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Don't Lie To Anyone, But Particularly Don't Lie To Millennials. They Just Know. They Can Smell It. Be Yourself: If You're Old, Be Old. If You Don't Know Anything About Pop Culture, Don't Pretend To Know Anything About Pop Culture. When You Credit Teenagers With Intelligence And Emotional Sophistication, They Respond Intelligently And With Emotional Sophistication.

-John Green

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Don't Lie To Anyone,

John Green

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Don't Lie To Anyone, But Particularly Don't Lie To Millennials. They Just Know. They Can Smell It. Be Yourself: If You're Old, Be Old. If You Don't Know Anything About Pop Culture, Don't Pretend To Know Anything About Pop Culture. When You Credit Teenagers With Intelligence And Emotional Sophistication, They Respond Intelligently And With Emotional Sophistication.

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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.

You Should See It. V For Vendetta I Mean. "i'll Look It Up." No. With Me. At My House. Now

The Romans Knew It: Quod Me Alit Me Extinguit, They Said: That Which Nourishes Me, Extinguishes Me.

His Every Syllable Flirted. Honestly, He Kind Of Turned Me On. I Didn't Even Know That Guys Could Turn Me On-not, Like, In Real Life

The Point Is That There Are Always Answers.

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

The Right Story Needs The Right Telling.

You Are Going To Live A Good And Long Life Filled With Great And Terrible Moments That You Cannot Even Imagine Yet.

The Future Will Erase Everything--there's No Level Of Fame Or Genius That Allows You To Transcend Oblivion. The Infinite Future Makes That Kind Of Mattering Impossible.

How About I Call You When I Finish This?” “but You Don’t Even Have My Phone Number,” He Said. “i Strongly Suspect You Wrote It In The Book.” He Broke Out Into That Goofy Smile. “a Nd You Say We Don’t Know Each Other.

I Think Forever Is An Incorrect Concept.

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.

On The Morning In Question, She Wore White Shorts And A Pink T-shirt That Featured A Green Dragon Breathing A Fire Of Orange Glitter. It Is Difficult To Explain How Awesome I Found This T-shirt At The Time.

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.

Chuck Parson Did Not Participate In Organized Sports, Because To Do So Would Distract From His Larger Goal Of His Life: To One Day Be Convicted Of Murder

Before I Got Here, I Thought For A Long Time That The Way Out Of The Labyrinth Was To Pretend That It Did Not Exist, To Build A Small, Self-sufficient World In The Back Corner Of The Endless Maze And To Pretend That I Was Not Lost, But Home.

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.

All Representations Of A Thing Are Inherently Abstract.

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.

Talking To A Drunk Person Was Like Talking To An Extremely Happy, Severely Brain-damaged Three-year-old.

He Took A Bite, Swallowed. "god. If Asparagus Tasted Like That All The Time, I'd Be Vegetarian, Too." Some People In A Lacquered Wooden Boat Approached Us On The Canal Below. One Of Them, A Woman With Curly Blond Hair, Maybe Thirty, Drank From A Beer Then Raised Her Glass Towards Us And Shouted Something. "we Don't Speak Dutch," Gus Shouted Back. One Of The Others Shouted A Translation: "the Beautiful Couple Is Beautiful.

I Was Thinking About The Universe Wanting To Be Noticed, And How I Had To Notice It As Best I Could. I Felt That I Owed A Debt To The Universe That Only My Attention Could Repay, And Also That I Owed A Debt To Everybody Who Didn’t Get To Be A Person Anymore And Everyone Who Hadn’t Gotten To Be A Person Yet.

I Am Still Bowled Over By This Great Young Adult Novel By David Levithan Called 'every Day,' Which Is About A Character With No Gender Or Body Who Wakes Up Every Day In The Body Of A Different Person. It's A Really Impressive Execution Of A Really Great Premise.

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

I Figured Something Out," He Said Aloud. "the Future Is Unpredictable." Hassan Said, "sometimes The Kafir Likes To Say Massively Obvious Things In A Really Profound Voice.

Of Course I Tensed Up When He Touched Me. To Be With Him Was To Hurt Him-inevitably. And That's What I'd Felt As He Reached For Me: I'd Felt As Though I Were Committing An Act Of Violence Against Him, Because I Was.

