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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.

-John Green

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And As Paralyzing And

John Green

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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.

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I Found Myself Thinking About President William Mckinley, The Third American President To Be Assassinated. He Lived For Several Days After He Was Shot, And Towards The End, His Wife Started Crying And Screaming, "i Want To Go Too! I Want To Go Too!" And With His Last Measure Of Strength, Mckinley Turned To Her And Spoke His Last Words: "we Are All Going.

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.

I Don't Even Know How Ugly And Pretty Get Decided.

Hazel Grace!” He Shouted. “you Did Not Use Your One Dying Wish To Go To Disney World With Your Parents.” “also Epcot Center,” I Mumbled. “oh, My God,” Augustus Said. “i Can’t Believe I Have A Crush On A Girl With Such Cliché Wishes.

"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."

The Food Was So Good That With Each Passing Course, Our Conversation Devolved Further Into Fragmented Celebrations Of Its Deliciousness: 'i Want This Dragon Carrot Risotto To Become A Person So I Can Take It To Las Vegas And Marry It.

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

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.

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

"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."

She Was Up And Down—from Fire And Brimstone To Smoke And Ashes.

Without Pain, We Couldn't Know Joy.

I Don't Know Why Boys Expect Us To Like Boy Movies. We Don't Expect Them To Like Girl Movies.

The Punch Connected, But (1) Colin Forgot To Close His Fist, So He Was Slapping Not Hitting, And (2) Instead Of Slapping Toc, He Ended Up Slapping Hassan Flush Across The Cheek, Whereupon Hassan Finally Succeeded In Falling Down.

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

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

That's The Great Thing About Being In The Third Grade. If You've Got One Polysyllabic Adjective, Everyone Thinks You're A Genius.

The Nature Of The Love Between A Parent And Child Really Is Literally Stronger Than Death. As Long As Either Person In That Relationship Is Alive, That Relationship Is Still Alive.

I Always Had This Secret Suspicion That I Was Special.

The World Went On, As It Does, Without My Full Participation, And I Only Woke Up From The Reverie When Someone Said My Name.

The Red Wheelbarrow" By William Carlos Williams. So Much Depends Upom A Red Wheel Barrow Glazed With Rain Water Beside The White Chickens.

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

We Don't Suffer From A Shortage Of Metaphors . . . But You Have To Be Careful Which Metaphor You Choose, Because It Matters.

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.

Augustus Waters Was The Great Star-crossed Love Of My Life. Ours Was An Epic Love Story, And I Won’t Be Able To Get More Than A Sentence Into It Without Disappearing Into A Puddle Of Tears. Gus Knew. Gus Knows. I Will Not Tell You Our Love Story, Because—like All Real Love Stories—it Will Die With Us, As It Should.

Nerd Life Is Just So Much Better Than Regular Life.

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.

Because There Is No Glory In Illness. There Is No Meaning To It. There Is No Honor In Dying Of.

I Thought Being An Adult Meant Knowing What You Believe, But That Has Not Been My Experience.

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

Books Are Like Tweets, Except Longer.

They Love Their Hair Because They're Not Smart Enough To Love Something More Interesting.

I Can't Remember, Because I Never Knew.

Real Gangster-ass Nerdfighters Don't Run From Nothing... 'cause Real Gangster-ass Nerdfighters Can't Run Fast.

It Is The Nature Of Stars To Cross

The Way We Still Essentializ, We're Constantly Essentializing People As Merely Poor, Or Merely Other, And In The End You Can't Have A Relationship With People. I Think The Biggest Job Of Adulthood Is To Learn To Imagine Other People Complexly.

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.

It Is So Hard To Leave—until You Leave. And Then It Is The Easiest Goddamned Thing In The World.

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

You Can Say A Lot Of Bad Things About Alabama, But You Can't Say That Alabamans As A People Are Duly Afraid Of Deep Fryers.

Because No One Can Catch The Motherfucking Fox.

Looking For Alaska Book

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

Every Second Of Your Definitionally Temporary Consciousness, You Are Choosing How You Spend Something That Will Not Last Forever.

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.

