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According To Maslow, I Was Stuck On The Second Level Of The Pyramid, Unable To Feel Secure In My Health And Therefore Unable To Reach For Love And Respect And Art And Whatever Else, Which Is, Utter Horseshit: The Urge To Make Art Or Contemplate Philosophy Does Not Go Away When You Are Sick. Those Urges Just Become Transfigured By Illness. Maslow's Pyramid Seemed To Imply I Was Less Human Than Other People, And Most People Seemed To Agree With Him.

-John Green

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According To Maslow, I

John Green

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According To Maslow, I Was Stuck On The Second Level Of The Pyramid, Unable To Feel Secure In My Health And Therefore Unable To Reach For Love And Respect And Art And Whatever Else, Which Is, Utter Horseshit: The Urge To Make Art Or Contemplate Philosophy Does Not Go Away When You Are Sick. Those Urges Just Become Transfigured By Illness. Maslow's Pyramid Seemed To Imply I Was Less Human Than Other People, And Most People Seemed To Agree With Him.

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The Consequences Of Being Un-cool Feel So Big That A Lot Of Times You End Of Not Finding Ways To Have Open And Honest Conversations.

I Came To The Conclusion A While Ago That There Is Nothing Romantic Or Supernatural About Loving Someone: Love Is The Privilege Of Being Responsible For Another. It Was, For A Time, What Kept Me Going: Each Morning, For A Little While, I Got To Feel The Weight Of The Yoke On My Back As I Pulled The Ancient Cart Of My Species.

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.

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.

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've Never Known Before What It Feels Like To Want Someone - Not To Want To Hook Up With Them Or Whatever, But To Want Them, To Want Them. And Now I Do. So Maybe I Do Believe In Epiphanies.

So She Became Impulsive, Scared By Her Inaction Into Perpetual Action.

According To Maslow, I Was Stuck On The Second Level Of The Pyramid, Unable To Feel Secure In My Health And Therefore Unable To Reach For Love And Respect And Art And Whatever Else, Which Is, Utter Horseshit: The Urge To Make Art Or Contemplate Philosophy Does Not Go Away When You Are Sick. Those Urges Just Become Transfigured By Illness. Maslow's Pyramid Seemed To Imply I Was Less Human Than Other People, And Most People Seemed To Agree With Him.

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

Every Paper Girl Needs At Least One String.

The French Verb Aimer Has Two Meanings. And That’s Why He Liked Her, And Loved Her. She Spoke To Him In A Language That, No Matter How Hard You Studied It, Could Not Be Completely Understood.

Something About Me Has Always Liked The Drama And Inconvience Of Bad Weather. The Worse The Better, Really.

I Don't Really Care How People Read. I Care If People Read.

He Lit A Cigarette And Handed It To Me. I Inhaled. Coughed. Wheezed. Gasped For Breath. Coughed Again. Considered Vomiting. Grabbed The Swinging Bench, Head Spinning, And Threw The Cigarette To The Ground And Stomped On It, Convinced My Great Perhaps Did Not Involve Cigarettes.

We All Miss You So Much. It Just Never Ends. It Feels Like We Were All Wounded In Your Battle, Caroline. I Miss You. I Love You.

He Liked The Idea Of Coffee Quite A Lot—a Warm Drink That Gave You Energy And Had Been For Centuries Associated With Sophisticates And Intellectuals. But Coffee Itself Tasted To Him Like Caffeinated Stomach Bile.

Maybe Life Is Not About Accomplishing Some Bullshit Markers.

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

He Missed His Imagined Future.

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 Were Kissing. I Thought: This Is Good. I Thought: I Am Not Bad At This Kissing. Not Bad At All. I Thought: I Am Clearly The Greatest Kisser In The History Of The Universe. Suddenly She Laughed And Pulled Away From Me. She Wiggled A Hand Out Of Her Sleeping Bag And Wiped Her Face. "you Slobbered On My Nose," She Said, And Laughed

But There's So Much To Do: Cigarettes To Smoke, Sex To Have, Swings To Swing On.

