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At Least It Was Instant. At Least There Wasn't Any Pain." I Knew He Was Only Trying To Help, But He Didn't Get It. There Was Pain. A Dul Endless Pain In My Gut That Wouldn't Go Away Even When I Knelt On The Stingingly Frozen Tile Of The Bathroom, Dry-heaving.

-John Green

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At Least It Was

John Green

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At Least It Was Instant. At Least There Wasn't Any Pain." I Knew He Was Only Trying To Help, But He Didn't Get It. There Was Pain. A Dul Endless Pain In My Gut That Wouldn't Go Away Even When I Knelt On The Stingingly Frozen Tile Of The Bathroom, Dry-heaving.

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We Are Engaged Here In The Most Important Pusuit In History. The Search For Meaning. What Is What Is The Nature Of Being A Person? What Is The Best Way To Go About Being A Person?how Did We Come To Be, And Wha Will Become Of Us When We Are No Longer? In Short: What Are The Rules This Game, And How Might We Best Play It?

It's Like People Believe All You Need To Do Is Like The Same Bands In Order To Be Soulmates. Or Book. Oh My God...you Like The Outsiders Too...it's Like We're The Same Person! No, We're Not. It's Like We Have The Same English Teacher. There's A Difference.

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

For Me, The Hero’s Journey Is Not The Voyage From Weakness To Strength. The True Hero’s Journey Is The Voyage From Strength To Weakness.

Shouldn't Letting Go Be Painless If You've Never Learned How To Hold On?

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

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

Much Of My Life Had Been Devoted To Trying Not To Cry In Front Of People Who Loved Me, So I Knew What Augustus Was Doing. You Clench Your Teeth. You Look Up. You Tell Yourself That If They See You Cry, It Will Hurt Them, And You Will Be Nothing But A Sadness In Their Lives, And You Must Not Become A Mere Sadness, So You Will Not Cry, And You Say All Of This To Yourself While Looking Up At The Ceiling, And Then You Swallow Even Though Your Throat Does Not Want To Close And You Look At The Person Who Loves You And Smile.

Agustus Asked If I Wanted To Go With Him To Support Group, But I Was Really Tired From My Busy Day Of Having Cancer, So I Passed.

Thank You For Wearing That Dress Which Is Like Whoa.

There Is No Try. There Is Only Do.

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.

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

I Leaned In Toward Her, Suddenly Overwhelmed With The Feeling That We Must Kiss.

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

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.

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

Almost Everyone Is Obsessed With Leaving A Mark Upon The World. Bequeathing A Legacy. Outlasting Death. We All Want To Be Remembered. I Do, Too. That’s What Bothers Me Most, Is Being Another Unremembered Casualty In The Ancient And Inglorious War Against Disease.

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.

Night Falls Fast. Today Is The Past.

Augustus Waters Died Eight Days After His Prefuneral, At Memorial, In The Icu, When The Cancer, Which Was Made Of Him, Finally Stopped His Heart, Which Was Also Made Of Him.

She Never Liked Me Much, But She Sure Loved Me

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

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

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

Your Responsibility Is Not To The People You're Making The Gift For, But The Gift Itself.

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

The Funny Thing About Writing Is That Whether You're Doing Well Or Doing It Poorly, It Looks The Exact Same. That's Actually One Of The Main Ways That Writing Is Different From Ballet Dancing.

Patients Are Almost Always Preceded By Their Parents, Because No Matter How Fast An Ambulance Can Drive, Terrified Parents Can Drive Faster.

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

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

All Those Paper People Living In Their Paper Houses, Burning The Future To Stay Warm.

You Do Not Immortalize The Lost By Writing About Them. Language Buries, But Does Not Resurrect.

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.

She Waited For Me To Play Out The String, To Find The Place Where She Had Stopped And Was Waiting For Me, To Follow The Breadcrumb Tail Until It Dead-ended Into Her.

Caring Doesn't Sometimes Lead To Misery. It Always Does.

I Like This World. I Like Drinking Champagne. I Like Not Smoking. I Like Dutch People Speaking Dutch.

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.

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.

Suffering Is Universal. It’s The One Thing Buddhists, Christians, And Muslims Are All Worried About.

The Minister Said, “let Us Pray,” But As Everyone Else Bowed Their Head, I Could Only Stare Slack-jawed At The Sight Of Peter Van Houten. After A Moment, He Whispered, “we Gotta Fake Pray,” And Bowed His Head.

