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A Small Olive-skinned Creature Who Had Hit Puberty But Never Hit It Very Hard, Ben Had Been My Best Friend Since Fifth Grade, When We Both Finally Owned Up To The Fact That Neither Of Us Was Likely To Attract Anyone Else As A Best Friend.

-John Green

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A Small Olive-skinned Creature

John Green

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A Small Olive-skinned Creature Who Had Hit Puberty But Never Hit It Very Hard, Ben Had Been My Best Friend Since Fifth Grade, When We Both Finally Owned Up To The Fact That Neither Of Us Was Likely To Attract Anyone Else As A Best Friend.

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It Is Easy To Forget How Full The World Is Of People, Full To Bursting, And Each Of Them Imaginable And Consistently Misimagined.

Why Don’t We Break Up? I Guess I Stay With Her Because She Stays With Me. And That’s Not An Easy Thing To Do.

Patience, Grasshopper," I Counseled. "you Don't Want To Seem Overeager." "right, That's Why I Said Tomorrow," He Said. "i Want To See You Again Tonight. But I'm Willing To Wait All Night And Much Of Tomorrow.

When It Comes To Girls (and In Colin's Case, It So Often Did), Everyone Has A Type. Colin Singleton's Type Was Not Physical But Linguistic: He Liked Katherines. And Not Katies Or Kats Or Kitties Or Cathys Or Rynns Or Trinas Or Kays Or Kates Or, God Forbid, Catherines. K-a-t-h-e-r-i-n-e. He Had Dated 19 Girls. All Of Them Had Been Named Katherine. And All Of Them- Every Single Solitary One- Had Dumped Him.

I Bet If You Look At The Average Teenager And The Average Adult, The Average Teenager Has Read More Books In The Last Year Than The Average Adult. Now Of Course The Adult Would Be All Like, 'i'm Busy, I Got A Job, I Got Stuff To Do.' Whatever! Read! I Mean, You're Watching Csi: Miami. Why Would You Be Watching Csi: Miami, When You Could Be Reading Csi: Miami, The Novelization?

I Don't Know How I Look, But I Know How I Feel: Young. Goofy. Infinite.

I Worked Hard To Meet His Eyes, Even Though They Were The Kind Of Pretty That's Hard To Look At.

Stop Thinking About The Landing, Because It's All About Falling.

My Regret Was Immediate And Permanent And Useless.

Mom Sobbed Something Into Dad's Chest That I Wish I Hadn't Heard, And That I Hope She Never Finds Out That I Did Hear. She Said, "i Won't Be A Mom Anymore." It Gutted Me Pretty Badly.

This Is The Fear That Made Fish Crawl Out Onto Dry Land And Evolve Lungs, The Fear That Teaches Us To Run, The Fear That Makes Us Bury Our Dead.

The Risen Sun Too Bright In Her Losing Eyes.

The Job Of Reading Is To Use Stories As A Way Into Seeing Other People As We See Ourselves

Before Any Of It Could Make Sense, It Had To Be Heard.

I Never Really Understood That Massive Collaboration Involving Hundreds Of People Is What Makes Movies Possible, And It's Also Why I Would Agree That Curiosity Is Not The Most Important Human Trait; The Urge To Collaborate Is. Heck . . . Only We Have The Ability To Cooperate To Make Like Online Communities And Space Telescopes And Imaginariums And Movies. So The Great Thrill Of This Whole Experience [my Novel Being Made Into A Movie] For Me Was . .. .seeing Humanity Do What It's Best At, Which Ultimately Is Not Competing But Cooperating.

I Hated Cranberry Sauce, But For Some Reason My Mom Persisted In Her Lifelong Belief That It Was My Very Favorite Food, Even Though Every Single Thanksgiving I Politely Declined To Include It On My Plate.

If We Restructure Things To See That The Hero's Journey Is A Degree In Astrophysics Rather Than A Journey To Star In A Reality Show, That's A Better World.

I Jog Through The Halls And Then Go Upstairs To Jane’s Locker And Carefully Slip The Note I Wrote Last Night Through The Vent: To: The Locker Houdini From: Will Grayson Re: An Expert In The Field Of Good Boyfriends? Dear Jane, Just So You Know: E. E. Cummings Cheated On Both Of His Wives. With Prostitutes. Yours, Will Grayson

I Leave, And The Leaving Is So Exhilarating I Know I Can Never Go Back. But Then What? Do I Just Keep Leaving Places, And Leaving Them, And Leaving Them, Tramping A Perpetual Journey?

All Salvation Is Temporary

I Was So Tired Of Her Getting Upset For No Reason. The Way She Would Get Sulky And Make References To The Freaking Oppressive Nature Of Tragedy Or Whatever But Then Never Said What Was Wrong, Never Have Any Goddamned Reason To Be Sad. And I Just Think You Ought To Have A Reason. My Girlfriend Dumped Me, So I'm Sad. I Got Caught Smoking, So I'm Pissed Off. My Head Hurts, So I'm Cranky. She Never Had A Reason, Pudge. I Was Just So Tired Of Putting Up With Her Drama. And I Just Let Her Go. Christ.