But It Is The Nature Of Stars To Cross, And Never Was Shakespeare More Wrong Than When He Has Cassius Note, ‘the Fault, Dear Brutus, Is Not In Our Stars / But In Ourselves.

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.

Don't Swear In The Literal Heart Of Jesus.

We Imagine People As Animals Or Gods. -but She Was Just A Person, A Girl.

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

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.

The Tales Of Our Exploits Will Survive As Long As The Human Voice Itself,' He Said. 'and Even After That, When The Robots Recall The Human Absurdities Of Sacrifice And Compassion, They Will Remember Us.

Funerals...are For The Living.

I Stand In This Parking Lot, Realizing That I’ve Never Been This Far From Home, And Here Is This Girl I Love And Cannot Follow. I Hope This Is The Hero’s Errand, Because Not Following Her Is The Hardest Thing I’ve Ever Done.

She’s The Kind Of Person Who Either Dies Tragically At Twenty-seven, Like Jimi Hendrix And Janis Joplin, Or Else Grows Up To Win, Like, The First-ever Nobel Prize For Awesome.

"and We'll Call You... Hmmm. Pudge." "huh?" "pudge," The Colonel Said. "because You're Skinny. It's Called Irony, Pudge. Heard Of It? Now, Let's Go Get Some Cigarettes And Start This Year Off Right."

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

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Traveling, I Am Finding, Teaches You A Lot Of Things About Yourself. For Instance, I Never Thought Myself To Be The Kind Of Person Who Pees Into A Mostly Empty Bottle Of Bluefin Energy Drink While Driving Through South Carolina At Seventy-seven Miles Per Hour - But In Face I Am That Kind Of Person.

I Don't Want To Hear Another Negative Word About Cheerleaders. If It Weren't For Cheerleaders, Who Would Tell Us When And How To Be Happy During Athletic Events? If It Weren't For Cheerleaders, How Would America's Prettiest Girls Get The Exercise That's So Vital To A Healthy Life?

I Think About How Much Depends Upon A Best Friend. Then You Wake Up In The Morning You Swing Your Legs Out Of Bed And You Put Your Feet On The Ground And You Stand Up. You Don't Scoot To The Edge Of The Bed And Look Down To Make Sure The Floor Is There. The Floor Is Always There. Until It's Not.

He Knew He Couldn't Tell Stories, That He Always Included Extraneous Details & Tangents That Interested Only Him.

But I Had To Kill You, Because The Only Other Possible Ending Was Us Doing It, Which I Wasn't Really Emotionally Ready To Write About At Ten.' 'fair Enough,' I Say. 'but In The Revision, I Want To Get Some Action.

You Know What Ambrosia Tastes Like? It Tastes Like All The Things You Can't Eat On Weight Watchers. Cheeseburgers, Sugar Cookies, Regular Freaking Ice Cream Instead Of, Like, Ice Cream That's Made Out Of Air And Human Hope.

Weight Watchers

Also, I Feel That Crying Is Almost--like, Aside From Deaths Of Relatives Or Whatever-- Totally Avoidable If You Follow Two Very Simple Rules: 1.don't Care Too Much. 2. Shut Up. Everything Unfortunate That Has Ever Happened To Me Has Stemmed From Failure To Follow One Of The Rules.

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

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3 Whole Catfish, Wrapped Separately Veet (it’s For Shaving Your Legs Only You Don’t Need A Razor. It’s With All The Girly Cosmetic Stuff) Vaseline Six Pack, Mountain Dew One Dozen Tulips One Bottle Of Water Tissues One Can Of Blue Spray Paint

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The Last Time I Was This Scared, I Peed Myself." "the Last Time I Was This Scared," Radar Says, "i Actually Had To Face A Dark Lord In Order To Make The World Safe For Wizards.