I Think Inspiration Is Always Around; It's Just A Question Of Whether Or Not You're Noticing It.

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

Writing, Or At Least Good Writing, Is An Outgrowth Of That Urge To Use Language To Communicate Complex Ideas And Experiences Between People. And That's True Whether You're Reading Shakespeare Or Bad Vampire Fiction-reading Is Always An Act Of Empathy. It's Always An Imagining Of What It's Like To Be Someone Else.

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

The Human Tongue Is Like Wasabi: It's Very Powerful, And Should Be Used Sparingly.

It Is A Good Life, Hazel Grace.

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

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

Augustus," I Said. "really. You Don't Have To Do This." "sure I Do," He Said. "i Found My Wish." "god, You're The Best," I Told Him. "i Bet You Say That To All The Boys Who Finance Your International Travel," He Answered.

We Can't Love Our Neighbors Till We Know How Crooked Their Hearts Are.

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

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

10-5 Space 16-5-14-19-5 Space 17-21-5 Space 10-5 Space 20-1-9-13-5.

It Hurts Because It Mattered.

She Did Not Need To Fold Into Herself And Self-destruct. Those Awful Things Are Survivable, Because We Are As Indestructible As We Believe Ourselves To Be. When Adults Say, "teenagers Think The Hate Invincible," With That Sly, Stupid Smile On Their Faces, They Don't Know How Right They Are. We Need Never Be Hopeless, Because We Can Never Be Irreparably Broken.

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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.

Imagine Others Complexly.

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

It Is Worth It To Leave Behing My Minor Life For Grander Maybes.

Entropy Increases. Things Fall Apart.

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

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‎"i Go To Seek A Great Perhaps.

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

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.

Whenever I'm Asked What Advice I Have For Young Writers, I Always Say That The First Thing Is To Read, And To Read A Lot. The Second Thing Is To Write. And The Third Thing, Which I Think Is Absolutely Vital, Is To Tell Stories And Listen Closely To The Stories You're Being Told.

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I Got My Wish, I Suppose. I Left My Scar.

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?

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Ben's Tongue Is Like Sunscreen...it's Good For Your Health And Should Be Applied Liberally.

I Was A Bit Of A Victorian Lady, Fainting-wise.

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

It Always Happened Like This: He Would Look And Look For The Keys To Satan’s Hearse And Then Finally He’d Just Give Up And Say, “fine. I’ll Take The Fugging Bus,” And On His Way Out The Door, He’d See The Keys. Keys Show Up When You Reconcile Yourself To The Bus; Katherines Appear When You Start To Disbelieve The World Contains Another Katherine; And, Sure Enough, The Eureka Moment Arrived Just As He Began To Accept It Would Never Come.

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

Getting A Life’ Is Something Only A Complete Idiot Could Believe. Like You Can Just Drive To A Store And Get A Life. See It In Its Shiny Box And Look Inside The Plastic Window And Catch A Glimpse Of Yourself In A New Life And Say, ‘wow, I Look Much Happier — I Think This Is The Life I Need To Get!’, Take It To The Counter, Ring It Up, Put It On Your Credit Card. If Getting A Life Was That Easy, We’d Be One Blissed-out Race.

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

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My Stomach Sank. Jp Had Come So Close. His Immigrant Parents Had Sacrificed So Much.

Immigrant Parents

Ben Starling, You Better Not Have Bought Your Token Black Friend A Racist Shirt

The Book Was Turned To The Page With Anne Frank's Name, But What Got Me About It Was The Fact That Right Beneath Her Name There Were Four Aron Franks. Four. Four Aron Franks Without Museums, Without Historical Markers, Without Anyone To Mourn Them. I Silently Resolved To Remember And Pray For The Four Aron Franks As Long As I Was Around.

Truth Resists Simplicity.

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.

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

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When You Stopped Wishing Things Wouldn't Fall Apart, You'd Stop Suffering When They Did.

Crying Adds Something: Crying Is You, Plus Tears. But The Feeling Colin Had Was Some Horrible Opposite Of Crying. It Was You, Minus Something. He Kept Thinking About One Word - Forever - And Felt The Burning Ache Just Beneath His Rib Cage.

She Cannot Possibly Be Dead, People Do Not Just Die

I Always Liked Routine. I Suppose I Never Found Boredom Very Boring.

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

The Part I Enjoy Most Is Not The Doing, But The Noticing.

We All Use The Future To Escape The Present.