I Hope We Get Pulled Over, He Says. I'd Like To See How The Cop Responds To A Black Man Wearing A Confederate T-shirt Over A Black Dress.

She Has Great Breasts," The Colonel Said Without Looking Up From The Whale. "do Not Objectify Women's Bodies!" Alaska Shouted. Now He Looked Up. "sorry. Perky Breasts." "that's Not Any Better!

But That Wasn't Quite Right. I Called It A Nine Because I Was Saving My Ten. And Here It Was, The Great And Terrible Ten, Slamming Me Again And Again As I Lay Still And Alone In My Bed Staring At The Ceiling, The Waves Tossing Me Against The Rocks Then Pulling Me Back Out To Sea So They Could Launch Me Again Into The Jagged Face Of The Cliff, Leaving Me Floating Faceup On The Water, Undrowned.

History Doesn't Have A Curfew.

But Mothers Lie. It's In The Job Description.

What's The Point In Being Alive If You Don't At Least Try To Do Something Remarkable? How Very Odd, To Believe God Gave You Life, And Yet Not Think That Life Asks More Of You Than Watching Tv.

I've Read A Lot Of Bad Books. I Used To Review Books For A Living, And When You're A Reviewer You Read Tons Of Terrible Books.

It Is Saying These Things That Keeps Us From Falling Apart. And Maybe By Imagining These Futures We Can Make Them Real, And Maybe Not, But Either Way We Must Imagine Them. The Light Rushes Out And Floods In.

No Headboards Were Broken.

Colin Had Always Preferred Baths; One Of His General Policies In Life Was Never To Do Anything Standing Up That Could Just As Easily Be Done Lying Down

Cold One Day, Sweet The Next; Irresistibly Flirty One Moment, Resistibly Obnoxious The Next.

He Took A Long Drink, Then Grimaced. “i Do Not Have A Drinking Problem,” He Announced, His Voice Needlessly Loud. “i Have A Churchillian Relationship With Alcohol: I Can Crack Jokes And Govern England And Do Anything I Want To Do. Except Not Drink.

Sunlight Feels Warm And Rough Against Your Skin Like A Kiss On The Cheek From Your Dad.

That Is The Fear: I Have Lost Something Important, And I Cannot Find It, And I Need It. It Is Fear Like If Someone Lost His Glasses And Went To The Glasses Store And They Told Him That The World Had Run Out Of Glasses And He Would Just Have To Do Without.

C'mon Pudge. I'm Teasing. You Have To Be Tough. I Didn't Know How Bad It Was-- And I'm Sorry, And They'll Regret It-- But You Have To Be Tough.

She Had This Dark Cancer Water Dripping Out Of Her Chest. Eyes Closed. Intubated. But Her Hand Was Still Her Hand, Still Warm And The Nails Painted This Almost Black Dark Blue And I Just Held Her Hand And Tried To Imagine The World Without Us And For About One Second I Was A Good Enough Person To Hope She Died So She Would Never Know That I Was Going, Too. But Then I Wanted More Time So We Could Fall In Love. I Got My Wish, I Suppose. I Left My Scar.

Falling In Love

Did I Help You To A Fate You Didn't Want?

I Believe Humans Have Souls, And I Believe In The Conservation Of Souls.

Look, Let Me Just Say It: He Was Hot. A Nonhot Boy Stares At You Relentlessly And It Is, At Best, Awkward And, At Worst, A Form Of Assault. But A Hot Boy . . . Well.

Maybe Life Is Not About Accomplishing Some Bullshit Markers.

Writing Fiction Is An Inherently Political Activity Because People-even Imaginary Ones-do Not Live In Vacuums... From Twilight To Romeo And Juliet To The Little Mermaid, No Work Of The Imagination Is Truly Apolitical, Because The World And Our Hopes For It Are Always Part Of Our Stories.

Love Is Always A Miracle, Everywhere,every Time. But For Us, It's A Little Different. I Don't Want To Say It's More Miraculous,...it Is Though.

It Is The Nature Of Stars To Cross

We Only Have So Long To Play In The Dirt And Ask Questions Of Rivers.

You're Not Going To Impose The Patriarchal Paradigm On Me.

In The Dark Beside Me, She Smelled Of Sweat And Sunshine And Vanilla.

Isn't It Also That On Some Fundamental Level We Find It Difficult To Understand That Other People Are Human Beings In The Same Way That We Are? We Idealize Them As Gods Or Dismiss Them As Animals.

Thank You For Explaining That My Eye Cancer Isn't Going To Make Me Deaf. I Feel So Fortunate That An Intellectual Giant Like Yourself Would Deign To Operate On Me.

To Be Human Is To Catch The Falling Person.

The Future Will Erase Everything--there's No Level Of Fame Or Genius That Allows You To Transcend Oblivion. The Infinite Future Makes That Kind Of Mattering Impossible.

Ultimately, It Doesn't Matter If The Author Intended A Symbol To Be There, Because The Job Of Reading Is Not To Understand The Authors Intend. The Job Of Reading Is To See Into Other People As We See Ourselves.