You Could Drive Past It Without Noticing And From What I Understand, You Ought To.

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We’re As Likely To Hurt The Universe As We Are To Help It, And We’re Not Likely To Do Either.

We Didn't Talk Much. But We Didn't Need To.

Sometimes You Lose A Battle. But Mischief Always Wins The War

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All Representations Of A Thing Are Inherently Abstract.

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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.

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Need Is Never A Good Basis For Any Relationship.

Just Move To The Internet, Its Great Here. We Get To Live Inside Where The Weather Is Always Awesome.

But I Believe In True Love, You Know? I Don't Believe That Everybody Gets To Keep Their Eyes Or Not Get Sick Or Whatever, But Everybody Should Have True Love, And It Should Last At Least As Long As Your Life Does.

That Doesn't Sound Like My Margo", She Said, And I Thought Of My Margo, And All Of Us Looking At Her Reflection In Different Funhouse Mirrors.

I Am A Grenade," I Said Again. "i Just Want To Stay Away From People And Read Books And Think And Be With You Guys Because There's Nothing I Can Do About Hurting You: You're Too Invested, So Just Please Let Me Do That, Okay? "i'm Going To Go To My Room And Read For Awhile, Okay? I'm Fine. I Really Am Fine: I Just Want To Go Read For A While.

That Smile Could End Wars And Cure Cancer.

That's Always Seemed So Ridiculous To Me, That People Want To Be Around Someone Because They're Pretty. It's Like Picking Your Breakfeast Cereals Based On Color Instead Of Taste.

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I Don’t Know A Perfect Person. I Only Know Flawed People Who Are Still Worth Loving.

The Important Thing Is Not Whatever Nonsense The Voices Are Saying, But What The Voices Are Feeling.

True Love Will Triumph In The End—which May Or May Not Be A Lie, But If It Is A Lie, It's The Most Beautiful Lie We Have.

Language Buries, But Does Not Resurrect.

I Knew That I Would Know More Dead People. The Bodies Pile Up. Could There Be A Space In My Memory For Each Of Them, Or Would I Forget A Little Of Alaska Every Day For The Rest Of My Life?

The Missing Piece In His Stomach Hurt So Much-and Eventually He Stopped Thinking About The Theorem And Wondered Only How Something That Isn't There Can Hurt You.

We Are Greater Than The Sum Of Our Parts.

Like All Sick Children,' He Answered Dispassionately, 'you Say You Don't Want Pity, But Your Very Existence Depends Upon It.

People Always Get Used To Beauty Though.

Adult Librarians Are Like Lazy Bakers: Their Patrons Want A Jelly Doughnut, So They Give Them A Jelly Doughnut. Children’s Librarians Are Ambitious Bakers: 'you Like The Jelly Doughnut? I’ll Get You A Jelly Doughnut. But You Should Try My Cruller, Too. My Cruller Is Gonna Blow Your Mind, Kid.

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.

And Then I Screwed Up And The Colonel Screwed Up And Takumi Screwed Up And She Slipped Through Our Fingers.

Labyrinth Looking For Alaska

Not The Brightest Gem In The Jewelry Shop, But You've Got To Admire His Single-minded Dedication To Drug Abuse.

If I'm Too Old To Be Emo, How Do You Account For The Very Emo And Very Old Edgar Allan Poe? Checkmate!

How Do You Just Stop Being Terrified Of Getting Left Behind And Ending Up By Yourself Forever And Not Meaning Anything To The World?

Feeling - Probably For The First Time In My Life - The Fear And Excitement Of Living In A Place Where You Never Know What's Going To Happen Or When.

Where Do You Come Up With These Zingers, Clint? Do You Own Some Kind Of Joke Factory In Indonesia Where You've Got Eight-year-olds Working Ninety Hours A Week To Deliver You That Kind Of Top-quality Witticism? There Are Boy Bands With More Original Material.

