Graham, quote from The Angry Tide
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BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.
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