Grief Does Not Change You, Hazel. It Reveals You.

I Needed, I Decided, To Really Know Her, Because I Needed More To Remember. Before I Could Begin The Shameful Process Of Forgetting The How And The Why Of Her Living And Dying, I Needed To Learn It: How. Why. When. Where. What.

She's Just Playing A Trick On Us. This Is Just An Alaska Young Prank Extraordinaire. It's Alaska Being Alaska, Funny And Playful And Not Knowing When Or How To Put On The Brakes.

Come Over Here So I Can Examine Your Face With My Hands And See Deeper Into Your Soul Than A Sighted Person Ever Could.

All The Characters Are Made Out Of Words. With Reading, I Understand That The People Aren't Real But The Fact That They Are Made Out Of Language And Are Made Out Of Words Is Extremely Powerful To Me. It Becomes Transformative For Me. Different People Have Different Ways Of Trying To Make Stories Using Language.

I Dislike The Phrase ‘internet Friends,’ Because It Implies That People You Know Online Aren’t Really Your Friends, That Somehow The Friendship Is Less Real Or Meaningful To You Because It Happens Through Skype Or Text Messages. The Measure Of A Friendship Is Not Its Physicality But Its Significance.

I Write About Broken People Who Need Other People In Order To Go On. But Those Are The Only Kind Of People I Know To Exist. We Are All Broken.

She Left Me Enough To Rediscover The Great Perhaps.

We're Not Going To Break Anything. Don't Think Of It As Breaking In To Seaworld. Think Of It As Visiting Seaworld In The Middle Of The Night For Free.

When You’re As Charming And Physically Attractive As Myself, It’s Easy Enough To Win Over People You Meet. But Getting Strangers To Love You...now, That’s The Trick.

That Feeling Of Finishedness Does Not Come All At Once, And It Is Not Easily Won, But I Think Once You Get There It Is Hard To Go Back.

But Ultimately I Do Not Believe That She Was Only Matter. The Rest Of Her Must Be Recycled, Too. I Believe Now That We Are Greater Than The Sum Of Our Parts. If You Take Alaska's Genetic Code And You Add Her Life Experiences And The Relationships She Had With People, And Then You Take The Size And Shape Of Her Body, You Do Not Get Her. There Is Something Else Entirely. There Is A Part Of Her Greater Than The Sum Of Her Knowable Parts. And That Part Has To Go Somewhere, Because It Cannot Be Destroyed

I Always Had This Secret Suspicion That I Was Special.

Do You Guys Remember That Time When We Were All Definitely Going To Die And Then Ben Grabbed The Steering Wheel And Dodged A Ginormous Freaking Cow And Spun The Car Like The Teacups At Disney World And We Didn't Die?

As I Followed Margo's Directions Through The Maze Of One-way Streets, We Saw A Few People Sleeping On The Sidewalk Or Sitting On Benches, But Nobody Was Moving. Margo Rolled Down The Window, And I Felt The Thick Air Blow Across My Face, Warmer Than Night Ought To Be. I Glanced Over And Saw Strands Of Her Hair Blowing All Around Her Face. Even Though I Could See Her There, I Felt Entirely Alone Among These Big And Empty Buildings, Like I'd Survived The Apocalypse And The World Had Been Given To Me, This Whole And Amazing And Endless World, Mine For The Exploring.

You Matter As Much As The Things That Matter To You Do.

Things That Matter

Grief Does Not Change You. It Reveals You. And Herein Lies The Gift That Cannot Die. It Changes The Course Of Your Life Forever. If You Allow Yourself The Chance To Feel It For As Long As You Need To - Even If It Is For The Rest Of Your Life - You Will Be Guided By It. You Will Become Someone It Would Have Been Impossible For You To Be, And In This Way Your Loved One Lives On, In You

Augustus Waters," I Said, Looking Up At Him, Thinking That You Cannot Kiss Anyone In The Anne Frank House, And Then Thinking That Anne Frank, After All, Kissed Someone In The Anne Frank House, And That She Would Probably Like Nothing More Than For Her Home To Have Become A Place Where The Young And Irreparably Broken Sink Into Love.

Because It's Kind Of Great, Being An Idea That Everybody Likes. But I Could Never Be The Idea To Myself, Not All The Way. And Agloe Is A Place Where A Paper Creation Became Real. A Dot On The Map Became A Real Place, More Real Than The People Who Created The Dot Could Never Have Imagined. I Thought Maybe The Paper Cutout Of A Girl Could Start Becoming Real Here Also. And It Seemed Like A Way To Tell That Paper Girl Who Cared About Popularity And Clothes And Everything Else: 'you Are Going To The Paper Towns. And You Are Never Coming Back.

Hey Pudge," The Colonel Said. "what Do You Think Of A Truce?" "it Reminds Me Of When The Germans Demanded That The U.s. Surrender At The Battle Of The Bulge," I Said. "i Guess I'd Say To This Truce Offer What General Mcauliffe Said To That One: Nuts.