I Am A Giant Squid Of Anger.

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

Leaving Feels Too Good, Once You Leave.

The Universe Is Biased Toward Consciousness Because The Universe Wants To Be Noticed. It's A Way Into Existential Hope That Doesn't Have Too Much Cliché Wrapped Around It.

It Turns Out That, Somehow, There Are A Tremendous Number Of Things To Be Optimistic About.

The Whole Pleasure Of Being In A State Of Unknowing Is That As Long As You Don’t Know, All Possible Outcomes Feel As If They Are Happening.

Jp Shouted, "tell Them What You Just Did To Each Other!" "um," I Said. "we Kissed," The Duke Said. "that's Kinda Gay," Keun Said. "i Am A Girl." "yeah, I Know, But So Is Tobin," Keun Said.

He Really Was Beautiful. I Know Boys Aren’t Supposed To Be, But He Was.

The Pleasure Of Remembering Had Been Taken From Me, There Was No Longer Anyone To Remember With.

I Figured Something Out. The Future Is Unpredictable.

There Is No Shortage Of Fault To Be Found Amid Our Stars

Late In The Winter Of My Seventeenth Year, My Mother Decided I Was Depressed, Presumably Because I Rarely Left The House, Spent Quite A Lot Of Time In Bed, Read The Same Book Over And Over, Ate Infrequently, And Devoted Quite A Bit Of My Abundant Free Time To Thinking About Death.

The Thing About That Guy Is A Gigolo,' Radar Says, 'i Mean, The Thing About It As A Game, Is That In The End It Reveals A Lot More About The Person Doing The Imagining Than It Does About The Person Being Imagined.

I Change My Keyboard Between Every Book. I Usually Shop Around. I'm Very Passionate About The Physical Feel Of Pressing The Keys. It's Got To Have The Right Springiness. I Tend To Find The Built-in Keys Very Unsatisfying, The Keys Are Low-profile And Don't Really Do Anything - I Want It To Feel Like I'm Typing.

Stupid Truth, Always Resisting Simplicity

Breaking Up Isn't Something That Gets Done To You; Its Something That Happens With You.

Like Many People, I Feel Like Celebrating. Remember This Feeling. It Is Human, And Can Help Us Understand When Others Express Bloodlust.

I Kept Thinking There Were Two Kinds Of Adults: There Were...miserable Creatures Who Scoured The Earth In Search Of Something To Hurt. And Then There Were People Like My Parents, Who Walked Around Zombically, Doing Whatever They Had To Do To Keep Walking Around.

This Star Won't Go Out. And It Won't. We Won't Let It.

It Is Not My Fault That My Parents Own The World's Largest Collection Of Black Santas.

You Completely Unscatter Me, And I Appreciate That Too Much.

The World May Be Broken, But Hope Is Not Crazy.

We Acknowledge That Being The Person God Made You Cannot Separate You From God's Love.

Don't Worry. Worry Is Useless. I Worried Anyway

The Feeling Of Loving Her And Being Loved By Her Welled Up In Him, And He Could Taste The Adrenaline In The Back Of His Throat, And Maybe It Wasn't Over, And Maybe He Could Feel Her Hand In His Again And Hear Her Loud, Brash Voice Contort Itself Into A Whisper To Say I-love-you As If It Were A Secret, And An Immense One.

People Thought He Was A Glutton For Punishment, That He Liked Getting Dumped. But It Wasn't Like That. He Could Just Never See Anything Coming, And As He Lay On The Solid, Uneven Ground With Hassan Pressing Too Hard On His Forehead, Colin Singleton's Distance From His Glasses Made Him Realize The Problem: Myopia. He Was Nearsighted. The Future Lay Before Him, Inevitable But Invisible.

Osteosarcoma Sometimes Takes A Limb To Check You Out. The, If It Like You, It Takes The Rest.

