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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.

-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.

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I Think All True Stories Are Hopeful Stories. I Don't Think There's Any Room For Nihilism.

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

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.

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.

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!

One Swing Set, Well Worn But Structurally Sound, Seeks New Home. Make Memories With Your Kid Or Kids So That Someday He Or She Or They Will Look Into The Backyard And Feel The Ache Of Sentimentality As Desperately As I Did This Afternoon. It's All Fragile And Fleeting, Dear Reader, But With This Swing Set, Your Child(ren) Will Be Introduced To The Ups And Downs Of Human Life Gently And Safely, And May Also Learn The Most Important Lesson Of All: No Matter How Hard You Kick, No Matter How High You Get, You Can't Go All The Way Around.

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

When You Acknowledge That There Is Nothing Repulsive Or Unforgivable Or Shameful About Yourself, It Becomes Easier To Be That Authentic Person And Feel Like You're Living A Less Performed Life.

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

Nerd Girls Are The World's Greatest Under-utilized Romantic Resource.

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.

I Hadn’t Been In Proper School In Three Years. My Parents Were My Two Best Friends. My Third Best Friend Was An Author Who Did Not Know I Existed.

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 Mean, If Hardee's Is Urban, I'm Not Sure I Want To See Rural.

The Town Was Paper, But The Memories Were Not.

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

Colin Singleton’s Distance From His Glasses Made Him Realize The Problem: Myopia. He Was Nearsighted. The Future Lay Before Him, Inevitable But Invisible.

Tiny, The Next Time That You Try To Set Me Up With A Girl With A Secret Boyfriend Can You At Least Inform Me That She Has A Secret Boyfriend? Also, If You Don't Call Me Back Within Five Minutes, I'm Going To Assume You Found A Way Back To Evanston. Furthermore, You Are An Asshat. That Is All.

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

"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."

And I Will Forget Her, Yes. That Which Came Together Will Fall Apart Slowly, But She Will Forgive My Forgetting, Just As I Forgive Her For Forgetting Me And The Colonel And Nothing But Herself And Her Mom In Those Last Moments As She Spent As A Person.

Teenagers Think They Are Invincible

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

I’ve Stopped Thinking About It. I Don’t Have Time To Have A Girlfriend. I Have Like A Full-time Job Learning How To Be Blind.

For The Longest Time, It Felt Kind Of Like My Chest Was Cracking Open, But Not Precisely In An Unpleasant Way.

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.

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

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

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 Mean, I Am Pretty Fabulous. Am I Not?' 'you're A Pillar Of Fabulosity In The Community,' I Tell Him.

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.

If I Could Just Stay Alive For A Week, I’d Know The Unwritten Secrets Of Anna’s Mom And The Dutch Tulip Guy.

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.

The Only Way Out Of The Labyrinth Of Suffering Is To Forgive.

And So Much Depends, I Told Augustus, Upon A Blue Sky Cut Open By The Branches Of The Trees Above. So Much Depends Upon The Transparent G-tube Erupting From The Gut Of The Blue-lipped Boy. So Much Depends Upon The Observer Of The Universe.

I’m On A Roller Coaster That Only Goes Up, My Friend.

You Get All These Friends Just When You Don’t Need Friends Anymore.

Nerdighters Make Me Believe In America Again.

Eternity Bids Thee To Forget.

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.

People Will Say It's Sad That She Leaves A Lesser Scar, That Fewer Remember Her, That She Was Loved Deeply But Not Widely. But It's Not Sad, Van Houten. It's Triumphant. It's Heroic. Isn't That The Real Heroism? Like The Doctors Say: First, Do No Harm.

We Cannot Be Born, And We Cannot Die. Like All Energy, We Can Only Change Shapes And Sizes And Manifestations.

We Live In This Irreparably Broken World, And I Don't Wish To Deny Reality, But The Amazing Thing To Me Is Not That We Refuse To Relinquish Hope As A Species. The Amazing Thing Is That We're Right To Hold On To Hope. The World May Be Broken, But Hope Is Not Crazy. ... Obviously Not All Stories End Happily. We Don't Always Have Good Fortune, But Hope Gives Us, As A Species And As Individuals, What We Otherwise Wouldn't Have: A Chance.

Chicago Is The Great American City, And It Was Really Great To Live There During A Time Of Economic Expansion And Opportunity And Growth. I Felt Like I Was Living At The Center Of The World. Unlike New York, No One Expects You To Be A Professional Writer.

