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.”

“Once you have a kid, it's amazing how quickly people ask, 'So are you going to stop at just one?'”

“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.”

“People have always asked me why I'm drawn to material about kids, and for me, it's - I remember being at that age and feeling completely and utterly powerless. You know, there's so many things you wanna do and so many things you're told you can't do.”

“See, because being Cool is obviously the most important thing on earth. It's more important than getting a job, or having a girlfriend, or political power, or money, because all those things are predicated by Coolness. They happen because of it. They depend on it.”

“You have tremendous freedom in the young adult book world to write what you want. You can put R-rated content in a book that you can't in a similarly targeted movie.”

“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.”

“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.”

“you have to be the prude or the slut, and if you pick one, other people hate you for it, and you can’t trust anyone anymore, because they’re all after the same thing, and you see that you can never go back to how was before…”

“(...) Since I was a kid.""Which you refer to as 'back when you were happy.'""Right.”

“Adolescence is the most Technicolor time in our lives. It's the time when adulthood is new and we care most about it. It contains the highs and lows that excite me as a writer.”

“I'm fine. Well, I'm not fine - I'm here.""Is there something wrong with that?""Absolutely.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“I always start a book thinking that it can be something other than first-person present, and I always come back to first-person present. It's just the easiest way.”

“Whether it's sleeping or playing video games or riding my bike or studying. Giving my brain up. That's what's important.”

“A lot of the books that I grew up reading were pretty brutal, like the 'Redwall' books.”

“A novel wouldn't be a book if there weren't some flights of fancy on the part of the author, stopping time to examine things, or to tell a joke.”

“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.”