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

Me: You Know What Sucks About Love? O.w.g.: What? Me: That It's So Tied To The Truth. I Know It Sucks, But In A Way, It's Good....love And Truth Being Tied Together, I Mean. They Make Each Other Possible, You Know?

The Kiss Lasted Forever As Otto Frank Kept Talking From Behind Me. "and My Conclusion Is," He Said, "since I Had Been In Very Good Terms With Anne, That Most Parents Don't Know Really Their Children.

It Has Been My Experience That Maximizing Income Is A Helluva Lot Less Important Than Maximizing Passion And Fulfillment In Your Both Professionally And Personally.

I'm Starting To Realize That People Lack Good Mirrors. It's So Hard For Anyone To Show Us How We Look, & So Hard For Us To Show Anyone How We Feel.

People Are Different When You Can Smell Them And Look Up Close, You Know?

And As We Kept Driving North, The Whole Family In The Care Together, It Got Darker, And Snowier, Until Finally The Road Delivered Us To The One Place That All My Youthful Trips West Never Could: Home.

Stupid Human Voices Always Ruining Everything.

Ruining Everything

And I Don't Really Have Anyone Upon Whom I Want To Rain Down My Wrath," I Said, Because In Truth I Didn't. I Always Felt Like You Had To Be Important To Have Enemies. Example: Historically, Germany Has Had More Enemies Than Luxembourg, Margo Roth Spiegelman Was Germany. And Great Britain. And The United States. And Czarist Russia. Me, I'm Luxembourg. Just Sitting Around, Tending Sheep, And Yodeling.

I’m Not Up For Laughing, But Their Laughter Makes The Room Feel Safer, So We Begin To Explore.

What The Hell Is Instant? Nothing Is Instant.

Do You Know Why I Left America, Lidewij? So That I Would Never Again Have To Encounter Americans." "but You Are An American." "incurably So, It Seems.

... She Called It A Paper Town. Like, You Know, Everything So Fake And Flimsy.

Suffering Can Bend & Break Us. But It Can Also Break Us Open To Become The Persons God Intended Us To Be. It Depends On What We Do With The Pain. If We Offer It Back To God, He Will Use It To Do Great Things In Us & Through Us, Because Suffering Is Fertile... It An Grow New Life.

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.

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

The Way I Figure It, Everyone Gets A Miracle.

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

Books Are Seldom Useful Unless They Are Also Beautiful.

Breaking Down That Wall Is The Kind Of Story That Might Have A Happy Middle - Oh, Look, We Broke Down This Wall, I'm Going To Look At You Like A Girl And You're Going To Look At Me Like A Boy, And We're Going To Play A Fun Game Called Can I Put My Hand There What About There What About There.

You Are Valuable And Rare And Worthy Of Love.

This Was What I Liked Most About My Friends: Just Sitting Around & Telling Stories.

I Always Felt Like You Had To Be Important To Have Enemies.

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 Don't Believe In Prom,' I Reminded Her As She Rounded A Corner. I Expertly Angled My Raisin Bran To Accomodate The G-forces. I'd Done This Before.

Margo Always Loved Mysteries. And In Everything That Came Afterward, I Could Never Stop Thinking That Maybe She Loved Mysteries So Much That She Became One.

I Said Nothing—i Hadn’t Known Marya, And Anyway, “listening Quietly” Was My General Social Strategy

Cold,” He Said, Pressing A Finger To My Pale Wrist. “not Cold So Much As Underoxygenated,” I Said. “i Love It When You Talk Medical To Me,” He Said. He Stood, And Pulled Me Up With Him, And Did Not Let Go Of My Hand Until We Reached The Stairs.

I Was A Fairly Shy Person - Not The Hand Raising Type.

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

Thank You For Wearing That Dress Which Is Like Whoa.

I'm Not Saying It Was Your Fault. I'm Saying It Wasn't Nice.

Maybe She'd Been Scared Of Being Paralyzed By Fear Again.