By The Way, I've Decided To Start Referring To Myself Exclusively As 'daddy.' Everytime Daddy Would Otherwise Say 'i' Or 'me,' Daddy Is Now Going To Say 'daddy.

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.

I Am Concussed," I Announced, Entirely Sure Of My Self-diagnosis.

The Not Knowing Would Not Keep Me From Caring.

Nothing To Be Gained By Worrying Between Now And Then.

Stupid Human Voices Always Ruining Everything.

Ruining Everything

The True Ninja Doesn't Make A Splash At All.

Anyway, That Was The Last Good Day I Had With Gus Until The Last Good Day.

I Hated Sports. I Hated Sports, And I Hated People Who Played Them, And I Hated People Who Watched Them, And I Hated People Who Didn't Hate People Who Watched Or Played Them.

I Wanted More Time So We Could Fall In Love.

Falling In Love

That Was The Worst Part About Having Cancer, Sometimes: The Physical Evidence Of Disease Separates You From Other People.

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

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.

Reading With An Eye Towards Metaphor Allows Us To Become The Person We’re Reading About, While Reading About Them. That’s Why There Is Symbols In Books And Why Your English Teacher Deserves Your Attention. Ultimately, It Doesn’t Matter If The Author Intended The Symbol To Be There Because The Job Of Reading Is Not To Understand The Author’s Intent. The Job Of Reading Is To Use Stories As A Way Into Seeing Other People As A We Ourselves.

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.

Omnis Cellula E Cellula," He Said Again. "all Cells Come From Cells. Every Cell Is Born Of A Previous Cell, Which Was Born Of A Previous Cell. Life Comes From Life. Life Begets Life Begets Life Begets Life Begets Life.

She's Cute, I Thought, But You Don't Need To Like A Girl Who Treats You Like You're Ten: You've Already Got A Mom.

You Cannot Invent An Algorithm That Is As Good At Recommending Books As A Good Bookseller.

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.

Mental Health Days Only Exist For People Who Have The Luxury Of Saying 'i Don't Want To Deal With Things Today' And Then Can Take The Whole Day Off, While The Rest Of Us Are Stuck Fighting The Fights We Always Fight, With No One Really Caring One Way Or Another, Unless...

One Of The Others Shouted A Translation: "the Beautiful Couple Is Beautiful.

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

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.

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

Miscalculations

Waffles аrе јust Awesome Bread.

Sometimes The Way You Think About Someone Isn't The Way They Actually Are.

All Of Us, Poor & Rich Alike, Have Been Conditioned By Our Upbringings. Impoverished Men & Women May Become Lulled Into A State Of "learned Helplessness" Without Hope To Change Their Lives. Likewise, The Wealthy Can Walk In A State Of "learned Blindness" Ignoring The Desperation Of The Local & Global Poor.

The Colonel Explained To Me That 1. This Was Alaska's Room, And That 2. She Had A Single Room Because The Girl Who Was Supposed To Be Her Roommate Got Kicked Out At The End Of Last Year, And That 3. Alaska Had Cigarettes, Although The Colonel Neglected To Ask Whether 4. I Smoked, Which 5. I Didn't.

What The Hell Is Instant? Nothing Is Instant.

As Lives Go, I'll Take The Quietly Desperate Over The Radically Bipolar.

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

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 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 Was Not An Adventure, She Was Not A Fine And Precious Thing. She Was A Girl.

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.

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

Books Belong To Their Readers.

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.

At Least For Tonight. In Sickness And In Health. In Good Times And In Bad. For Richer, For Poorer. 'till Dawn Do Us Part.

At Some Point, I Realized I Was Kaitlyning The Encounter, So I Decided To Text Kaitlyn And Ask For Some Advice.

This Fear Bears No Analogy To Any Fear I Knew Before. This Is The Basest Of All Possible Emotions, The Feeling That Was With Us Before We Existed, Before This Building Existed, Before The Earth Existed. 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.

Such Is Life. We Grow Up. Planets Like Tiny Get New Moons. Moons Like Me Get New Planets.

Home Is Where The Heart Is, Good Friends Are Hard To Find And Impossible To Forget. True Love Is Born From Hard Times.

