Wellness

His wife and son were becoming other people, new people, people who found Jack more and more unnecessary.

you were just another cog, just the smallest possible pinion in the engine of global progress, one of mass culture’s million tiny underwriters, dispersing risk.” “And how was I doing that, exactly?” “It was your whole starving artist ethos, that whole rebel-without-a-cause motif. Back then, we really believed that the worst person in the entire sou

Elizabeth called this phenomenon the “meaning effect,” a term she much preferred to “placebo effect.” Because to say that these effects arose from placebo implied that they arose from nothing—for that’s what placebo traditionally was, an inert substance, literally and intentionally useless—when in fact the placebo effect was elicited by the strong

This is what it felt like to not belong: the anxiety, the constant low-level wariness, trying to avoid that shame Jack felt when it was revealed to him that he’d been doing something horribly crude, or thinking something horribly shallow. Like this photograph, which was apparently perpetuating violent American dominance, and here he’d thought it wa

she got up and pulled the covers over him and kissed him on the forehead and said her customary farewell, which was not “Good night” or “Sweet dreams” or anything like that. Those tended to agitate Toby, who generally considered nighttime to be scary and treacherous. No, the way she said goodbye to him each night was the way everyone signed off on

the study of placebo was really the study of context and expectation and faith and symbol and metaphor and story, which could lead people to believe any number of delusions.

“Believe what you believe, my dear, but believe gently. Believe compassionately. Believe with curiosity. Believe with humility. And don’t trust the arrogance of certainty. I mean, my goodness, Elizabeth, if you want the gods to really laugh at you, then by all means call it your forever home.”

Turns out, if all your companionship and social capital derives from being an important artist, it is frightfully easy to decide that you are one.

“You know, when I was young,” Jack said, “none of my friends wanted corporate sponsorship.” “Why?” “They called it selling out. It meant you were fake.” Toby snorted. “That’s dumb.” “You think so?” “It doesn’t mean you’re fake. It means you’re good.”