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 Kept Waiting For That Loneliness And Nervousness To Make Me Want To Go Back. But It Never Did.

Coal Miners Don't Get Coal Miners' Block.

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

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

Suffering Is Universal.

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

I Inherited That Penchant For Intellectualism, A Character Flaw That These Days Can Only Be Thoroughly Eradicated By Getting Z’ed Up.

And He Was Feeling Not-unique In The Very Best Possible Way.

Wow,” I Said. “are You Making This Up?” “hazel Grace, Could I, With My Meager Intellectual Capacities, Make Up A Letter From Peter Van Houten Featuring Phrases Like ‘our Triumphantly Digitized Contemporaneity’?” “you Could Not,” I Allowed. “can I, Can I Have The Email Address?” “of Course,” Augustus Said, Like It Was Not The Best Gift Ever.

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

After All This Time, It Seems To Me Like Straight And Fast Is The Only Way Out- But I Choose The Labyrinth. The Labyrinth Blows, But I Choose It.

Who Would You Die For? Who Would You Wake Up At Five Forty-five In The Morning For Even Though You Don't Even Know Why He Needs You?

If You Act Out Of A Paranoid Fear Of Something Happening, You Will Always Make That Thing Happen.

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

Colin Emphatically Pushed The Book Cover Shut When He Finished Reading. "did You Like It?" His Dad Asked. "yup," Colin Said. He Liked All Books, Because He Liked The Mere Act Of Reading, The Magic Of Turning Scratches On A Page Into Words Inside His Head.

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

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

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

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

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

Everything That Comes Together Falls Apart.

The Amazing Thing Is That We're Right To Hold Onto Hope. The World May Be Broken But Hope Is Not Crazy.

He Just Waited Until I Stopped Talking And Said, 'jesus, Kid, You're Almost A Detective. All You Need Now Is A Gun, A Gut, And Three Ex-wives. So What's Your Theory?

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

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.

The Miracle And Hope Of Human Consciousness Is That We Can Still Conceive Of Boundlessness.

Study Broadly And Without Fear.

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

I Think It's Crazy, Crazy That Book Tours Lose So Much Money. They Shouldn't. Book Tours Should Be Part Of What Keeps Independent Bookstores Vibrant And Profitable.

Remember That Time In The Minivan, Twenty Minutes Ago, When We Didn't Die?

Facts, Even False Ones, Cannot Be Copyrighted.

Night Falls Fast. Today Is The Past.

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

Being A Person, I Had Come To Realize, Is A Communal Activity. Dogs Know How To Be Dogs. But People Do Not Know How To Be People Unless And Until They Learn From Other People.

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.

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.

The Marks Humans Leave Are Too Often Scars.

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

Nothing Was Happening, Really, But The Moment Was Thick With Mattering

Not That Smart. Not That Hot. Not That Nice. Not That Funny. That's Me: I'm Not That.

... I Didn't Know Whether To Feel Angry At Her For Making Me Part Of Her Suicide Or Just To Feel Angry At Myself For Letting Her Go.

It Is Saying These Things That Keeps Us From Falling Apart. And Maybe By Imagining These Futures We Can Make Them Real, And Maybe Not, But Either Way We Must Imagine Them. The Light Rushes Out And Floods In.

People Always Get Used To Beauty Though.

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

And Now Life Has Become The Future. Every Moment Of Your Life Is Lived For The Future—you Go To High School So You Can Go To College So You Can Get A Good Job So You Can Get A Nice House So You Can Afford To Send Your Kids To College So They Can Get A Good Job So They Can Get A Nice House So They Can Afford To Send Their Kids To College.

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

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 Like The Strings. I Always Have. Because That's How It Feels. But The Strings Make Pain Seem More Fatal Than It Is, I Think. We're Not As Frail As The Strings Would Make Us Believe. And I Like The Grass, Too. The Grass Got Me To You, Helped Me To Imagine You As An Actual Person. But We're Not Different Sprouts From The Same Plant. I Can't Be You. You Can't Be Me. You Can Imagine Another Well – But Never Quite Perfectly, You Know?

When We Think Of Death, We Often Imagine It As Happening In Degrees: We Think Of A Sick Person Becoming Less And Less Alive Until Finally They Are Gone.