The Pleasure Of Remembering Had Been Taken From Me, Because There Was No Longer Anyone To Remember With. It Felt Like Losing Your Co-rememberer Meant Losing The Memory Itself, As If The Things We'd Done Were Less Real And Important Than They Had Been Hours Before.

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

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.

So She Became Impulsive, Scared By Her Inaction Into Perpetual Action. When The Eagle Confronted Her With The Expulsion, Maybe She Blurted Out Marya's Name Because It Was The First That Came To Mind, Because In That Moment She Didn't Want To Get Expelled And She Couldn't Think Past That Moment. She Was Scared, Sure. But More Importantly, Maybe She'd Been Scared Of Being Paralyzed By Fear Again. ~miles/pudge On Alaska, Pg 120-121

Our Role As Humans Is To Recognize The Complexity Of Others.

He Puts The Killing Thing In His Mouth But Doesn't Give It The Power To Kill Him.

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

I Don't Think You're Dying," I Said. "i Think You've Just Got A Touch Of Cancer. He Smiled. Gallows Humor.

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

Here's My Answer To The Very Real Existential Crisis That Grips Me Midway Through Everything I've Ever Tried To Do: I Think Stories Help Us Fight The Nihilistic Urges That Constantly Threaten To Consume Us.

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.

Teenagers Think They Are Invincible

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

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

Just Deleting Vandalism On The Chuck Norris Page," Radar Said. "for Instance, While I Do Think That Chuck Norris Specializes In The Roundhouse Kick, I Don't Think It's Accurate To Say, 'chuck Norris's Tears Can Cure Cancer, But Unfortunately He Has Never Cried.

Need Is Never A Good Basis For Any Relationship.

It Was Nice - In The Dark And The Quiet... And Her Eyes Looking Back, Like There Was Something In Me Worth Seeing.

This Is What I Love About Novels - Both Reading Them And Writing Them. They Jump Into The Abyss To Be With You Where You Are.

But There Was Nothing I Could Do To Dim The Supernovae Exploding Inside My Brain, An Endless Chain Of Intra Cranial Firecrackers

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Jesus, I'm Not Going To Be One Of Those People Who Sits Around Talking About What They're Going To Do. I'm Just Going To Do It.

Videogame Players Essentially Choose Whether To Win The Game Or To Die Heroically. There's A Certain Glory In Both.

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

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 Really Think That Reading Is Just As Important As Writing When You're Trying To Be A Writer Because It's The Only Apprenticeship We Have, It's The Only Way Of Learning How To Write A Story.

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?

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

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

You Were Clearly Not Doing Your Part In The Clover Search, Perv.

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She Fell Apart Because That's What Happens.

People, I Thought, Wanted Security. They Couldn't Bear The Idea Of Death Being A Big Black Nothing, Couldn't Bear The Thought Of Their Loved Ones Not Existing, And Couldn't Even Imagine Themselves Not Existing. I Finally Decided That People Believed In An Afterlife Because They Couldn't Bear Not To.

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!

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.

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 Hope You Didn't Bring The Asian Kid Along Thinking He's A Computer Genius. Because I'm Not," Takumi Said.

I Fear Your Faith Has Been Mis- Placed—but Then, Faith Usually Is.

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.

Stupid Truth, Always Resisting Simplicity

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

Teenagers Are Extremely Funny, And Extremely Clever And Intellectually Curious. But They're Also Willing To Ask Questions About The Meaning Of Life Without Disguising Them Around Irony, And Ask Questions About What Are Our Responsibilities To Other People Without Having To Couch It In Irony.

And So That Is The Question I Leave You With In This Final: What Is Your Cause For Hope?

Everlasting Life

I Shaved This Morning For Precisely That Reason. I Was Like, 'well, You Never Know When Someone Is Going To Clamp Down On Your Calf And Try To Suck Out The Snake Poison.

When People Call People Nerds, Mostly What They're Saying Is, 'you Like Stuff.' Which Is Not A Good Insult At All, Like, 'you Are Too Enthusiastic About The Miracle Of Human Conscience.

I Think That It's A Universal Urge To Have Our Pain Not Be Felt Alone And To Have Our Joys Not Be Felt Alone.

