Turtles All the Way Down Quotes By John Green
John Green’s book Turtles All the Way Down is known for being a story about mental health. But to me, it’s more than that. It tells you how to live with your thoughts, how to embrace love, and how to keep going.
In this post, I’ll share the inspirational quotes from the Turtles All the Way Down book, highlighting the raw honesty of Aza Holmes’s inner world and the wisdom that stays long after you close the book.
Turtles All the Way Down Quotes About Identity and Self-Perception
“You think you’re the painter, but you’re the canvas.”
“I was beginning to learn that your life is a story told about you, not one that you tell.”
“I is the hardest word to define.”
“You are as real as anyone, and your doubts make you more real, not less.”
“No, it’s not, Holmesy. You pick your endings, and your beginnings. You get to pick the frame, you know? Maybe you don’t choose what’s in the picture, but you decide the frame.”
About Mental Health and Intrusive Thoughts
“I can’t stop thinking, I can’t stop thinking, I can’t stop thinking.”
“True terror isn’t being scared; it’s not having a choice on the matter.”
“The thing about a spiral is, if you follow it inward, it never actually ends. It just keeps tightening infinitely.”
“The worst part of being truly alone is you think about all the times you wished that everyone would just leave you be. Then they do, and you are left being, and you turn out to be terrible company.”
“Actually, the problem is that I can’t lose my mind,” I said. “It’s inescapable.”
“There is hope, even when your brain tells you there isn’t.”
Turtles All the Way Down Quotes About Pain and the Human Condition
“One of the challenges with pain—physical or psychic—is that we can really only approach it through metaphor. It can’t be represented the way a table or a body can. In some ways pain is the opposite of language.”
“Whether it hurts is kind of irrelevant.”
“Everyone wanted me to feed them that story—darkness to light, weakness to strength, broken to whole. I wanted it, too.”
“To be alive is to be missing.”
“I was so good at being a kid, and so terrible at being whatever I was now.”
“I would get better, but never cured. That was the difference.”
About Love, Loss, and Connection
“You remember your first love because they show you—prove to you—that you can love and be loved, that nothing in this world deserves to be feared.”
“Our hearts were broken in the same places. That’s something like love, but maybe not quite the thing itself.”
“And the thing is, when you lose someone, you realize you’ll never be the same person again.”
“No one ever says goodbye unless they want to see you again.”
Turtles All the Way Down Quotes About Friendship and Chosen Family
“If you can’t pick your family, at least you can pick your friends.”
“Anybody can look at you. It’s quite rare to find someone who sees the same world you see.”
About Hope, Growth, and Resilience
“Your now is not your forever.”
“The world is billions of years old, and life is temporary. So we keep going.”
“I, Aza Holmes, got better, though it’s always a rough draft.”
“It’s turtles all the way down.”
Turtles All the Way Down Quotes About Knowledge, Curiosity, and Perspective
“What I love about science is that as you learn, you don’t really get answers. You just get better questions.”
“If only I were as good at life as I am at the internet.”
Through its realistic portrayal of love, mental illness, and the self, John Green’s Turtles All the Way Down reminds us that life doesn’t mean you have to reach a destination. It is more of a work in progress, and that’s totally okay.