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

...all I Have To Do Is Stay In Between The Lines And Make Sure That No One Is Too Close To Me And I Am Not Too Close To Anyone And Keep Leaving. Maybe It Felt Like This For Her, Too, But I Could Never Feel Like This Alone.

And Yes, Again, That Was It Exactly. A Retyper And Not A Writer. A Prodigy And Not A Genius.

Colin Singleton

Reading It The Night Before, I'd Wondered If It Would Be Like That For Me-if In One Moment, I Would Finally Understand Her, Know Her, And Understand The Role I'd Played In Her Dying. But I Wasn't Convinced Enlightenment Struck Like Lightining.

Throughout The Book, She Refers To Herself As "the Side Effect," Which Is Just Totally Correct. Cancer Kids Are Essentially Side Effects Of The Relentless Mutation That Made The Diversity Of Life On Earth Possible.

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.

Moms Aren’t The Best Audience For Medication Humor.

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

I Want More Numbers Than I’m Likely To Get, And God, I Want More Numbers For Augustus Waters Than He Got. But, Gus, My Love, I Cannot Tell You How Thankful I Am For Our Little Infinity. I Wouldn’t Trade It For The World. You Gave Me A Forever Within The Numbered Days, And I’m Grateful.

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.

Why Is It Upset? Shouldn't It Be Downset?

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

Like Everyone, I'm Saddened And Horrified By This. All I'll Say Is That I'm Personally Trying To Pay More Attention To The Victims Than To Their Murderer. I Certainly Will Not Be Mentioning The Murderer. I Don't Think He Warrants Our Attention-particularly Since He So Clearly Wanted It.

Standing In Line Is A Form Of Oppression

Standing In Line

It Hurts Because It Mattered.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Maybe Our Favorite Quotations Say More About Us Than About The Stories And People We're Quoting.

Leaving Feels Good And Pure Only When You Leave Something Important, Something That Mattered To You. Pulling Life Out By The Roots. But You Can't Do That Until Your Life Has Grown Roots.

I Don't Really Want To Be The Costar Of Anyone's Life.

What Else? She Is So Beautiful. You Don’t Get Tired Of Looking At Her. You Never Worry If She Is Smarter Than You: You Know She Is. She Is Funny Without Ever Being Mean. I Love Her. I Am So Lucky To Love Her, Van Houten. You Don’t Get To Choose If You Get Hurt In This World, Old Man, But You Do Have Some Say In Who Hurts You. I Like My Choices. I Hope She Likes Hers.

I Knew That Time Would Now Pass For Me Differently Than It Would For Him - That I, Like Everyone In That Room, Would Go On Accumulating Loves And Losses While He Would Not. And For Me, That Was The Final And Truly Unbearable Tragedy: Like All The Innumerable Dead, He'd Once And For All Been Demoted From Haunted To Haunter.

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

Headline?" He Asked. "'swing Set Needs Home,'" I Said. "'desperately Lonely Swing Set Needs Loving Home,'" He Said. "'lonely, Vaguely Pedophilic Swing Set Seeks The Butts Of Children,'" I Said.

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.

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

Great News For Someone Is Always Bad News For Someone Else

She Said 'i Love You' As If It Were A Secret, And An Immense One.

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

Too Pissed Off To Cry, I Said, 'this Is Only Making Me Hate Her. I Don't Want To Hate Her. And What's The Point, If That's All It's Making Me Do?' Still Refusing To Answer How And Why Questions. Still Insisting On An Aura Of Mystery. I Leaned Forward, Head Between By Knees, And The Colonel Placed A Head On My Upper Back. 'the Point Is That There Are Always Alsweres, Pudge.' And Then He Pushed Air Out Between His Pursed Lips And I Could Hear The Angry Quiver In His Voice As He Repeated, 'there Are Always Answers. We Just Have To Be Smart Enough.' ~miles/pudge And Chip/the Colonel, Pg 168

If People Could See Me The Way I See Myself - If They Could Live In My Memories - Would Anyone Love Me?

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

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

Dutch Is Not So Much A Language As An Ailment Of The Throat.

