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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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When It Works, Anticipation Is Far More Fulfilling Than Surprise, Because We Are Reminded That A Sunrise Is Precisely As Magnificent As It Is Inevitable.

Everything's Uglier Close Up," She Said. "not You," I Answered.

The Prospect Of A World That Contains Neither Humans Nor Z's Is Not So Terrifying. Nature Will Take Its World Back. Animals Will Frolic And Fight. There Will Be No Lord Of The Manor, Which Is Not Such A Bad Thing, Because It Seems To Me That People Have Done A Pretty Poor Job Of Guiding The Biosphere For The Last Few Thousand Years.

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.

I Wondered Whether I Could Find A Great Perhaps Here At All Or Whether I Had Made A Grand Miscalculation.

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I Just Want To Fly Under The Radar, Because When You Start To Make Yourself Into A Big Deal, That's When You Get Shot Down.

Random Questions Are The Least Random Of All Questions.

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.

I’ve Always Sort Of Preferred People Who Are Not Entirely Likable.

She Never Acted As If She Liked Him All That Much, But Then She Never Acted As If She Liked Anyone All That Much.

You Say Into My Cracks And I Saw Into Yours.

There's A Place In The Brain For Knowing What Cannot Be Remembered.

In The End, What Makes A Book Valuable Is Not The Paper It's Printed On, But The Thousands Of Hours Of Work By Dozens Of People Who Are Dedicated To Creating The Best Possible Reading Experience For You.

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

Are You Currently At Your House?" He Asked. "um, No," I Said. "that Was A Trick Question. I Knew The Answer, Because I Am Currently At Your House.

So I Was Ugly. I Was Never Fat, Really, And I Never Wore Headgear Or Had Zits Or Anything. But I Was Ugly. I Don't Even Know How Ugly And Pretty Get Decided - Maybe There's Like A Secret Cabal Of Boys Who Meet In The Locker Room And Decide Who's Ugly And Who's Hot, Because As Far As I Can Remember, There Was No Such Thing As A Hot Fourth-grader. - Lindsey Lee Wells

I Always Had This Idea That You Should Never Give Up A Happy Middle In The Hopes Of A Happy Ending, Because There Is No Such Thing As A Happy Ending. Do You Know What I Mean? There Is So Much To Lose.

I'm A Grenade And At Some Point I'm Going To Blow Up And I Would Like To Minimize The Casualties, Okay?

"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."

Dear Teens At Starbucks Wearing 'abstain From Sex 2 Attain Ur Goals' T-shirts: Doesn't It Depend On What My Goals Are?

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One Of Those Moments He Knew He'd Remember And Look Back On, One Of Those Moments That He'd Try To Capture In The Stories He Told. Nothing Was Happening, Really, But The Moment Was Thick With Mattering.

Need Is Never A Good Basis For Any Relationship.

In The End, What You Do Isn't Going To Be Nearly As Interesting Or Important As Who You Do It With.

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Issac:"i Dislike Living In A World Without Augustus Waters." Computer: "i Don't Understand-" Issac: "me Neither. Pause

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Everything That Comes Together Falls Apart.

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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.

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I Wondered If There Would Ever Be A Day When I Didn't Think About Alaska, Wondered Whether I Should Hope For A Time When She Would Be A Distant Memory - Recalled Only On The Anniversary Of Her Death, Or Maybe A Couple Of Weeks After, Remembering Only After Having Forgotten.

When Surprised And Excited And Innocent Gus Emerged From Grand Gesture Metaphorically Inclined Augustus, I Literally Could Not Resist.

There Is Always The Risk: Something Is Good And Good And Good And Good, And Then All At Once It Gets Awkward. All At Once, She Sees You Looking At Her, And Then She Doesn't Want To Joke Around With You Anymore, Because She Doesn't Want To Seem Flirty, Because She Doesn't Want You To Think She Likes You. It's Such A Disaster, Whenever, In The Course Of Human Relationships, Someone Begins To Chisel Away At The Wall Of Separation Between Friendship And Kissing.

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

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I'd Had Nearly Four Years Of Experience Looking At These Clocks, But Their Sluggishness Never Ceased To Surprise. If I Am Ever Told That I Have One Day To Live, I Will Head Straight To The Hallowed Halls Of Winter Park High School, Where A Day Has Been Known To Last A Thousand Years.