Radar Threw His Books Into His Locker And Shut It. Then The Din Of Conversation Around Us Quieted Just A Bit As He Turned His Eyes Toward The Heavens And Shouted, "it Is Not My Fault That My Parents Own The World's Largest Collection Of Black Santas.

Tiny Cooper Is Not The World's Gayest Person, And He Is Not The World's Largest Person, But I Believe He May Be The World's Largest Person Who Is Really, Really Gay, And Also The World's Gayest Person Who Is Really, Really Large.

I Kind Of Conned You Into Believing You Were Falling In Love With A Healthy Person.

Falling In Love

I Thought Of The One Thing About Home That I Missed, My Dad's Study With Its Built-in, Floor-to-ceiling Shelves Sagging With Thick Biographies And The Black Leather Chair That Kept Me Just Uncomfortable Enough To Keep From Feeling Sleepy As I Read.

Because You're Only Thinking They-might-not-like-me-they-might-not-like-me, And Guess What? When You Act Like That, No One Likes You.

Coal Miners Don't Get Coal Miners' Block.

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

And I Wanted To Tell Her That The Pleasure For Me Wasn't Planning Or Doing Or Leaving; The Pleasure Was In Seeing Our Strings Cross And Separate And Then Come Back Together.

Depression Is Not A Side Effect Of Cancer. Depression Is A Side Effect Of Dying.

Whenever You Read A Cancer Booklet Or Website Or Whatever, They Always List Depression Among The Side Effects Of Cancer. But, In Fact, Depression Is Not A Side Effect Of Cancer. Depression Is A Side Effect Of Dying.

So I Walked Back To My Room And Collapsed On The Bottom Bunk, Thinking That If People Were Rain, I Was Drizzle And She Was A Hurricane.

Unrequited Love

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.

What Happens In The Band Room Stays In The Band Room.

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

The World Is Broken, And All Our Attempts To Fix It Will Inevitably Fail, And Some Day All Life Will Be Extinguished From The Planet And There Will Be No One To Remember That Any Of Us Ever Did Anything. But This Fact, Strangely, Does Not Delegitimize Hope, Because Every Now And Again We Find Evidence That Hope Is Helpful. This Evidence, In My Opinion, Should Be Celebrated-even As We Lament And Fight The Devastation.

Because You're My Friend, Wingnut.

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 Believe The Universe Wants To Be Noticed. I Think The Universe Is Inprobably Biased Toward The Consciousness, That It Rewards Intelligence In Part Because The Universe Enjoys Its Elegance Being Observed. And Who Am I, Living In The Middle Of History, To Tell The Universe That It-or My Observation Of It-is Temporary?

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.

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

I Can't Be You. You Can't Be Me. You Can Imagine Another Well—but Never Quite Perfectly, You Know?

Eternity Bids Thee To Forget.

A Desert Blessing, An Ocean Curse.

She Would Stay On The Road And In Hiding, A Balloon Floating Through The Sky, Eating Up Hundreds Of Miles A Day With A Help Of The Perpetual Tailwind.

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.

Colder By The Hour, More Dead With Every Breath.

He Wanted To Draw Out The Moment Before The Moment- Because As Good As Kissing Feels, Nothing Feels As Good As The Anticipation Of It.

But Even If We Survive The Collapse Of Our Sun, We Will Not Survive Forever.

What's That?" "the Laundry Basket?" "no, Next To It." "i Don't See Anything Next To It." "it's My Last Shred Of Dignity. It's Very Small.

There Is Only One Things In This World Shittier Than Biting It From Cancer When You're Sixteen, And That's Having A Kid Who Bites It From Cancer.

I'm A Good Person But A Shitty Writer. You're A Shitty Person But A Good Writer. We'd Make A Good Team.

Youth Is Counted Sweetest By Those Who Are No Longer Young.

I Am Crying, He Thought, Opening His Eyes To Stare Through The Soapy, Stinging Water. I Feel Like Crying, So I Must Be Crying, But It's Impossible To Tell Because I'm Underwater. But He Wasn't Crying. Curiously, He Felt Too Depressed To Cry. Too Hurt. It Felt As If She'd Taken The Part Of Him That Cried.