The Dead Are Visible Only In The Terrible Lidless Eye Of Memory. The Living, Thank Heaven, Retain The Ability To Surprise And To Disappoint. - Van Houten

Books So Special And Rare And Yours That Advertising Your Affection Feels Like A Betrayal.

You Live For Pretentious Metaphors.

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

You Can't Just Make Me Different, And Then Leave. Because I Was Fine Before, Alaska. I Was Just Fine With Me And Last Words And School Friends, And You Can't Just Make Me Different And Then Die.

There Are Infinite Numbers Between 0 And 1.

It's Not Fair," I Said. "it's Just So Goddamned Unfair." "the World," He Said, "is Not A Wishgranting Factory.

Some Tourists Think Amsterdam Is A City Of Sin, But In Truth It Is A City Of Freedom. And In Freedom, Most People Find Sin.

We Kiss. Her Hands Are Freezing On My Face, And She Tastes Like Coffee And The Smell Of The Onion Is Still Stuck In My Nose, And My Lips Are All Dry From The Endless Winter. And It's Awesome.

I Don't Know Where People Got The Idea That Characters In Books Are Supposed To Be Likable. Books Are Not In The Business Of Creating Merely Likeable Characters With Whom You Can Have Some Simple Identification With. Books Are In The Business Of Creating Great Stories That Make You're Brain Go Ahhbdgbdmerhbergurhbudgerbudbaaarr.

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.

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

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

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.

He Is Both The Source Of My Happiness And The One I Want To Share It With. I Have To Believe That’s A Sign.

It's Total Bullshit," He Said. "the Whole Thing. Eighty Percent Survival Rate And He's In The Twenty Percent? Bullshit. He Was Such A Bright Kid. It's Bullshit. I Hate It. But It Was Sure A Privilege To Love Him, Huh?

The Abbreviated Exam Week Meant That Wednesday Was The Last Day Of School For Us. And All Day Long, It Was Hard Not To Walk Around, Thinking About The Lastness Of It All.

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

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.

And I Agreed, But Still, She Owed Us An Explanation. If She Was Up There, Down There, Out There, Somewhere, Maybe She Would Laugh.

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?

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

She Has Enough Black Eyeliner On To Outline A Corpse, And Her Skin's So Pale She Looks Like She's Just Broken Dawn.

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.

There's Some People In This World Who You Can Just Love And Love And Love No Matter What.

We Are Greater Than The Sum Of Our Parts.

Finally, I Decided That The Proper Strategy Was To Stare Back. Boys Do Not Have A Monopoly On The Staring Business, After All. So I Looked Him Over And Soon It Was A Staring Contest. After A While The Boy Smiled, And Then Finally His Blue Eyes Glanced Away. When He Looked Back At Me, I Flicked My Eyebrows Up To Say, I Win. He Shrugged

But Why Alaska?' I Asked Her. 'well, Later, I Found Out What It Means. It's From An Aleut Word, Alyeska. It Means 'that Which The Sea Breaks Against,' And I Love That. But At The Time, I Just Saw Alaska Up There. And It Was Big, Just Like I Wanted To Be.

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.

Oh, Wikipedia, With Your Tension Between Those Who Would Share Knowledge And Those Who Would Destroy It.

Sharing Knowledge

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.

Different Authors Write Different Ways, Have Different Relationships With Their Audiences, And Those Are All Legitimate.

You Can't Dingleberry That! That's A Flagrant Misuse Of The Dingleberry!

I Do Love You And What Else Matters But That

The Weird Thing About Houses Is That They Almost Always Look Like Nothing Is Happening Inside Of Them, Even Though They Contain Most Of Our Lives. I Wondered If That Was Sort Of The Point Of Architecture.

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.

...whatever You're Worried About, You're Bigger Than The Worries.

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

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.

I Hate The Rich Snots Here With A Fervent Passion I Usually Reserve Only For Dental Work And My Father.

Do You Ever Wonder Whether People Would Like You More Or Less If They Could See Inside You? But I Always Wonder About That. If People Could See Me The Way I See Myself—if They Could Live In My Memories—would Anyone, Anyone, Love Me?

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.

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

We Have This Weird Thing In The World Where You Don't Get Insulted For What You Do, You Get Insulted For Who You Are.

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

He'd Fought Hard, Lida Told Me, As If There Was Another Way To Fight.

Boys Are Much More Likely To Objectify Girls Bodies, While Boys Are Seen By Girls As Whole People.