What I Really Want - And What I Never Get - Is To Be Appreciated. Do You Know What It’s Like To Work So Hard To Make Sure Everyone’s Happy, And To Have Not A Single Person Recognize It

I Don't Think Ministering Requires A Religious Context. The Number One Thing Is That Every Parent Is Extremely Worried About Their Kid. Of Course, When A Chaplain Shows Up, That Can Exacerbate This Worry Rather Than Calm It.

I Tore Open The Closet Door And Began Feverishly Sorting Through The Shirts Piled On The Floor In The Vain Hope That Inside That Pile There Might Be Some Wondrously Perfect Shirt Down There, A Nice And Tough But I'm Also A Surprisingly Good Listener With A True And Abiding Passion For Cheers And Those Who Lead Them.

Maybe We're Grass—our Roots So Interdependent That No One Is Dead As Long As Someone Is Still Alive.

Becoming A Father Made Me Much More Interested In The Parent Character In My Novels. I've Never Found Parents That Interesting.

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.

"nothing," I Said. "i’m Just…" I Couldn’t Finish The Sentence, Didn’t Know How To. "i’m Just Very, Very Fond Of You."

I Like To Build Places Online Where Readers Can Have Productive Conversations About Books.

I Have An Augustus Waters Fetish.

I'll Just Go Over To The Duke's," I Said. "her Parents Already Told Me I Could Stay There. I'll Go Over There And Open All My Presents, And Talk About How My Parents Neglect Me, And Then Maybe The Duke Will Give Me Some Of Her Presents Because She Feels So Bad About How My Mom Doesn't Love Me.

I'm Not Saying That Everything Is Survivable. Just That Everything Except The Last Thing Is.

How Are The Eyes?' 'oh, Excellent,' He Said. 'i Mean, They're Not In My Head Is The Only Problem.

I Thought You Hung The Moon.

I Would Argue That Stupidity Is Born Out Of Bad Reading, Bad Teaching And Bad Thinking!

I Laughed And Pointed Out That "hash Browns Mean Nothing Without You" Was A Pretty Good Name For A Band. "or A Song," The Duke Said, And Then She Started Singing All Glam Rock, A Glove Up To Her Face Holding An Imaginary Mic As She Rocked Out An A Cappella Power Ballad. "oh, I Deep Fried For You / But Now I Weep 'n' Cry For You / Oh, Babe, This Meal Was Made For Two / And These Hash Browns Mean Nothing, Oh These Hash Browns Mean Nothing, Yeah These Hash Browns Mean Nothin' Without You.

I Pointed At The Little Kids Goading Each Other To Jump From Rib Cage To Shoulder And Gus Answered Just Loud Enough For Me To Hear Over The Din, 'last Time, I Imagined Myself As The Kid. This Time, The Skeleton.

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

"nothing Ever Happens Like You Imagine It Will," She Says. The Sky Is Like A Monochromatic Contemporary Painting, Drawing Me In With Its Illusion Of Depth, Pulling Me Up. "yeah, That's True," I Say. But Then After I Think About It For A Second, I Add, "but Then Again, If You Don't Imagine, Nothing Ever Happens At All."

It's A Metaphor, See: You Put The Killing Thing Right Between Your Teeth, But You Don't Give It The Power To Do Its Killing.

Idiotically, It Occurred To Me That My Pink Underwear Didn’t Match My Purple Bra, As If Boys Even Notice Such Things.

Light, The Visible Reminder Of Invisible Light.

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

Worry Is Yet Another Side Effect Of Dying.

See, Popularity Is Complicated. You Have To Spend A Lot Of Time Thinking About Liking; You Have To Really Like Being Liked, And Also Sort Like Being Disliked.

You Matter As Much As The Things That Matter To You. And I Got So Backwards Trying To Matter To Him. All This Time, There Were Real Things To Care About: Real, Good People Who Care About Me, And This Place. It's So Easy To Get Stuck. You Just Get Caught In Being Something, Being Special Or Cool Or Whatever, To The Point Where You Don't Even Know Why You Need It; You Just Think You Do.