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The United States Congress, Like A Lot Of Rich People, Lives In Two Houses.

The Town Was Paper, But The Memories Were Not.

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Long Week. Long Month. Long Life.

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This Is Unbearable ... God. These Books She'll Never Read. Her Life's Library.

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 Have To Tell You Man, That My Stalker Meter Is Kind Of Registering In The Red Zone Right Now.

What Is An "instant" Death Anyway? How Long Is An Instant? Is It One Second? Ten? The Pain Of Those Seconds Must Have Been Awful As Her Heart Burst And Her Lungs Collapsed And There Was No Air And No Blood To Her Brain And Only Raw Panic. What The Hell Is Instant? Nothing Is Instant. Instant Rice Takes Five Minutes, Instant Pudding An Hour. I Doubt That An Instant Of Blinding Pain Feels Particularly Instantaneous.

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You Could Hold Me And I Could Hold You. And It Would Be So Peaceful. Completely Peaceful. Like The Feeling Of Sleep, But Awake In It Together.

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 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.

Neither Novels Or Their Readers Benefit From Any Attempts To Divine Whether Any Facts Hide Inside A Story. Such Efforts Attack The Very Idea That Made-up Stories Can Matter, Which Is Sort Of The Foundational Assumption Of Our Species.

Made Up Stories

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.

What I Eventually Realized Is That The Real Business Of Books Is Not Done By Awards Committees Or People Who Turn Trees Into Paper Or Editors Or Agents Or Even Writers. We're All Just Facilitators. The Real Business Is Done By Readers.

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.

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.

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She Was Nothing But Good And I Was Nothing But Bad, But Then She Died, And I Didn't.

Maybe Some People Need To Believe In A Proper And Omnipotent God To Pray, But I Don't.

Peter Van Houten Was The Only Person I’d Ever Come Across Who Seemed To (a) Understand What It’s Like To Be Dying, And (b) Not Have Died.

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That Tastes Like Hope Feels.

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.

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If I Had Cared About Her As I Should Have, As I Thought I Did, How Could I Have Let Her Go?

She Smiled With All The Delight Of A Kid On Christmas Morning And Said, "y'all Smoke To Enjoy It. I Smoke To Die." - Alaska

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I Know So Many Last Words. But I Will Never Know Hers.

Reading Forces You To Be Quiet In A World That No Longer Makes Place For That.

I Couldn't Hear A Thing In The World But You. And It Was So Cold Then, And So Silent, And I Loved You So Much. Now It's Hot And Dead Quiet Again, And I Love You Still.

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'cause I'm Just - I Want To Go To Amsterdam, And I Want Him To Tell Me What Happens After The Book Is Over, And I Just Don't Want My Particular Life, And Also The Sky Is Depressing Me, And There Is This Old Swing Set Out Here That My Dad Made For Me When I Was A Kid.' 'i Must See This Old Swing Set Of Tears Immediately,' He Said. 'i'll Be Over In Twenty Minutes.'

Hurt Tends To Drown Out Sorry.

Coal Miners Don't Get Coal Miners' Block.

Gus: "it Tastes Like..." Me: "food." Gus: "yes, Precisely. It Tastes Like Food, Excellently Prepared. But It Does Not Taste, How Do I Put This Delicately...?" Me: "it Does Not Taste Like God Himself Cooked Heaven Into A Series Of Five Dishes Which Were Then Served To You Accompanied By Several Luminous Balls Of Fermented, Bubbly Plasma While Actual And Literal Flower Petals Floated Down Around Your Canal-side Dinner Table." Gus: "nicely Phrased." Gus's Father: "our Children Are Weird." My Dad: "nicely Phrased."

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.

As A Child I Was An Inveterate Liar. As Opposed To Now, I Am A Novelist.

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.

And The Moral Of The Story Is That You Don't Remember What Happened. What You Remember Becomes What Happened. And The Second Moral Of The Story, If A Story Can Have Multiple Morals, Is That Dumpers Are Not Inherently Worse Than Dumpees - Breaking Up Isn't Something That Gets Done To You; It's Something That Happens With You.

Moral Of The Story

"and How Are You Feeling?" Asked Patrick."oh, I'm Grand." Augustus Waters Smiled With A Corner Of His Mouth. "i'm On A Roller Coaster That Only Goes Up, My Friend."