Hank, When People Call People Nerds Mostly What They're Saying Is,'you Like Stuff'.

What About The Rest Of Your Life?" She Shrugged. "what About It?" "aren't You Worried About, Like, Forever?" "forever Is Composed Of Nows," She Says.

Rest Of Your Life

Think For One Minute Of Those Who Have Loved You Up Into This Day.

Muhammad Brought The Promise That Anyone Could Find Fulfillment And Everlasting Life Through Allegiance To The One True God. The Buddah Held Out Hope That The Suffering Could Be Transcended. Jesus Brought The Message That Even The Last Shall Be First, That Even The Tax Collectors And Lepers - The Outcasts - Had Cause For Hope. And So That Is The Question I Leave You With In This Final: What Is Your Cause For Hope.

I Did Some Research On This A Couple Years Ago," Augustus Continued. "i Was Wondering If Everybody Could Be Remembered. Like, If We Got Organized, And Assigned A Certain Number Of Corpses To Each Living Person, Would There Be Enough Living People To Remember All The Dead People?" "and Are There?" "sure, Anyone Can Name Fourteen Dead People. But We're Disorganized Mourners, So A Lot Of People End Up Remembering Shakespeare And No One Ends Up Remembering The Person He Wrote Sonnet Fifty-five About

I Love You' Really Is The Gateway Drug Of Breaking Up.

...it Was Nice To Spend Time With Someone So Interesting.

He Loved The Scratching Of Pencil Against Paper When He Was Focused: It Meant Something Was Happening.

She Said, "it's Not Life Or Death, The Labyrinth." "um, Okay. So What Is It?" "suffering," She Said. "doing Wrong And Having Wrong Things Happen To You. That's The Problem. Bolivar Was Talking About The Pain, Not About The Living Or Dying. How Do You Get Out Of The Labyrinth Of Suffering?... Nothing's Wrong. But There's Always Suffering, Pudge. Homework Or Malaria Or Having A Boyfriend Who Lives Far Away When There's A Good-looking Boy Lying Next To You. Suffering Is Universal. It's The One Thing Buddhists, Christians, And Muslims Are All Worried About."

All Hurt Is Brain Hurt.

Suffering Is Universal.

I Realize That They Giggle And I Actually Laugh, That They Show Their Cleavage And I Have None To Show, But Just So You Know, I Am Also A Girl. I'm One Of The Three Wise Men. And It's Gay To Think That James Bond Is Hot.

I Wasn't Disappointed. My Expectations Had Been Met.

The Pure And Simple Truth Is Rarely Pure And Never Simple. What's A Boy To Do When Lies And Truth Are Both Sinful?

I Can Almost Imagine A Happiness Without Her, The Ability To Let Her Go, To Feel Our Roots Are Connected Even If I Never See That Leaf Of Grass Again.'

Leaves Of Grass

In The Ensuing Silence, I Have Time To Contemplate The Word Cute— How Dismissive It Is, How It’s The Equivalent Of Calling Someone Little, How It Makes A Person Into A Baby, How The Word Is A Neon Sign Burning Through The Dark Reading, “feel Bad About Yourself.

And People Are Moody, Dude. You Gotta Get Used To Living With People.

But That Part Of Us Greater Than The Sum Of Our Parts Cannot Begin And Cannot End, And So It Cannot Fail

It's Not Life Or Death, The Labyrinth. Suffering. Doing Wrong And Having Wrong Things Happen To You. That's The Problem. Bolivar Was Talking About The Pain, Not About The Living Or Dying. How Do You Get Out Of The Labyrinth Of Suffering?

Above Us, The Wind Blew And The Branching Shadows Rearranged Themselves On Our Skin. Gus Squeezed My Hand. "it Is A Good Life, Hazel Grace.

I Found His Last Words Without Too Much Searching. Captured By The Bolivian Army, Guevara Said, 'shoot, Coward. You Are Only Going To Kill A Man.

Standing In Line Is A Form Of Oppression

Standing In Line

How Can You Read And Talk At The Same Time?” I Asked. “well, I Usually Can’t, But Neither The Book Nor The Conversation Is Particularly Intellectually Challenging.

You Are Valuable And Rare And Worthy Of Love.

We Are All Going, I Thought, And It Applies To Turtles And Turtlenecks, Alaska The Girl And Alaska The Place, Because Nothing Can Last, Not Even The Earth Itself. The Buddha Said That Suffering Was Caused By Desire, We'd Learned, And That The Cessation Of Desire Meant The Cessation Of Suffering. When You Stopped Wishing Things Wouldn't Fall Apart, You'd Stop Suffering When They Did.

. . . Endlessness Is A Really Strange Idea In A Universe That Is Defined By Its Endings.

The Colonel Led All The Cheers. Cornbread!" He Screamed. Chicken!" The Crowd Responded. Rice!" Peas!" And Then, All Together: "we Got Higher Sats." Hip Hip Hip Hooray!" The Colonel Cried. You'll Be Workin' For Us Someday!