A Margo For Each Of Us--and Each More Mirror Than Window.

One Of The Pitfalls About Writing About Illness Is That It Is Very Easy To Imagine People With Cancer As Either These Wise-beyond-their-years Creatures Or These Sad-eyed Tragic People. And The Truth Is, People Living With Cancer Are Very Much Like People Who Are Not Living With Cancer. They're Every Bit As Funny And Complex And Diverse As Anyone Else.

We're Invisible. I've Never Been Here With Someone Else. It's Different Being Invisible With Someone.

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

There Is Always The Risk: Something Is Good And Good And Good And Good, Then All At Once It Gets Awkward.

Thank You," I Say, Pounding His Back Probably Too Hard. "that Was The Best Damned Passenger-seat Driving I've Ever Seen In My Life." He Pats My Uninjured Cheek With His Greasy Hand. "i Did It To Save Myself, Not You," He Says. "believe Me When I Say That You Did Not Once Cross My Mind. " I Laugh. "nor You Mine," I Say.

Not Following Her Is The Hardest Thing I've Ever Done.

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

We Are Greater Than The Sum Of Our Parts.

The Five Of Us Walking Confidently In A Row, I'd Never Felt Cooler. The Great Perhaps Was Upon Us, And We Were Invincible. The Plan May Have Had Faults, But We Did Not.

I'm At The Eye Doctor. I'm Always At The Eye Doctor. It's Like This Is My Profession. I Am No Longer A Writer, I'm Now An Optomoligical Patient. By The Way, This Job Doesn't Pay Well.

Sexuality Is Important, But It's Certainly Not The Most Interesting Or Important Thing Happening To You Right Now. We Live In A World That Tells Us That There Are Only Two Important Things. One Is The Acquisition Of Goods And The Other Is Either The Acquisition Or Avoidance Of Sex, But It Turns Out That The Question Of Who's A Virgin And Who's A Virgout Is Not The Most Interesting Question.

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

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.

It's Almost As If The Way You Imagine My Dead Self Says More About You Than It Says About Either The Person I Was Or The Whatever I Am Now.

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

Abligurition: An Actual, If Very Obscure, English Word, Which Means The Spending Of Too Much Money On Food.

Nothing Really Mattered That Much, Not The Good Things And Not The Bad Ones. We Were In The Business Of Mutual Amusement, And We Were Reasonably Prosperous.

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

And Then Something Invisible Snapped Insider Her, And That Which Had Come Together Commenced To Fall Apart.

My Regret Was Immediate And Permanent And Useless.

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

I Choose The Labyrinth.

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

Why Are Breakfast Foods Breakfast Foods?

That Is, To Me At Least, One Of The Most Helpful And Useful Things Books Do For Us: They Are Generous Enough To Allow Us To Choose What Matters To Us.

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

The Thing About Chameleoning Your Way Through Life Is That It Gets To Where Nothing Is Real.

I'm Just Reveling In The Glory Of Not Having To Hear The Neediness And Impotence Of My Own Voice.

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 Told Myself – As I’ve Told Myself Before – That The Body Shuts Down When The Pain Gets Too Bad, That Consciousness Is Temporary, That This Will Pass. But Just Like Always, I Didn’t Slip Away. I Was Left On The Shore With The Waves Washing Over Me, Unable To Drown.

God Will Punish The Wicked. And Before He Does, We Will.

For She Had Embodied The Great Perhaps--she Had Proved To Me That It Was Worth It To Leave Behind My Minor Life For Grander Maybes, And Now She Was Gone And With Her My Faith In Perhaps.

I Spy With My Little Eye A Great Story.

I Want To Minimize The Deaths I Am Responsible For.

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.

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

It Was Psychological Trick Called Empathic Listening. You Say What The Person Is Feeling So They Feel Understood.

I Think If You Keep The Box Closed Long Enough You Do Kill The Cat, Actually.

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.

Something Invisible Snapped Inside Her.

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

Don't Swear In The Literal Heart Of Jesus.

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

I Tried--i Swear I Tried. But You Didn't Want To Hear What I Was Saying, And I Used That As An Excuse To Let It Go On.