I Told Augustus The Broad Outline Of My Miracle: Diagnosed With Stage Iv Thyroid Cancer When I Was Thirteen. (i Didn’t Tell Him That The Diagnosis Came Three Months After I Got My First Period. Like: Congratulations! You’re A Woman. Now Die.)

Congratulations

As Far As I Can Tell, There Are Two Basic (kissing) Rules: 1. Don't Bite Anything Without Permission. 2. The Human Tongue Is Like Wasabi: It's Very Powerful, And Should Be Used Sparingly.

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.

Some People Don't Understand The Promises They're Making When They Make Them," I Said. "right, Of Course. But You Keep The Promise Anyway. That's What Love Is. Love Is Keeping The Promise Anyway.

Keeping Promises

When I Look At My Room, I See A Girl Who Loves Books.

I Feel Like I Might Start Crying And That I'm Going To Cry Pee.

We're Going To Get Gored To Death By A Feral Fugging Hog And Your Best Strategy Is To Pretend It's A Grizzly Bear?

This Squirrel Is Inadequately Afraid Of Humans! Squirrel, I Am A Threat To You! We Are Enemies! Please Get Off My Bench! Oh, God! Oh, God! Don't Touch Me—oh, God!

High School Is Neither A Democracy Nor A Dictatorship - Nor, Contrary To Popular Belief, An Anarchic State. High School Is A Divine-right Monarchy. And When The Queen Goes On Vacation, Things Change.

I Have Spent My Life Falling. Not The Kind That Tiny's Talking About. He's Talking About Love. I'm Talking About Life. In My Kind Of Falling, There's No Landing. There's Only Hitting The Ground. Hard. Dead, Or Wanting To Be Dead. So The Whole Time You're Falling, It's The Worst Feeling In The World. Because You Feel You Have No Control Over It. Because You Know How It Ends.

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 Smiled. She Smiled. I Believed The Smile.

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

How Can You Seperate Those Things Though? The People Are The Place Is The People.

We Did A Few Things Worth Remembering, And I Wish For Someone To Remember Them.

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.

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Because No One Thought She Was A Person, She Had No One To Really Talk To.

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

Support Group Featured A Rotating Cast Of Characters In Various States Of Tumor-driven Unwellness. Why Did The Cast Rotate? A Side Effect Of Dying.

It Was An Indulgence, Learning Last Words. Other People Had Chocolate; I Had Dying Declarations.

That's Why I Like You. Do You Realize How Rare It Is To Come Across A Hot Girl Who Creates A Adjectival Version Of The Word Pedophile? You Are So Busy Being You That You Have No Idea How Utterly Unprecedented You Are.

This Is What Happens: Somebody—girl Usually—got A Free Spirit, Doesn't Get On Too Good With Her Parents. These Kids, They're Like Tied-down Helium Balloons. They Strain Against The String And Strain Against It, And Then Something Happens, And That String Gets Cut, And They Just Float Away. And Maybe You Never See The Balloon Again . . . Or Maybe Three Or Four Years From Now, Or Three Or Four Days From Now, The Prevailing Winds Take The Balloon Back Home . . . But Listen, Kid, That String Gets Cut All The Time.

Books Are Like Tweets, Except Longer.

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.

You Listen To People So That You Can Imagine Them, And You Hear All The Terrible And Wonderful Things People Do To Themselves And To One Another, But In The End The Listening Exposes You Even More Than It Exposes The People You're Trying To Listen To.

Everything That Comes Together Falls Apart. Everything. The Chair I’m Sitting On. It Was Built, And So It Will Fall Apart. I’m Gonna Fall Apart, Probably Before This Chair. And You’re Gonna Fall Apart. The Cells And Organs And Systems That Make You You—they Came Together, Grew Together, And So Must Fall Apart. The Buddha Knew One Thing Science Didn’t Prove For Millennia After His Death: Entropy Increases. Things Fall Apart.

The Times That Were Most Fun Seemed Always To Be Followed By Sadness Now, Because It Was When Life Started To Feel Like It Did When She Was With Us That We Realized How Utterly Gone She Was.

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

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.