I Am Still Bowled Over By This Great Young Adult Novel By David Levithan Called 'every Day,' Which Is About A Character With No Gender Or Body Who Wakes Up Every Day In The Body Of A Different Person. It's A Really Impressive Execution Of A Really Great Premise.

And As Paralyzing And Upsetting As All The Never Agains Were, The Final Leaving Felt Perfect. Pure. The Most Distilled Possible Form Of Liberation. Everything That Mattered Except One Lousy Picture Was In The Trash, But It Felt So Great. I Started Jogging, Wanting To Put Even More Distance Between Myself And School. It Is So Hard To Leave—until You Leave. And Then It Is The Easiest Goddamned Thing In The World.

And I Don’t Blame Him. I Don’t Even Trust Me.

Random Questions Are The Least Random Of All Questions.

She Never Liked Me Much, But She Sure Loved Me

Miles, As In 'to Go Before I Sleep'?

March 4th, The Only Day That Is Also A Sentence

Caroline Was Always Moody And Miserable, But I Liked It. I Liked Feeling As If She Had Chosen Me As The Only Person In The World Not To Hate, And So We Spent All This Time Together Just Ragging On Everyone, You Know?

Without Pain, How Could We Know Joy?' This Is An Old Argument In The Field Of Thinking About Suffering And Its Stupidity And Lack Of Sophistication Could Be Plumbed For Centuries But Suffice It To Say That The Existence Of Broccoli Does Not, In Any Way, Affect The Taste Of Chocolate.

I Pulled The Oxygen Tubes From My Nostrils And Raised The Tube Up Over My Head, Handing It To Dad. I Wanted It To Be Just Me And Just Him.

When Adults Say, "teenagers Think They Are Invincible" With That Sly, Stupid Smile On Their Faces, They Don't Know How Right They Are. We Need Never Be Hopeless, Because We Can Never Be Irreparably Broken. We Think That We Are Invincible Because We Are. We Cannot Be Born, And We Cannot Die. Like All Energy, We Can Only Change Shapes And Sizes And Manifestations. They Forget That When They Get Old. They Get Scared Of Losing And Failing. But That Part Of Us Greater Than The Sum Of Our Parts Cannot Begin And Cannot End, And So It Cannot Fail.

I Didn't Know Whether To Trust Alaska, And I'd Certainly Had Enough Of Her Unpredictability - Cold One Day, Sweet The Next; Irresistibly Flirty One Moment, Resistibly Obnoxious The Next. I Preferred The Colonel: At Least When He Was Cranky, He Had A Reason.

Most Loves Don't Last. But Some Do.

The Challenge Is The Same Whether Or Not I'm Collaborating: To Empathize With Your Reader And To Tell A Story That Will Matter To Him Or Her. But The Mechanics Of Going About That Challenge Change When You're Collaborating, Because You Have Someone To Help Refine Your Thinking And Expand Your Vision Of What Might Happen.

Every Time I Try To Set Something In Chicago, I Get Intimidated By 'augie March.' It's Easy To Set Something In Indianapolis - We Don't Have 'augie March' Here. But I Love Writing About Chicago, And I Love Being There And Imagining Lives In Chicago. I Hope To Set Something There In The Future, But It's Intimidating.

She Said Robert Joyner Had Killed Himself With A Gun. And Then I Asked Why, And Then She Told Me That He Was Getting A Divorce And Was Sad About It.' 'lots Of People Get Divorces And Don't Kill Themselves,' I Said. 'i Know,' She Said, Excitement In Her Voice. 'that's What I Told Her.

Television Is A Passivity.

Writing Is Something You Do Alone. It's A Profession For Introverts Who Wanna Tell You A Story But Don't Wanna Make Eye Contact While Telling It

Those Of Us Who Frequent The Band Room Have Long Suspected That Becca Maintains Her Lovely Figure By Eating Nothing But The Souls Of Kittens And The Dreams Of Impoverished Children.

I Was Struck By An Awful Thought, The Kind That Cannot Be Taken Back Once It Escapes Into The Open Air Of Consciousness; It Seemed To Me That This Was Not A Place You Go To Live. It Was A Place You Go To Die.

I Didn’t Need You, You Idiot. I Picked You. And Then You Picked Me Back.

But It Was Sure A Privilege To Love Him, Huh?" I Nodded Into His Shirt. "gives You An Idea How I Feel About You," He Said. My Old Man. He Always Knew Just What To Say.

High School Made Me Realize That The People Who Say They Will Never Change, Are Always The Ones Who Change The Most.

A Drink This Good Deserves One's Best Posture.

I Think Maybe The Reason I Have Spent Most Of My Life Being Afraid Is That I Have Been Trying To Prepare Myself To Train My Body For Real Fear When It Comes. But I Am Not Prepared.

My Interest As A Writer Is Not In Reflecting Actual Human Speech, Which, Of Course, Does Not Occur In Sentences And Is Totally Undiagrammable. My Interest Is In Trying To Reflect The Reality Of Experience - How We Feel When We Talk To Each Other, How We Feel When We're Engaging With Questions That Interest Us.

