but there was nothing I could do to dim the supernovae exploding inside my brain, an endless chain of intra cranial firecrackers

His head .. it exploded. As if someone had scooped out his brains and put a hand grenade in his skull.

What the hell is instant? Nothing is instant. Instant rice takes five minutes, instant pudding an hour. I doubt that an instant of blinding pain feels particularly instantaneous.

There is hope, even when your brain tells you there isn't.

Thoughts are only thoughts. They are not you. You do belong to yourself, even when your thoughts don't.

Nothing ever happens like you imagine it will… but then again, if you don’t imagine, nothing ever happens at all. Imagining isn’t perfect. You can’t get all the way inside someone else… But imagining being someone else, or the world being something else, is the only way in. It is the machine that kills the fascists