"There's nothing like deep breaths after laughing that hard. Nothing in the world like a sore stomach for the right reasons"
About this Quote
Relief is the real punchline here: the moment after the laugh, when the body is still catching up to what just happened. Chbosky doesn’t romanticize laughter as a lifestyle brand; he pins it to physiology. Deep breaths. A sore stomach. Comedy becomes measurable, almost bruise-like, proof that something broke through the usual armor.
The phrasing is doing quiet work. “Nothing like” sounds casual, even tossed off, but it’s an absolutist claim in street clothes. It suggests a speaker who’s surprised by their own joy, as if they didn’t expect to feel this good. Then comes the moral calibration: “for the right reasons.” That small qualifier introduces a whole ethical universe without lecturing. There are wrong reasons to be doubled over (cruelty, humiliation, the cheap laugh at someone else’s expense), and the line gently insists on a version of humor that heals rather than wounds. The soreness matters because it’s earned honestly.
In Chbosky’s orbit, this lands as a counterweight to adolescent heaviness. His characters often live in the aftershocks of trauma, shame, and social claustrophobia; joy arrives not as a permanent state but as an interruption, a pocket of oxygen. The deep breath is almost a reset button, a return to the body after being trapped in the mind. The subtext isn’t “laughter is nice.” It’s that laughter can be a temporary proof of safety: a moment where you’re not bracing, not performing, not surviving - just alive enough to ache in a good way.
The phrasing is doing quiet work. “Nothing like” sounds casual, even tossed off, but it’s an absolutist claim in street clothes. It suggests a speaker who’s surprised by their own joy, as if they didn’t expect to feel this good. Then comes the moral calibration: “for the right reasons.” That small qualifier introduces a whole ethical universe without lecturing. There are wrong reasons to be doubled over (cruelty, humiliation, the cheap laugh at someone else’s expense), and the line gently insists on a version of humor that heals rather than wounds. The soreness matters because it’s earned honestly.
In Chbosky’s orbit, this lands as a counterweight to adolescent heaviness. His characters often live in the aftershocks of trauma, shame, and social claustrophobia; joy arrives not as a permanent state but as an interruption, a pocket of oxygen. The deep breath is almost a reset button, a return to the body after being trapped in the mind. The subtext isn’t “laughter is nice.” It’s that laughter can be a temporary proof of safety: a moment where you’re not bracing, not performing, not surviving - just alive enough to ache in a good way.
Quote Details
| Topic | Joy |
|---|---|
| Source | The Perks of Being a Wallflower, Stephen Chbosky, 1999 — contains the line 'There's nothing like deep breaths after laughing that hard. Nothing in the world like a sore stomach for the right reasons.' (novel) |
More Quotes by Stephen
Add to List