So You've Been Gone A Couple Days,' Alison Said. 'hmm, What'd You Miss...a Celebrity Did Drugs. Politicians Disagreed. A Different Celebrity Wore A Bikini That Revealed A Bodily Imperfection. A Team Won A Sporting Event, But Another Team Lost.

Colin Did Not Laugh. Instead He Thought, Tampons Have Strings? Why? Of All The Major Human Mysteries - God, The Nature Of The Universe, Etc. - He Knew The Least About Tampons. To Colin, Tampons Were A Little Bit Like Grizzly Bears: He Was Aware Of Their Existence, But He'd Never Seen On In The Wild, And Didn't Really Care To.

Read A Lot. Read Broadly... Tell Stories To Your Friends, And Pay Attention To When They Get Bored... Write A Lot.

But To Be Perfectly Frank, This Childish Idea That The Author Of A Novel Has Some Special Insight Into The Characters In The Novel ... It's Ridiculous. That Novel Was Composed Of Scratches On A Page, Dear. The Characters Inhabiting It Have No Life Outside Of Those Scratches. What Happened To Them? They All Ceased To Exist The Moment The Novel Ended.

There's Your Labyrinth Of Suffering. We Are All Going. Find Your Way Out Of That Maze.

We Look Back To The Most Important Moment In Our History, And That Becomes The Dividing Line Between What We Were And What We Are Now.

Your Driving Is Unpleasant, But It Isn't Technically Unsafe.

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

Being In A Relationship, That's Something You Choose. Being Friends, That's Something You Just Are.

No Headboards Were Broken.

Of Course, Sweetie," His Mom Said. "we'll Be Here All Day. You Just Come Down Whenever You Want And We Love You And You're So So Special, Colin, And You Can't Possibly Let This Girl Make You Think Otherwise Because You Are The Most Magnificent, Brilliant Boy-" And Right Then, The Most Special, Magnificent, Brilliant Boy Bolted Into His Bathroom And Puked His Guts Out. An Explosion, Sort Of.

Beware Of That Monster Called 'self-loathing'.

The Darkest Nights Produce The Brightest Stars.

History Reminds Us That Revolutions Are Not Events, So Much That They’re Processes – That For Tens Of Thousands Of Years, People Have Been Making Decisions That Irrevocably Shaped The World That We Live In Today; Just As Today, We Are Making Subtle, Irrevocable Decisions That People Of The Future Will Remember As Revolutions.

When You're Walking Home At Night, Do You Even Get Creeped Out And Even Though It's Silly And Embarrassing You Just Want To Run Home?" It Seemed Too Secret And Personal To Admit To Virtual Stranger, But I Told Her, "yeah, Totally." For A Moment, She Was Quiet. Then She Grabbed My Hand, Whispered, "run Run Run Run Run," And Took Off, Pulling Me Behind Her.

The Pleasure Isn't In Doing The Thing, The Pleasure Is In Planning It.

I Didn't Even Know What The Feeling Was, Really, Just That There Was A Lot Of It.

At Least I Carpe'd That One Diem.

Margo Roth Spiegelman

No," I Said. And Maybe It Was Only Because Alaska Couldn't Hit The Brakes And I Couldn't Hit The Accelerator.

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

Maybe All The Strings Inside Him Broke.

The Past Feels Distant, Even When It's Near. The Future Feels Assured, Even When It Isn't.

Margo Says, "i Know What She's Talking About. The Something Deeper And More Secret. It's Like Cracks Inside Of You. Like There Are These Fault Lines Where Things Don't Meet Up Right.

I Know That Books Seem Like The Ultimate Thing That's Made By One Person, But That's Not True. Every Reading Of A Book Is A Collaboration Between The Reader And The Writer Who Are Making The Story Up Together.

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