Imagining The Future

But As For Me: I Must Ask The Wounded Man Where He Is Hurt, Because I Cannot Become The Wounded Man. The Only Wounded Man I Can Be Is Me.

So I Let Her Go, Too. And I'm Sorry.

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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.

Dumpers May Not Always Be The Heartbreakers, And The Dumpees May Not Always Be The Heartbroken. But Everyone Has A Tendency.

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.

There's Not Even Real *popularity* At My School." "that," Coli Said Emphatically, "is A Sentence That Has Only Ever Been Spoken By Popular People.

All Representations Of A Thing Are Inherently Abstract.

Because So Many People Use Goodreads, It Is An Amazingly Good—and Amazingly Underutilized—resource For Understanding What People Read, Why, And How They Feel About Their Reading Experiences.

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.

"you Are Fairly Smart," I Said After A While. "you Are Fairly Good At Compliments," He Answered.

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

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

So We Gave Up. I'd Finally Had Enough Of Chasing After A Ghost Who Did Not Want To Be Seen. We'd Failed, Maybe, But Some Mysteries Aren't Meant To Be Solved.

Standing In Line Is A Form Of Oppression

Standing In Line

If You Don't Say The Honest Thing, It Never Becomes True.

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.

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

The Town Was Paper, But The Memories Were Not.

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

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

Nothing To Be Gained By Worrying Between Now And Then.

By The Power Of The Superglue Beer Sword, I Designate You My Driver!

Need Is Never A Good Basis For Any Relationship.

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

Right, Except I'm Not Going To Lie To My Mom, Because What Kind Of (man) Lies To His Own Mother?

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 Ran Like A Cheetah - Well, Like A Cheetah That Smoked Too Much.

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

You Can't Not Like "the Great Gatsby." It's Got The Best Sentences In, Like, Ever.

It Always Shocked Me When I Realized That I Wasn’t The Only Person In The World Who Thought And Felt Such Strange And Awful Things.

Pudge, My Friend, We Are Indefuckingstructible.

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.

[this] Is Very Important To Remember When Reading Or Writing Or Talking Or Whatever: You Are Never, Ever Choosing Whether To Use Symbols. You Are Choosing Which Symbols To Use.

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The Sun Was A Toddler Insistently Refusing To Go To Bed: It Was Past Eight Thirty And Still Light.

Whatever. Great Day. Today. Best Day Of My Life.

The Catholic Hierarchy Has Become More Conservative. What We Don't Know Is Whether [catholic Voters] Will Become Increasingly Conservative, Or .. Stay Swing Voters.

What Happened?" "during The Kiss?" "no, With You And Caroline." "oh," He Said. And Then After A Second, "caroline Is No Longer Suffering From Personhood.

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

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Keeping Promises

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Falling In Love

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

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!

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.

Maybe 'okay' Will Be Our 'always

In The Contemporary World Where Things Fall Apart, And The Centre Cannot Hold, You Have To Imagine A Community Where There Is No Centre. Hank, At The End Of This Year I Started Thinking That A Lot Of Life Is About Doing Things That Don’t Suck With People Who Don’t Suck.

I Couldn’t Help But Think About School And Everything Else Ending. I Liked Standing Just Outside The Couches And Watching Them—it Was A Kind Of Sad I Didn’t Mind, And So I Just Listened, Letting All The Happiness And The Sadness Of This Ending Swirl Around In Me, Each Sharpening The Other. For The Longest Time, It Felt Kind Of Like My Chest Was Cracking Open, But Not Precisely In An Unpleasant Way.

There Are Always Answers. We Just Have To Be Smart Enough.

People Are Such Idiots. As If There's Something Wrong With Being In Love.

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.

A Paper Town For A Paper Girl.

That's Absolutely True, About The Eight Glasses A Day. There's No Reason Whatsoever To Drink Eight Glasses Of Water A Day Unless You, For Whatever Reason, Particularly Like The Taste Of Water. Most Experts Agree That Unless There's Something Horribly Wrong With You, You Should Just Drink Water Whenever You're - Get This - Thirsty.

You'll Live Forever In Our Hearts, Big Man. That Particularly Galled Me, Because It Implied The Immortality Of Those Left Behind: You Will Live Forever In My Memory, Because I Will Live Forever! I Am Your God Now, Dead Boy! I Own You!