Imagining The Future Is A Kind Of Nostalgia. (...) You Spend Your Whole Life Stuck In The Labyrinth, Thinking About How You'll Escape It One Day, And How Awesome It Will Be, And Imagining That Future Keeps You Going, But You Never Do It. You Just Use The Future To Escape The Present.

All At Once, I Couldn’t Figure Out Why I Was Methodically Tossing A Spherical Object Through A Toroidal Object. It Seemed Like The Stupidest Thing I Could Possibly Be Doing.

Was It Animal Pee Or Human Pee? Someone Asked. How Would I Know? What, Am I An Expert In The Study Of Pee?

I Realized It In Waves And We Held On To Each Other Crying And I Thought, God We Must Look So Lame, But It Doesn't Matter Much When You Have Just Now Realized, All The Time Later, That You Are Still Alive.

Imagining The Future Is A Kind Of Nostalgia.

Imagining The Future

Coal Miners Don't Get Coal Miners' Block.

I Can't Imagine Us Saying These Things To Each Other Out Loud. But Even If I Can't Imagine Hearing These Words, I Can Imagine Living Them. I Don't Even Picture It. Instead I'm In It. How I Would Feel With Him Here. That Peace. It Would Be So Happy, And It Makes Me Sad Because It Only Exists In Words.

We Were Sitting There On The Couch Together, And He Pushed Himself Up To Go But Then Fell Back Down Onto The Couch And Sneaked A Kiss Onto My Cheek. “augustus!” I Said. “friendly,” He Said. He Pushed Himself Up Again And Really Stood This Time, Then Took Two Steps Over To My Mom And Said, “always A Pleasure To See You,” And My Mom Opened Her Arms To Hug Him, Whereupon Augustus Leaned In And Kissed My Mom On The Cheek. He Turned Back To Me. “see?” He Asked.

Uh-uh, Dude. I Tried It Your Way With The Dating And The Girls And The Kissing And The Drama, And Man, I Didn't Like It. Plus, My Best Friend Is A Walking Cautionary Tale Of What Happens To You When Romantic Relationships Don't Involve Marriage. Like You Always Say, Kafir, Everything Ends In Breakup, Divorce, Or Death. I Want To Narrow My Misery Options To Divorce Or Death - That's All.

We'd Failed, Maybe, But Some Mysteries Aren't Meant To Be Solved.

I Liked That He Was A Tenured Professor In The Department Of Slightly Crooked Smiles With A Dual Appointments In The Department Of Having A Voice That Made My Skin Feel More Like Skin.

I Realized That All My Life, My Values Were Based Upon Typical Middle-class American Values: Hard Work, Doing Good, Living Well, Owning Things, Following The Rules & Being The Best I Can Be... But God Clearly Says, "those Are Not My Values. I Value Justice, Mercy & Humility.

I'll Fight It. I'll Fight It For You. Don't You Worry About Me, Hazel Grace. I'm Okay. I'll Find A Way To Hang Around And Annoy You For A Long Time.

I Opened The Door. He Looked Down At My Shirt And Smiled. "funny," He Said. "don't Call My Boobs Funny," I Answered.

The Way I Figure It, Everyone Gets A Miracle.

He Flipped Himself Onto His Side And Kissed Me. "you're So Hot," I Said, My Hand Still On His Leg. "i'm Starting To Think You Have An Amputee Fetish," He Answered, Still Kissing Me. I Laughed. "i Have An Augustus Waters Fetish," I Explained.

You May Choose Your Song, But Know This: Tiny. Cooper. Hates. Over. The. Rainbow.

That's Why Those Tapes We Made Are Going To Be So Great One Day, Because They'll Tell Stories That Time Has Swallowed Up Or Distorted Or Whatever.

I've Lived Here For Eighteen Years And I Have Never Once In My Life Come Across Anyone Who Cares About Anything That Matters.

I Think People Who Are Religious Are More Likely To Want One Around, But It's A Very Secular Position.

I Think Maybe I Know Why,' She Finally Said. 'why?' 'maybe All The Strings Inside Him Broke,' She Said.

Do You Know What Your Problem Is? You Can't Live With The Idea That Someone Might Leave.

In These Pages, And In My Memories, She Reminds Me That A Short Life Can Also Be A Good And Rich Life, That It Is Possible To Live With Depression Without Being Consumed By It, And That Meaning In Life Is Found Together, In Family And Friendship That Transcends And Survives All Manner Of Suffering. As The Poet Wrote In The Bible's Song Of Solomon, 'love Is Strong As Death.' Or Perhaps Even Stronger.

If You Act Out Of A Paranoid Fear Of Something Happening, You Will Always Make That Thing Happen.

Because It's Kind Of Great, Being An Idea That Everybody Likes. But I Could Never Be The Idea To Myself, Not All The Way.

You Know, Like When You Look In The Mirror And The Thing You See Is Not The Thing As It Really Is.