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

Tonight, Darling, We Are Going To Right A Lot Of Wrongs.

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.

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

Everybody Was So Kind. Strong, Too. In The Darkest Days, The Lord Puts The Best People Into Your Life." "quick, Give Me A Throw Pillow And Some Thread Because That Needs To Be An Encouragement.

Books Are Seldom Useful Unless They Are Also Beautiful.

You Can't Just Make Yourself Matter And Then Die, Alaska, Because Now I Am Irretrievably Different, And I'm Sorry I Let You Go, Yes, But You Made The Choice. You Left Me Perhapsless, Stuck In Your Goddamned Labyrinth. And Now I Don't Even Know If You Chose The Straight And Fast Way Out, If You Left Me Like This On Purpose. And So I Never Knew You, Did I? I Can't Remember, Because I Never Knew.

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.

They Belong To Their Readers Now, Which Is A Great Thing–because The Books Are More Powerful In The Hands Of My Readers Than They Could Ever Be In My Hands.

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.

I Call My Mom From The Car. I Tell Her That Neutral Milk Hotel Is Playing At The Hideout And She Says, "who? What? You're Hiding Out?" And Then I Hum A Few Bars Of One Of Their Songs And Mom Says, "oh, I Know That Song. It's On The Mix You Made Me," And I Say, "right," And She Says, "well You Have To Be Back By Eleven," And I Say, "mom This Is A Historical Event. History Doesn't Have A Curfew," And She Says, "back By Eleven," And I Say, "fine. Jesus," And Then She Has To Go Cut Cancer Out Of Someone.

My Parents Always Liked It When I Cursed In Front Of Them. I Could See The Pleasure Of It In Their Faces. It Signified That I Trusted Them, That I Was Myself In Front Of Them.

Life Works Best When We Think Of People As People.

And I Put The Latte Down On A Table, Awash In The Happy Middle Of My Greatest Adventure.

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.

You Can't Just Make Me Different And Then Leave. You Can't. You Can't Change Me And Make My Whole Life Centered Around You, Then Leave.

Given The Final Futility Of Our Struggle, Is The Fleeting Jolt Of Meaning That Art Gives Us Valuable? Or Is The Only Value In Passing The Time As Comfortable As Possible? What Should A Story Seek To Emulate, Augustus? A Ringing Alarm? A Call To Arms? A Morphine Drip? Of Course, Like All Interrogation Of The Universe, This Line Of Inquiry Inevitably Reduces Us To Asking What It Means To Be Human And Whether—to Borrow A Phrase From The Angst-encumbered Sixteeen-year-olds You No Doubt Revile—there Is A Point To It All.

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.

You Never Know. It's Just. It's Like. Poof. And You're Gone.

Study Broadly And Without Fear.

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

We Have This Habit Of Romanticizing The Lives Of Writers. I Remember When I Was A Kid, I Was Like, 'i Want To Be Kurt Vonnegut.'

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

Waffles Are Just Awesome Bread.

Just Remember That Sometimes, The Way You Think About A Person Isn't The Way They Actually Are... People Are Different When You Can Smell Them And See Them Up Close.

You Gave Me A Forever Within The Numbered Days, And I'm Grateful.

I Felt Tired For The First Time, And I Thought Of Us Lying Down On Some Grassy Patch Of Seaworld Together, Me On My Back And She On Her Side With Her Arm Draped Against Me, Her Head On My Shoulder, Facing Me. Not Doing Anything--just Lying There Together Beneath The Sky, The Night Here So Well Lit That It Drowns Out The Stars. And Maybe I Could Feel Her Breathe Against My Neck, And Maybe We Could Just Stay There Until Morning And Then The People Would Walk Past Us As They Came Into The Park, And They Would See Us And Think That We Were Tourists, Too, And We Could Just Disappear Into Them.

The Light Filtered Throught The Leaves And Pine Needles Above As If Through Lace, The Ground Spotted In Shadow.

The Urge To Make Art Or Contemplate Philosophy Does Not Go Away When You Are Sick. Those Urges Just Become Transfigured By Illness.

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.

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

All The Things Paper-thin And Paper-frail, And All The People Too.

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Rebecca Ferguson

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