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5d9d96e
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Is that the truth, Jimmy?" I ask without looking at him. "It's the truth and it come to ya!" I smile."
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Ned Vizzini |
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b6994d1
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Relationships change even more than people. It's like two people changing. It's exponentially more volatile. Especially two teenagers.
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Ned Vizzini |
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f31b7fc
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I like you a lot. Because you're funny and smart and because you seem to like me. I know that's not a good reason, but I can't help it; if a girl likes me I tend to like her back [...] I like you for all this stuff but I also kind of like you for the cuts on your face--
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Ned Vizzini |
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06e00b2
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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.
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Ned Vizzini |
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2f63af1
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The therapists told you that you needed to find happiness within yourself before you got it from another person.
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Ned Vizzini |
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64391cc
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Tentacles is my term -- the Tentacles are the evil tasks that invade my life. Like, for example, my American History class last week, which necessitated me writing a paper on the weapons of the Revolutionary war, which necessitated me traveling to the Metropolitan Museum to check out some of the old guns, which necessitated me getting the subway, which necessitated me being away from my cell phone and email for 45 minutes, which meant that ..
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struggles
tentacles
real-life
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Ned Vizzini |
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f768ff6
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If you can't get out of bed for long enough, people come and take your bed away
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Ned Vizzini |
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01629bc
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I'm going to be here until I'm cured?" "Life is not cured, Mr. Gilner. Life is managed"."
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Ned Vizzini |
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6951e7b
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I think you run out of 'I love yous
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Ned Vizzini |
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a063c14
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People don't make good Anchors, though, Craig. They change. The people here are going to change. The patients are going to leave. You can't rely on them.
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people
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Ned Vizzini |
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83d0cb9
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That's my school. I worked harder to get in than I did for anything else, ever. I went there because, coming out of it, I'd be able to be President. Or a lawyer. Rich, that's the point. Rich and successful. And look where it got me. One stupid year and here I am with not one, but two bracelets on my wrist, next to a shrink in a room adjacent to a hall where there's a guy named Human Being walking around. If I keep doing this for three more..
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Ned Vizzini |
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527480f
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Nobody had told me I was common.
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Ned Vizzini |
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d6e463a
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never touching, never talking, just smiling and keeping our eyes locked.
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Ned Vizzini |
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596b9f9
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Do you have difficulty sleeping?" "Sometimes not. When I do it's bad, though. I lie there thinking about how everything I've done is a failure, death and failure, and there's no hope for me except being homeless, because I'm never going to be able to hold a job because everyone else is so much smarter."
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Ned Vizzini |
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c39c7ac
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I want my brain to slide back into the slot it was meant to be in, rest there the way it did before the fall of last year, back when I was young, witty, and my teachers said I had incredible promise.
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Ned Vizzini |
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f5695f4
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Misfortune is no excuse for cruelty.
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Ned Vizzini |
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c0e7c56
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But I find God to be an ineffectual shrink. He adopts the "do nothing" method of therapy. You tell him your problems and he, ah, does nothing."
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Ned Vizzini |
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ec34358
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Just thoughts of what I have to do. Homework. And it comes up to my brain and I look at it and think "I'm not going to be able to do that" and then it cycles back down and the next one comes up. And then things come up like "You should be doing more extracurricular activities" because I should, I don't do near enough, and that gets pushed down and it's replaced with the big one: "What college are you going into, Craig?" which is like the do..
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Ned Vizzini |
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a79846e
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I'm glad you came here and got the help you needed," Neil says, and he shakes my hand in that way that people do in here to remind themselves that you're the patient and they're the doctor/volunteer/ employee. They like you, and they genuinely want you to do better, but when they shake your hand you feel that distance, that slight disconnect because they know that you're still broken somewhere, that you might snap at any moment."
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Ned Vizzini |
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85040cb
|
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.
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Ned Vizzini |
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dddded0
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The thought trail one another in my brain running from the back up to the front and dripping down again under my chin: I'm no one; I'll never make it in my life; I'm about to get revealed as a fake, I've already been revealed as a fake but I don't know it yet; I know I'm a fake and pretend not to. All the good thoughts - the normal ones, the ones that have occasionally surfaced since last fall - scramble out the front of my brain in terror ..