Don't Make Fun Of Her," The Duke Said. "she Needs Gentle Encouragement. Carla, Baby, We Love You. You Are Such A Good Car. And We Believe In You One Hundred Percent." ... "don't Listen To Him, Carla. You're Gonna Do This." ... "i Love You, Carla. You Know That, Don't You? I Wake Up Every Morning And The First Thing I Think Is That I Love Tobin's Mom's Car. I Know That's Weird, Baby, But I Do. I Love You. And I Know You Can Do This." ... "carla," The Duke Said, "it's Time To Tell You The Truth. I'm In Love With You. I Want To Be With You, Carla. I've Never Felt This Way About A C-

It Just Goes To Show, If You Try To Ruin Someone's Life, It Only Gets Better. You Just Don't Get To Be A Part Of It.

Hazel Grace,” He Said. “hi,” I Said. “how Are You?” “grand,” He Said. “i Have Been Wanting To Call You On A Nearly Minutely Basis, But I Have Been Waiting Until I Could Form A Coherent Thought In Re An Imperial Affliction.” (he Said “in Re.” He Really Did. That Boy.)

Bro, It's Dark. You Can't Go To A Strange Building With A Mysterious Address In The Dark. Haven't You Ever Seen A Horror Movie?

These Are All Direct Quotes, Except Every Time They Use A Curse Word, I'm Going To Use The Name Of A Famous American Poet: 'you Walt Whitman-ing, Edna St. Vincent Millay! Go Emily Dickinson Your Mom!' 'thanks For The Advice, You Pathetic Piece Of E.e. Cummings, But I Think I'm Gonna Pass.' 'you Robert Frost-ing Nikki Giovanni! Get A Life, Nerd. You're A Virgin.' 'hey Bro, You Need To Go Outside And Get Some Fresh Air Into You. Or A Girlfriend.' I Need To Get A Girlfriend Into Me? I Think That Shows A Fundamental Lack Of Comprehension About How Babies Are Made.

She Had The Kind Of Fingers You Want To Interlace With Your Own.

Let Us Go, Through Certain Half-deserted Streets, / The Muttering Retreats / Of Restless Nights In One-night Cheap Hotels / And Sawdust Restaurants With Oyster-shells: / Streets That Follow Like A Tedious Argument / Of Insidious Intent / To Lead You To An Overwhelming Question.../ Oh, Do Not Ask, 'what Is It?' / Let Us Go And Make Our Visit"' 'i'm In Love With You,' He Said Quietly.

You Either Have A Great Social Life And Shitty Taste In Music, Or A Fantastic Taste In Music With Barely Any Social Life.

In English, We Don't Have A Word For People Who Aren't Virgins. What The Non-virgin Lexical Gap Really Made Me Think Was That Our Obsession With Sexual Purity Is Such That Once You Are No Longer This Thing, You Are Indescribable.

The Worse The Haircut, The Better The Man.

I Try To Live Life So That I Can Live With Myself.

My Lungs Sucked At Being Lungs.

It's Hard As Hell To Hold On To Your Dignity When The Risen Sun Is Too Bright In Your Losing Eyes, And That's What I Was Thinking About As We Hunted For Bad Guys Through The Ruins Of A City That Didn't Exist.

I Always Wondered If There Was A Purpose To The Universe, If There Was A Plan, If There Was Some Sort Of Organizing Factor, Hopefully That I Played A Role In.

Nothing Has Ever Looked Like That Ever In All Of Human History.

Maybe There Is Something You're Afraid To Say, Or Someone You're Afraid To Love, Or Somewhere You're Afraid To Go. It's Gonna Hurt. It's Gonna Hurt Because It Matters.

I Don't Decide Where I Live. My Wife Decides. She's A Curator Of Contemporary Art, And She Works At An Art Museum, So We Go Wherever She Has A Job. All Basements Look The Same, So I Can Write From Whatever Basement I Happen To Be Living In.

The Only Person I Really Wanted To Talk To About Augustus Water's Death With Was Augustus Waters.

And, Since They Are Theater People, They Are All Talking. All Of Them. Simultaneously. They Do Not Need To Be Heard; They Only Need To Be Speaking.

Saying 'i Notice You're A Nerd' Is Like Saying, 'hey, I Notice That You'd Rather Be Intelligent Than Be Stupid, That You'd Rather Be Thoughtful Than Be Vapid, That You Believe That There Are Things That Matter More Than The Arrest Record Of Lindsay Lohan. Why Is That?' In Fact, It Seems To Me That Most Contemporary Insults Are Pretty Lame. Even 'lame' Is Kind Of Lame. Saying 'you're Lame' Is Like Saying 'you Walk With A Limp.' Yeah, Whatever, So Does 50 Cent, And He's Done All Right For Himself.

I Think When You're 16, If You Have Good Parents, They Generally Just Fade In The Background. I Had Great Parents, And Because They Were Great, I Thought Very Little About Them In High School.

He Wasn't Perfect Or Anything. He Wasn;t Your Fairytale Prince Charming Or Whatever. He Tried To Be Like That Sometimes,but I Liked Him Best When That Stuff Fell Away.

I Was Thinking About This Girl You Love So Much," She Said, "and This Place I Love So Much. And How That Happens. How You Can Just Fall Into It.