What Can We Do?" Mom Asked Again. I Shrugged. But She Kept Asking, As If There Were Something She Could Do, Until I Just Kind Of Crawled Across The Couch Into Her Lap And My Dad Came Over And Held My Legs Really Tight And I Wrapped My Arms All The Way Around My Mom's Middle And They Held On To Me For Hours While The Tide Rolled In.

Lies Are Attempts To Hide The Truth By Willfully Denying Facts. Fiction, On The Other Hand, Is An Attempt To Reveal The Truth By Ignoring Facts.

I Learned That Myth Doesn’t Mean A Lie; It Means A Traditional Story That Tells You Something About People And Their Worldview And What They Hold Sacred. Interesting.

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

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.

When We Read The Right Book Generously, It Can Change The Way Think About The World Around Us.

A Novel Is A Conversation Between A Reader And A Writer.

Babies Are Made Through An Act That You Will Eventually Find Intriguing But For Right Now Will Just Sort Of Horrify You, And Also Sometimes People Do Stuff That Involves Baby-making Parts That Does Not Actually Involve Making Babies, Like For Instance Kiss Each Other In Places That Are Not On The Face.

Love Is Always A Miracle, Everywhere,every Time. But For Us, It's A Little Different. I Don't Want To Say It's More Miraculous,...it Is Though.

You're Arguing That The Fragile, Rare Thing Is Beautiful Simply Because It Is Fragile And Rare. But That's A Lie, And You Know It.

"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."

Were She Better Or You Sicker, Then The Stars Would Not Be So Terribly Crossed, But It Is The Nature Of The Stars To Cross.

I Realize That They Giggle And I Actually Laugh, That They Show Their Cleavage And I Have None To Show, But Just So You Know, I Am Also A Girl. I'm One Of The Three Wise Men. And It's Gay To Think That James Bond Is Hot.

Hurt Tends To Drown Out Sorry.

But I Was Not In The Band, Because I Suffer From The Kind Of Tone Deafness That Is Generally Associated With Actual Deafness

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.

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

There Are At Least Two Distinct Meanings Of 'hot': There Is The, Like, Normal Human Definition Which Is That 'this Individual Seems Suitable For Mating'. And Then There's The Weird, Culturally Constructed Definition Of 'hot' Which Means, 'that Individual Is Malnourished And Has Probably Had Plastic Bags Inserted Into Her Breasts'. Like, I Think If You Went Back To The 18th Century And Asked A 15-year-old Boy, 'would You Like To Marry A Woman Who Has Had Plastic Bags Needlessly Inserted Into Her Breasts?' That 15-year-old Boy Would Probably Be Like ... 'what's Plastic?'

Some Infinities Are Bigger Than Other Infinities.

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

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.

You Will Go To The Paper Towns And Never Come Back.

Imagining The Future Is A Kind Of Nostalgia. (...) You Spend Your Whole Life Stuck In The Labyrinth, Thinking About How You'll Escape It One Day, And How Awesome It Will Be, And Imagining That Future Keeps You Going, But You Never Do It. You Just Use The Future To Escape The Present.

Someday No One Will Remember That She Ever Existed, I Wrote In My Notebook, And Then, Or That I Did. Because Memories Fall Apart, Too. And Then You're Left With Nothing, Left Not Even With A Ghost But With Its Shadow. In The Beginning, She Had Haunted Me, Haunted My Dreams, But Even Now, Just Weeks Later, She Was Slipping Away, Falling Apart In My Memory And Everyone Else's, Dying Again.

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.

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 Did Some Research On This A Couple Years Ago," Augustus Continued. "i Was Wondering If Everybody Could Be Remembered. Like, If We Got Organized, And Assigned A Certain Number Of Corpses To Each Living Person, Would There Be Enough Living People To Remember All The Dead People?" "and Are There?" "sure, Anyone Can Name Fourteen Dead People. But We're Disorganized Mourners, So A Lot Of People End Up Remembering Shakespeare And No One Ends Up Remembering The Person He Wrote Sonnet Fifty-five About

Ultimately What I Like About Reading Together Is That We All Make It Happen Together. Of Course Even Amid Shared Experience We’re Still Alone… Each Reading Of Each Book Is Unique. But What A Comfort It Is To Share Readings And Experiences. How Lucky We Are When We Get To Be Alone Together.

The Labyrinth Blows, But I Choose It.