You've Got A Lifetime To Mull Over The Buddhist Understanding Of Interconnectedness." He Spoke Every Sentence As If He'd Written It Down, Memorized It, And Was Now Reciting It. "but While You Were Looking Out The Window, You Missed The Chance To Explore The Equally Interesting Buddhist Belief In Being Present For Every Facet Of Your Daily Life, Of Being Truly Present. Be Present In This Class. And Then, When It's Over, Be Present Out There," He Said, Nodding Toward The Lake And Beyond.' ~dr. Hyde, Pg 50

Yeah, So If That Guy Can Make It In Drunk, Surely We Can Make It In Sober. I Mean, We’re Ninjas.' 'well, Maybe You’re A Ninja,' I Said. 'you’re Just A Really Loud, Awkward Ninja,' Margo Said, 'but We Are Both Ninjas.

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.

It Was Not An Eventful Day. I Should Have Done Extraordinary Things. I Should Have Sucked The Marrow Out Of Life. But On That Day, I Slept Eighteen Hours Out Of A Possible Twenty-four.

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

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'm So Proud Of You That It Makes Me Proud Of Me. I Hope You Know That.

Ma'am," Augustus Said, Nodding Toward Her, "your Daughter's Car Has Just Been Deservingly Egged By A Blind Man. Please Close The Door And Go Back Inside Or We'll Be Forced To Call The Police.

What Matters To You Defines Your Mattering.

It Seemed Like Forever Ago, Like We've Had This Brief But Still Infinite Forever. Some Infinities Are Bigger Than Other Infinities.

As Far As All Of Our Identities Are Dependent On How Other People Imagine Us We Are All Making Ourselves And Each Other Up All The Time

Walt Whitman Is Hot! I Mean, That Guy Could Sound His Barbaric Yawps Over The Roofs Of My World Any Time.

..there She Is, And I Am Watching Her Through Plexiglass, And She Looks Like Margo Roth Spiegelman, This Girl I Have Known Since I Was Two–this Girl Who Was An Idea That I Loved. And It Is Only Now, When She Closes Her Notebook And Places It Inside A Backpack Next To Her And Then Stands Up And Walks Toward Us, That I Realize That The Idea Is Not Only Wrong By Dangerous. What A Treacherous Thing It Is To Believe That A Person Is More Than A Person.

I Wouldn't Have Cared If My Girlfriend Was A Jaguar-driving Cyclops With A Beard - I'd Have Been Grateful Just To Have Someone To Make Out With.

My Head Was Level With Hers As We Stared At Each Other From Opposite Sides Of The Glass. I Don't Remember How It Ended - If I Went To Bed Or She Did. In My Memory, It Doesn't End. We Just Stay There, Looking At Each Other, Forever.

You Will Not Kill My Girlfriend Today, International Terrorists Of Ambiguous Nationality!

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.

What You Must Understand About Me Is That I’m A Deeply Unhappy Person.

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

Collin Singleton Could No More Stay Cool Than A Blue Whale Could Stay Skinny Or Bangladesh Could Stay Rich

It Must Be Some Book," She Said As She Knelt Down Next To The Bed..."did That Boy Give It To You?" She Asked Out Of Nowhere. "by 'it' Do You Mean Herpes?" "you Are Too Much," Mom Said, "the Book, Hazel. I Mean The Book.

They Were Angry, I Thought. Horrified. These Teenagers, With Their Hormones, Making Out Beneath A Video Broadcasting The Shattered Voice Of A Former Father.

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

How Will I Ever Get Out Of This Labyrinth!" To A Margin Note Written In Her Loop-heavy Cursive: Straight & Fast.

The Internet Is Necessarily Public. It Can Be Filtered-public Or Censored-public, But It Necessarily Has To Be Open And Available.

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?

In Those Fifty, The Old Man Made Me Take Religion Seriously. I'd Never Been Religious, But He Told Us That Religion Is Important Whether Or Not We Believed In One, The Same Way That Historical Events Are Important Whether Or Not You Personally Lived Through Them.

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

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.

Depression Is A Side Effect Of Dying. (almost Everything Is, Really).

Stupid Truth, Always Resisting Simplicity

We Do An Epically Bad Job Of Acknowledging One Another's Work And Checking Our Sources.

Something Invisible Snapped Inside Her.

Does My Eye Look Okay To You?

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John Philpot Curran

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