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Ned Vizzini |
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fafdf5f
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They're sort of ancillary anyway, friends. I mean, they're important -- everybody knows that; the TV tells you so -- but they come and go. You lose one friend, you pick up another.
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Ned Vizzini |
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9d17688
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And I'm not assuming and I'm not judging. I'm just being curious.
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judgmental
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Ned Vizzini |
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fa31641
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Doc, I'm not afraid of dying; I'm only afraid of living, and I want to put this bayonet through my stomach,
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Ned Vizzini |
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f6dee29
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Time is a person-made concept.
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Ned Vizzini |
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6e749c4
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That's the number one thing I hear about humans. You have all these choices, so you're confused all the time, and you think so much that you're never happy.
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Ned Vizzini |
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f8390fc
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I know a lot of famous people didn't do well at school, like James Brown; he dropped out in fifth grade to be an entertainer, I respect that... but that's not going to be me. I'm not going to be able to do anything but work as hard as possible all the time and compete with everyone I know all the time to make it.
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Ned Vizzini |
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f4edd4b
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Losing yourself in a book is the best
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Chris Columbus & Ned Vizzini |
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5e84f09
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Where are you supposed to put your arms when you dance? It's like the Universal Question. I guess you're supposed to put them around someone.
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Ned Vizzini |
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c2068e7
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Who hasn't thought about killing themselves, as a kid? How can you grow up in this world and not think about it? It's an option taken by a lot of successful people: Ernest Hemingway, Socrates, Jesus. Even before high school, I thought that it would be a cool thing to do if I ever got really famous. If I kept making my maps, for instance, and some art collector came across them and decided to make them worth hundreds of thousands of dollars,..
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Ned Vizzini |
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4f7f36b
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But some people have to get lucky just to live. And I never knew I could make anybody lucky.
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Ned Vizzini |
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68e5524
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Dad nods, looks me dead in the eyes; slowly and regretfully, he banishes all the smiling and joking from his face, and for once he's just my dad, watching his son who has fallen so low.
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Ned Vizzini |
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13a27f2
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I eat not because I want to, not because I have to overcome anything, not to prove myself to anyone, but because it's there. I eat because that's what people do. And somehow when the food is put in front of you by an institution, when there's a large gray force behind it and you don't have to thank anyone for it, you have the animal instinct to make it disappear,
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Ned Vizzini |
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f93a044
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Books lay on the floor in literary dunes.
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Chris Columbus Ned Vizzini |
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314de14
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I'll fail." "At schoool.""Failing at school is failing at life."
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failing
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Ned Vizzini |
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32aef58
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My one friend is a screwup--a genius blessed with the most beautiful girl in the world, and he doesn't even know it.
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Ned Vizzini |
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ed64c2d
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How can you live without stars? What keeps you from thinking about yourself all the time?
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Ned Vizzini |
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a3fd804
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Yes, Doctor. I'll do what you say. I'll do what you all say.
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Ned Vizzini |
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95e1c3c
|
We wear our problems diffrently
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Ned Vizzini |
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3d7338c
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There's so much more for me to be doing. I should be a success and I'm not and other people - younger people - are. Younger people than me are on TV and getting paid and winning scholarships and getting their lives in order. I'm still a nobody. When am I going to not be a nobody?
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Ned Vizzini |
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bc4467b
|
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. When I pop into Aaron's, I continue my normal routine of wasting time. I turn the light off first. Then I sigh. Then I turn around, face the door I just closed, pull down my pants, and fall on the toilet-- I don't sit; I fall like a carcass, feeling my butt accommodate the rim. Then I pu..
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Ned Vizzini |
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249bb4c
|
I've started to think it must just be chemistry, in which case we're looking for the Shift and we haven't found it yet.
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Ned Vizzini |
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c1ba704
|
You see how the words work? They betray your mouth and walk away.
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Ned Vizzini |
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8fa2b54
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Why were the other kids doing better than me? Because they were better, that's why That's what I knew every time I sat down online or got on the subway to Aaron's house. Other people weren't smoking or jerking off, and those that were were gifted-able to live and compete at the same time. 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 worl..
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Ned Vizzini |