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.

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?

Have You Really Read All Those Books In Your Room?” Alaska Laughing- “oh God No. I’ve Maybe Read A Third Of ‘em. But I’m Going To Read Them All. I Call It My Life’s Library. Every Summer Since I Was Little, I’ve Gone To Garage Sales And Bought All The Books That Looked Interesting. So I Always Have Something To Read.

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

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.

Boys Do Not Have The Monopoly In Staring Business, After All.

We Were Sitting There On The Couch Together, And He Pushed Himself Up To Go But Then Fell Back Down Onto The Couch And Sneaked A Kiss Onto My Cheek. “augustus!” I Said. “friendly,” He Said. He Pushed Himself Up Again And Really Stood This Time, Then Took Two Steps Over To My Mom And Said, “always A Pleasure To See You,” And My Mom Opened Her Arms To Hug Him, Whereupon Augustus Leaned In And Kissed My Mom On The Cheek. He Turned Back To Me. “see?” He Asked.

I Have Guts, Just Not When It Counts.

Look, Let Me Just Say It: He Was Hot. A Nonhot Boy Stares At You Relentlessly And It Is, At Best, Awkward And, At Worst, A Form Of Assault. But A Hot Boy . . . Well.

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.

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.

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

At Some Point, You Gotta Stop Looking Up At The Sky, Or One Of These Days You'll Look Back Down And See That You Floated Away, Too.

Hank, When People Call People Nerds Mostly What They're Saying Is,'you Like Stuff'.

I'm Not Interested In Writing For Adults. I Like Them As People! I Don't Like The Way They Publish Books In That World. Nothing Ever Gets A Chance.

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

To Be Human Is To Catch The Falling Person.

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

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

That Was Part Of Her, And You Used To Know It. It's Like Now You Only Care About The Alaska You Made Up.

We Can Hear Others, And We Can Travel With Them Without Moving, And We Can Imagine Them, And We Are All Connected One To The Other By A Crazy Root System, Like So Many Leaves Of Grass. But The Game Makes Me Wonder Wheter We Can Really Ever Fully Become Another.

I Enjoy Writing About People Falling In Love, Probably Because I Think The First Time You Fall In Love Is The First Time That You Have To Figure Out How You're Going To Orient Your Life. What Are You Going To Value? What's Going To Be Most Important To You? And I Think That's Really Interesting To Write About.

Falling In Love

This One's For Alaska Young!

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 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.

Her Library Filled Her Bookshelves And Then Overflowed Into Waist-high Stacks Of Books Everywhere, Piled Haphazardly Against The Walls. If Just One Of Them Moved... The Domino Effect Could Engulf The Three Of Us In An Asphyxiating Mass Of Literature.

The Thought Of You Being Removed From The Rotation Is Not Funny To Me.

Thoughts Of You

Hazel Grace Lancaster

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

Meriwether Lewis's Last Words Were, 'i Am Not A Coward, But I Am So Strong. So Hard To Die.' I Don't Doubt That It Is, But It Cannot Be Much Harder Than Being Left Behind.

Did I Help You To A Fate You Didn't Want?

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

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

Immigrant Parents

I Never Liked Writing Concluding Paragraphs To Papers - Where You Repeat What You've Already Said With Phrases Like 'in Summation', And 'to Conclude'.

If I Had A Nervous Breakdown Every Time Something Awful Happened In The World, I'd Be Crazier Than A Shithouse Rat.

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.

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

I'm Not From Indianapolis, But I Like Living In Indianapolis. If I Were To Explain It, I'd Tell Someone To Imagine A City That Perfectly Captures The Best And The Worst Of America. Imagine The Truly American City, Because That's What It Is.

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.

If People Were Like Rain, I Was Like Drizzle And She Was A Hurricane.

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.

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.

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

Imagine Others Complexly.

Finally, I Decided That The Proper Strategy Was To Stare Back. Boys Do Not Have A Monopoly On The Staring Business.

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

Nerdfighter Pwns Woot. Everyone Knows That.

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

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

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.

I Choose The Labyrinth.

. . . Endlessness Is A Really Strange Idea In A Universe That Is Defined By Its Endings.

But Monotony Doesn't Make For Painlessness.

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

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Lakhdar Brahimi

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