Always' Was A Promise! How Can You Just Break The Promise?" "sometimes People Don't Always Understand The Promises They're Making When They Make Them," I Said. Isaac Shot Me A Look. "right, Of Course. But You Keep The Promise Anyway. That's What Love Is. Love Is Keeping The Promise Anyway. Don't You Believe In True Love?" I Didn't Answer. I Didn't Have An Answer. But I Thought That If True Love Did Exist, That Was A Pretty Good Definition Of It.

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.

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.

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

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

I Wrote My First Novel And My Second Novel In Chicago. It Was The Place Where I Became A Writer. It's My Favorite City.

The Whole Thing Was The Precise Opposite Of What I Figured It Would Be: Slow And Patient And Quiet And Neither Particularly Painful Nor Particularly Ecstatic

If Drunk Were Cookies, I'd Be Famous Amos

I Wouldn’t Have A Career If It Weren’t For Independent Bookstores.

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

Life Has Become The Future. Every Moment Of Your Life Is Lived For The Future.

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

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.

We Are Greater Than The Sum Of Our Parts.

I Find It Really Offensive When People Say That The Emotional Experiences Of Teenagers Are Less Real Or Less Important Than Those Of Adults. I Am An Adult, And I Used To Be A Teenager, And So I Can Tell You With Some Authority That My Feelings Then Were As Real As My Feelings Are Now.

You See How Fake It All Is. It's Not Even Hard Enough To Be Made Out Of Plastic. It's A Paper Town.

Suffering Is Universal.

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.

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

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

And Then We Were Kissing. My Hand Let Go Of The Oxygen Cart And I Reached Up For His Neck, And He Pulled Me Up By My Waist Onto My Tiptoes. As His Parted Lips Met Mine, I Started To Feel Breathless In A New And Fascinating Way. The Space Around Us Evaporated, And For A Weird Moment I Really Liked My Body, This Cancer-ruined Thing I'd Spent Years Dragging Around Suddenly Seemed Worth The Struggle, Worth The Chest Tubes And Picc Lines And The Ceaseless Bodily Betrayal Of The Tumors.

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.

The Vast Majority Of Us Imagine Ourselves As Like Literature People Or Math People. But The Truth Is That The Massive Processor Known As The Human Brain Is Neither A Literature Organ Or A Math Organ. It Is Both And More.

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.

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.

I Wanted More Time So We Could Fall In Love.

Falling In Love

Oh, God, Alaska, I Love You. I Love You,' And The Colonel Whispered, 'i'm So Sorry, Pudge. I Know You Did,' And I Said, 'no. Not Past Tense.

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.

I Wish I Knew How To Quit You, Tumblr.

So Often We Try To Make Other People Feel Better By Minimizing Their Pain, By Telling Them That It Will Get Better (which It Will) Or That There Are Worse Things In The World (which There Are). But That's Not What I Actually Needed. What I Actually Needed Was For Someone To Tell Me That It Hurt Because It Mattered. I Have Found This Very Useful To Think About Over The Years, And I Find That It Is A Lot Easier And More Bearable To Be Sad When You Aren't Constantly Berating Yourself For Being Sad.

Thomas Edison's Last Words Were 'it's Very Beautiful Over There'. I Don't Know Where There Is, But I Believe It's Somewhere, And I Hope It's Beautiful.

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

Her Hair Is Ridiculous," I Said. "i Know. That Was The Only Thing I Said About Her That Was True. When You Say Nasty Things About People, You Should Never Say The True Ones, Because You Can't Really Fully And Honestly Take Those Back, You Know? I Mean, There Are Highlights. And There Are Streaks. And Then There Are Skunk Stripes.

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.

Why Would You Try To Kill This Guy, Kevin? He's A Genius. Nuts To Your Truce.

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

I've Gotten Thrown Out Of Thirty-seven Straight Games,' He Said. 'once Or Twice, I've Had To Go Really Crazy. I Ran Onto The Court With Eleven Seconds Left Once And Stole The Ball From The Other Team. It Wasn't Pretty. But, You Know. I Have A Streak To Maintain.

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

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.

That's Why People Grow Weary Of Listening To Dumpees Obsess Over Their Troubles: Getting Dumped Is Predictable, Repetitive, And Boring. They Want To Stay Friends; They Feel Smothered; It's Always Them And It's Never You; And Afterward, You're Devastated And Their Relieved; It's Over For Them And Just Starting For You.

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.

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

All Hurt Is Brain Hurt.

You Have A Choice In This World, I Believe, About How To Tell Sad Stories, And We Made The Funny Choice.

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Earl Nightingale

Ayaan Hirsi Ali

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