"It's startling to realize how narrowly we avoid, or miss, living radically different lives."
This quote is the thesis of the book. The story of each person in the book could have been radically different if not for one thing: their mental illness. For Rachel Aviv, the author of the novel whose personal story is detailed in the introduction of the book, that is her eating disorder. And for other people featured in the book, that is their mental illness—like depression or Schizophrenia. If not for their mental illnesses, each person in the book would have likely lived radically different lives. Rachel would not have been put in an inpatient facility when she was a child. The rest of the people who haven't suffered like the people featured in the book live radically different lives because they narrowly avoided having a severe mental illness.
"Culture shapes the scripts that expressions of distress will follow."
This quote is a commentary on how the culture a person lives in shapes how they express distress. For Americans, grief looks different than distress in other cultures (like the woman featured in the book from the Middle East). In other words, culture changes how a person acts and how they interact with the world. In Aviv's opinion, culture is one of the most important things to consider when dealing with and to treat someone with a mental illness.
"There are stories that save us, and stories that trap us and in the midst of an illness it can be very hard to know which is which."
This is perhaps the most important quote in all of Strangers to Ourselves. According to Aviv and many of the psychologists and psychiatrists that she spoke to, there are stories that humans tell themselves that save them. But there are also stories that people tell themselves that cause them to be stuck and trapped inside of their mental illness. These kinds of stories often cause people to be difficult on themselves and cause them, occasionally, to lose touch with reality.