He Called Out To His Fellow Monks,'come Quickly I Am Tasting Stars.

I Have An Augustus Waters Fetish.

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.

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

Tobin," Mom Said Disapprovingly. She Wasn't A Particularly Funny Person. It Suited Her Professionally - I Mean, You Don't Want Your Cancer Surgeon To Walk Into The Examination Room And Be Like, "guy Walks Into A Bar. Bartender Says, 'what'll Ya Have?' And The Guy Says, 'whaddya Got?' And The Bartender Says, 'i Don't Know What I Got, But I Know What You Got: Stage Iv Melanoma.

And Then The Line Was Quite But Not Dead. I Almost Felt Like He Was There In My Room With Me, But In A Way It Was Better, Like I Was Not In My Room And He Was Not In His, But Instead We Were Together In Some Invisible And Tenuous Third Space That Could Only Be Visited On The Phone.

Oh, I Wouldn't Mind, Hazel Grace. It Would Be A Privilege To Have My Heart Broken By You.

Crying Is You, Plus Tears

Like, In General I Think People Have Very Complicated Reasons For Wanting Things, And We Often Have No Idea Whether We’re Actually Motivated By Altruism Or A Desire To Hook Up Or A Search For Answers Or What. I Always Get Annoyed When In Books Or Movies Characters Want Clear Things For Clear Reasons, Because My Experience Of Humanness Is That I Always Want Messy Things For Messy Reasons.

I Was Not Religious, But I Liked Rituals. I Liked The Idea Of Connecting An Action With Remembering.

Amsterdam Is Like The Rings Of A Tree: It Gets Older As You Get Closer To The Center.

The Preciousness Of The Moment, Which Should Make It Easier To Talk, Makes It Harder.

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.

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

Teenagers Have More Intense Reading Experiences Because They've Had Fewer Of Them. It's Like The First Time You Fall In Love. You Have A Connection To That First Person You Fell In Love With Because It Was So Intense And Unprecedented.

Falling In Love

He Liked The Mere Act Of Reading, The Magic Of Turning Scratches On A Page Into Words Inside His Head.

But My Miracle Was Different. My Miracle Was This: Out Of All The Houses In All The Subdivisions In All Of Florida, I Ended Up Living Next Door To Margo Roth Spiegelman.

From The Front Rdar Announces, "don't You Go Talking Bad About Gofast Bars. Do You Want Me To Stop This Car?" "whenever I Eat A Gofast Bar," Ben Says, "i'm Always Like, 'so This Is What Blood Tastes Like To Mosquitoes.

I Do Not Say Goodbye. I Believe That's One Of The Bullshitiest Words Ever Invented. It's Not Like You're Given The Choice To Say Bad-bye, Or Awful-bye, Or Couldn't-care-less-about-you-bye. Everytime You Leave, It's Supposed To Be A Good One.

If I Ever End Up Being The Kind Of Person Who Has One Kid And Seven Bedrooms. Do Me A Favor And Shoot Me.

Hurt Tends To Drown Out Sorry.

I Feel Like My Life Is So Scattered Right Now. Like It's All The Small Pieces Of Paper And Someone's Turned On The Fan. But, Talking To You Makes Me Feel Like The Fan's Been Turned Off For A Little Bit. Like Things Could Actually Make Sense. You Completely Unscatter Me, And I Appreciate That So Much.

But It Was Only Hot Outside, And Generally I Only Walked Outside Between One Air-conditioned Place To Another.

But Monotony Doesn't Make For Painlessness.

The Degree To Which I Am Blessed Staggers Me... The Degree To Which I Take That For Granted Shames Me. -streetwalking With Jesus

But There Are A Thousand Ways To Look At It: Maybe The Strings Break, Or Maybe Our Ship S Sink, Or Maybe We're Grass--our Roots So Interdependent That No One Is Dead As Long As Someone Is Still Alive. We Don't Suffer From A Shortage Of Metaphors, Is What I Mean. But You Have To Be Careful Which Metaphor You Choose, Because It Matters.

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

The Fourth Way To Get A Boy To Like You Is To Be Yourself. Now, I Am Contractually Obligated As An Adult To Give That Advice, Even Though It Doesn't Work. But Yeah, Be Yourself, Even Though No One Has Any Idea What It Means To Be Yourself. Like Whose Self Would I Otherwise Be Being?