I Believe In Hope, In What Is Something Called ”radical Hope.” I Believe There Is Hope For All Of Us, Even Amid The Suffering. And That’s Why I Write Fiction, Probaby. It’s My Attempt To Keep That Fragile Strand Of Radical Hope, To Buld A Fire In The Darkness.r

In General-like Not Just In Fiction But In Life-it Doesn't Work Out Well When Someone Imagines Someone Else As A Manic Pixie Dream Girl Or An Edward Cullen Or Anything Other Than A Full, Complex Human Being. That Said, While I've Tried To Reflect That In My Books, I Don't Think I've Always Succeeded, Because I Am Always Running Up Against My Own Insufficiencies And Biases Etc.

I Love Making Youtube Videos. I Love Tumblr, I Love Twitter. I Love Talking With People I Find Interesting About Stuff I Find Interesting, And The Internet Is A Great Way To Do That.

She Had The Kind Of Eyes That Predisposed You To Supporting Her Every Endeavor.

It's Easy To Like Someone From A Distance. But When She Stopped Being This Amazing Unattainable Thing Or Whatever, And Started Being, Like, Just A Regular Girl With A Weird Relationship With Food And Frequent Crankiness Wh's Kind Of Bossy--then I Had To Basically Start Liking A While Different Person.

This Is So Much Fun, But I’m So Sleepy. To Be Continued?

The Side Effects Of Dying In Your Pants Isn't Really Funny… Alright, It's A Little Funny.

I Feel Like, Like, How You Matter Is Defined By The Things That Matter To You. You Matter As Much As The Things That Matter To You.

Things That Matter

The Marks Humans Leave Are Too Often Scars. You Build A Hideous Minimall Or Start A Coup Or Try To Become A Rock Star And You'll Think "they'll Remember Me Now," But (a) They Don't Remember You, And (b) All You Leave Behind Are More Scars. Your Coup Becomes A Dictatorship. Your Minimall Becomes A Lesion.

Someday No One Will Remember That She Ever Existed, I Wrote In My Notebook, And Then, Or That I Did. Because Memories Fall Apart, Too. And Then You're Left With Nothing, Left Not Even With A Ghost But With Its Shadow. In The Beginning, She Had Haunted Me, Haunted My Dreams, But Even Now, Just Weeks Later, She Was Slipping Away, Falling Apart In My Memory And Everyone Else's, Dying Again.

We Fell. We Got Up. We Ran.

You Die In The Middle Of Your Life.

Fault In Our Stars

Some Wars," He Said Dismissively. "what Am I At War With? My Cancer. And What Is My Cancer? My Cancer Is Me. The Tumors Are Made Of Me. They're Made Of Me As Surely As My Brain And My Heart Is Made Of Me. It Is A Civil War, Hazel Grace, With A Predetermined Winner.

I Kept It For Myself Like A Keepsake, As If Sharing The Memory Might Lead To Its Dissipation.

In The End The Listening Exposes You Even More Than It Exposes The People You're Trying To Listen To.

If You Don’t Know About Tumblr Then You Are Not Supposed To Know About Tumblr. It’s Like Fight Club.

This Is It. I Can't Even Not Smoke Anymore

As Alaska Zipped Through Something Obvious About Linear Equations, Stoner/baller Hank Walsten Said, "wait, Wait. I Don't Get It." "that's Because You Have Eight Functioning Brain Cells." "studies Show That Marijuana Is Better For Your Health Than Those Cigarettes," Hank Said. Alaska Swallowed A Mouthful Of Fries, Took A Drag On Her Cigarette, And Blew A Smoke At Hank. "i May Die Young," She Said. "but At Least I'll Die Smart. Now, Back To Tangents.

Nothing's Wrong. Everything's Right. Things Couldn't Be Righter. Things Could Be Less Tired. They Could Be Less Busy. They Could Be Less Caffeinated. But They Couldn't Be Righter.

That's How Writing Works, At Least For Me: Even The Stuff That Doesn't Work Out Gets Funneled Into The Stuff That Does Work Out.

I Kept Waiting For That Loneliness And Nervousness To Make Me Want To Go Back. But It Never Did.

It Took Me A Sleeve Of Girl Scout Thin Mints And Forty Minutes To Get Over That Boy.

And Then It Was The Kind Of Dark Your Eyes Never Adjust To.

It's Hard To Believe In Coincidence, But It's Even Harder To Believe In Anything Else.

If You Were To Go, And Hopefully Someday You Will, You Would See A Lot Of Paintings Of Dead People. You'd See Jesus On The Cross, And You'd See A Dude Get Stabbed In The Neck, And You'd See People Dying At Sea And In Battle And A Parade Of Martyrs. But Not. One. Single. Cancer. Kid. Nobody Biting It From The Plague Or Smallpox Or Yellow Fever Or Whatever, Because There Is No Glory In Illness. There Is No Meaning To It. There Is No Honor In Dying Of.

I Didn't Know What To Say To Her - I Was Caught In A Love Triangle With One Dead Side.

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Alfred Hitchcock

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