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090368e
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In his suicide note, Kurt Cobain wrote, "It's better to burn out than to fade away." He was quoting a Neil Young song about Johnny Rotten of the Sex Pistols. When I was twenty-four, I interviewed John Lennon. I asked him about this sentiment, one that pervades rock and roll. He took strong, outraged exception to it. "It's better to fade away like an old soldier than to burn out, " he said. "I worship people who survive. I'll take the living..
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inspirational
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David Sheff |
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fd3791a
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Ha Jin writes: 'Some great men and women are fortified and redeemed through their suffering, and they even seek sadness instead of happiness, just as Van Gogh asserted, 'Sorrow is better than joy,' and Balzac declared, 'Suffering is one's teacher.' But these dicta are suitable only for extraordinary souls, for the select few. For ordinary people like us, too much suffering can only make us meaner, crazier, pettier, and more wretched
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David Sheff |
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00254a3
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Anne Lamott advises, "Try not to compare your insides with other people's outsides."
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David Sheff |
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3100e62
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The seventh and eighth grade were for me, and for every single good and interesting person I have ever known, what the writers of the bible meant when they used the words and ...It was all over for any small feeling that one was essentially all right. One wasn't...It was springtime, for Hitler, in Germany.
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side-note
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David Sheff |
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25bcf56
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You've got to wonder what Jesus was like at seventeen," Anne Lamott wrote. "They don't even talk about it in the Bible, he was apparently so awful." --
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David Sheff |
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44777b9
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You're safe, I remembered whispering to Quintana when I first saw her in the ICU at UCLA. I'm here. You're going to be all right. Half of her skull had been shaved for surgery. I could see the long cut and the metal staples that held it closed. She was again breathing only through an endotracheal tube. I'm here. Everything's fine . . . I would take care of her. It would be all right. It also occurred to me that this was a promise I could no..
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David Sheff |