I Wanted To, You Know, Get My Story Out In The World, Which, It Turns Out, Is A Very Misguided Notion.

I'm A Bad Boyfriend. She's A Bad Girlfriend. We Deserve Each Other.

Looking For Alaska Book

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.

If I Could Do It All Over Again," He Said, His Speech Slow And Vaguely Mangled By His Massive Lower Lip, "i'd Just Let Myself Be Trampled To Death By The Satan Pig.

Books Are The Ultimate Dumpees: Put Them Down And They’ll Wait For You Forever; Pay Attention To Them And They Always Love You Back.

I Like To Know The Places I Write About. I Feel Like It Helps Me Ground The Novel. My Novels Are 'realistic Novels,' But They Can Also Be Fantastical, So It's Nice To Have A Setting That Grounds Them A Little Bit.

I Feel Like Crying, So I Must Be Crying, But It's Impossible To Tell Because I'm Underwater.

The Only Thing Worse Than Having A Party That No One Attends Is Having A Party Attended Only By Two Vastly, Deeply Uninteresting People.

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

The Idea Is That For Ten Minutes, We Forget That We Have Feelings. And We Forget About Protecting Ourselves Or Other People And We Just Say The Truth. For Ten Minutes. And Then We Can Go Back To Being Lame.

We All Matter - Maybe Less Then A Lot But Always More Than None.

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

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

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.

You Could Hear The Wind In The Leaves, And On That Wind Traveled The Screams Of The Kids On The Playground In The Distance, The Little Kids Figuring Out How To Be Alive, How To Navigate A World That Was Not Built For Them By Navigating A Playground That Was. . . Who Am I To Say That These Things Might Not Be Forever? Who Is Pete Van Houten To Assert As Fact The Conjecture That Our Labor Is Temporary? All I Know Of Heaven And All I Know Of Death Is In This Park: An Elegant Universe In Ceaseless Motion, Teeming With Ruined Ruins And Screaming Children.

Standing In Line Is A Form Of Oppression

Standing In Line

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.

For A Moment, She Was Quiet. Then She Grabbed My Hand, Whispered, “run Run Run Run Run,” And Took Off, Pulling Me Behind Her.

I Wanted To Be One Of Those People Who Have Streaks To Maintain, Who Scorch The Ground With Their Intensity. But For Now, At Least I Knew Such People, And They Needed Me, Just Like Comets Need Tails.

And I Wrote My Way Out Of The Labyrinth.

The Dead Are Visible Only In The Terrible Lidless Eye Of Memory.

Did I Help You Toward A Fate You Didn't Want, Alaska, Or Did I Just Assist In Your Willful Self-destruction?

At The End, We Brought Her To New York, Where I Was Living, For A Series Of Experimental Tortures That Increased The Misery Of Her Days Without Increasing The Number Of Them.

Every Paper Girl Needs At Least One String.

Alaska Decided To Go Help Dolores With Dinner. She Said That It Was Sexist To Leave The Cooking To The Women, But Better To Have Good Sexist Food Than Crappy Boy-prepared Food.

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

We Fell. We Got Up. We Ran.

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

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.

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 Hate The Idea That, When It Comes To Books And Learning, Hard Is Often Seen As The Opposite Of Fun. It's Strange To Me That We Should Be So Quick To Give Up On A Book Or A Math Problem When We Are So Willing To Grapple, For Centuries If Necessary, With A Single Level Of Angry Birds.

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.

Let Me Just Acknowlege That The Function Of Grammar Is To Make Language As Efficent And Clear And Transparent As Possible. But If We’re All Constantly Correcting Each Other’s Grammar And Being Really Snotty About It, Then People Stop Talking Because They Start To Be Petrified That They’re Going To Make Some Sort Of Terrible Grammatical Error And That’s Precisely The Opposite Of What Grammar Is Supposed To Do, Which Is To Facilitate Clear Communication.

That’s Part Of What I Like About The Book In Some Ways. It Portrays Death Truthfully. You Die In The Middle Of Your Life, In The Middle Of A Sentence

Death And Dying

But A Lot Of Times, People Die How They Live. And So Last Words Tell Me A Lot About Who People Were, And Why They Became The Sort Of People Biographies Get Written About.

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

Truth Defies Simplicity.

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

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John C. Maxwell

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