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

-John Green

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Everything That Comes Together

John Green

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

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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.

I Tried To Tell Myself That It Could Be Worse, That The World Was Not A Wish-granting Factory, That I Was Living With Cancer Not Dying Of It, That I Mustn't Let It Kill Me Before It Kills Me.

But It Was Sure A Privilege To Love Him, Huh?" I Nodded Into His Shirt. "gives You An Idea How I Feel About You," He Said. My Old Man. He Always Knew Just What To Say.

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.

The World," He Said, "is Not A Wish-granting Factory," And Then He Broke Down, Just For One Moment, His Sob Roaring Impotent Like A Clap Of Thunder Unaccompanied By Lightning, The Terrible Ferocity That Amateurs In The Field Of Suffering Might Mistake For Weakness.

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

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.

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

But What Could I Lose By Continuing That Had Not Already Been Lost?

But You Know What They Say About Gutshot: The Population Never Goes Up And Never Goes Down, Because Every Time A Woman Gets Pregnant, A Man Leaves Town.

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

We Were Just Looking At Ideas Of Each Other.

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 Didn’t Happen, Of Course. Things Never Happened The Way I Imagined Them.

It Was Not Enough To Be The Last Guy She Kissed. I Wanted To Be The Last One She Loved. And I Knew I Wasn’t. I Knew It, And I Hated Her For It. I Hated Her For Not Caring About Me. I Hated Her For Leaving That Night, And I Hated Myself , Too, Not Only Because I Let Her Go But Because If I Had Been Enough For Her, She Wouldn’t Have Even Wanted To Leave. She Would Have Just Lain With Me And Talked And Cried, And I Would Have Listened And Kissed At Her Tears As They Pooled In Her Eyes.

It Just Goes To Show, If You Try To Ruin Someone's Life, It Only Gets Better. You Just Don't Get To Be A Part Of It.

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

The Truth Is That In Our Lives We Are All Going To Encounter Questions That Should Be Answered, That Deserve To Be Answered, And Yet Prove Unanswerable.

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

“i Thought We Were In A Church Basement, But We Are Literally In The Heart Of Jesus.” “someone Should Tell Jesus,” I Said. “i Mean, It's Gotta Be Dangerous, Storing Children With Cancer In Your Heart.” “i Would Tell Him Myself.” Augustus Said, “but Unfortunately I Am Literally Stuck Inside Of His Heart, So He Won't Be Able To Hear Me.”

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

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

Most Loves Don't Last. But Some Do.

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.

... 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.

There Were Five Others Before They Got To Him. He Smiled A Little When His Turn Came. His Voice Was Low, Smoky, And Dead Sexy. “my Name Is Augustus Waters,” He Said. “i’m Seventeen. I Had A Little Touch Of Osteosarcoma A Year And A Half Ago, But I’m Just Here Today At Isaac’s Request.” “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.

Our Children Are Weird. Nicely Phrased.

I Opened The Door. He Looked Down At My Shirt And Smiled. "funny," He Said. "don't Call My Boobs Funny," I Answered.

If You Don't Live A Life In Service Of A Greater Good, You've Gotta At Least Die A Death In Service Of A Greater Good, You Know? And I Fear That I Won't Get Either A Life Or A Death That Means Anything.

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

I Think Forever Is An Incorrect Concept.

Something Invisible Snapped Inside Her.

The Truth Hurts Because It's Real. It Hurts Because It Mattered. And That's An Important Thing To Acknowledge To Yourself.

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

There Comes A Time When We Realize That Our Parents Cannot Save Themselves Or Save Us, That Everyone Who Wades Through Time Eventually Gets Dragged Out To Sea By The Undertow- That, In Short, We Are All Going.

It Was Kind Of A Beautiful Day, Finally Real Summer In Indianapolis, Warm And Humid - The Kind Of Weather That Reminds You After A Long Winter That While The World Wasn't Built For Humans, We Were Built For The World.

I Always Had This Secret Suspicion That I Was Special.

Breaking Down That Wall Is The Kind Of Story That Might Have A Happy Middle - Oh, Look, We Broke Down This Wall, I'm Going To Look At You Like A Girl And You're Going To Look At Me Like A Boy, And We're Going To Play A Fun Game Called Can I Put My Hand There What About There What About There.

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.

Maybe This Time She Wanted To Be Found, And To Be Found By Me.

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

Also, It Was A Bit Hopeless," He Said. "a Bit Defeatist." "if By Defeatist You Mean Honest, Then I Agree." "i Don't Think Defeatism Is Honest, " Dad Answered. "i Refuse To Accept That.

There Are Many More Jobs Out There Than You Have Ever Heard Of. Your Dream Job Might Not Yet Exist. If You Had Told 'college Me' That I Would Become A Professional Youtuber, I Would've Been Like, "that Is Not A Word, And It Never Should Be."

I'm Not Sure If I'm Depressed. I Mean, I'm Not Exactly Sad. But I'm Not Exactly Happy Either. I Can Laugh And Joke And Smile During The Day, But Sometimes When I'm Alone At Night I Forget How To Feel.

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.

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

It Hurt, And That Is Not A Euphemism. It Hurt Like A Beating.

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

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

We Got Off At The Next Exit, Quietly, And, Switching Drivers, We Walked In Front Of The Car. We Met And I Held Him, My Hands Balled Into Tight Fists Around His Shoulders, And He Wrapped His Short Arms Around Me And Squeezed Tight, So That I Felt The Heaves Of His Chest As We Realized Over And Over Again That We Were Still Alive. I Realized It In Waves And We Held On To Each Other Crying And I Thought, 'god We Must Look So Lame,' But It Doesn't Matter When You Have Just Now Realized, All The Time Later, That You Are Still Alive.

Hey Pudge," The Colonel Said. "what Do You Think Of A Truce?" "it Reminds Me Of When The Germans Demanded That The U.s. Surrender At The Battle Of The Bulge," I Said. "i Guess I'd Say To This Truce Offer What General Mcauliffe Said To That One: Nuts.

I Had A Moral Opposition To Eating Before Dawn On The Grounds That I Was Not A Nineteenth-century Russian Peasant Fortifying Myself For A Day In The Fields.

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

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

I'm Not Embarrassed By My Faith, And I'm Also Not Embarrassed By My Doubt.

People Talk About The Courage Of Cancer Patients, And I Do Not Deny That Courage. I Had Been Poked And Stabbed And Poisoned For Years, And Still I Trod On. But Make No Mistake: In That Moment, I Would Have Been Very, Very Happy To Die.

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

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.

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.

Nerd Life Is Just So Much Better Than Regular Life.

You're Not A Little Kid Anymore. You Need To Make Friends, Get Out Of The House, And Live Your Life.

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

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

That Smile Could End Wars And Cure Cancer.

You Can’t Divorce Margo The Person From Margo The Body. You Can’t See One Without Seeing The Other. You Looked At Margo’s Eyes And You Saw Both Their Blueness And Their Margo-ness. In The End, You Could Not Say That Margo Roth Spiegelman Was Fat, Or That She Was Skinny, Any More Than You Can Say That The Eiffel Tower Is Or Is Not Lonely. Margo’s Beauty Was A Kind Of Sealed Vessel Of Perfection – Uncracked And Uncrackable.

Colin Did Not Laugh. Instead He Thought, Tampons Have Strings? Why? Of All The Major Human Mysteries - God, The Nature Of The Universe, Etc. - He Knew The Least About Tampons. To Colin, Tampons Were A Little Bit Like Grizzly Bears: He Was Aware Of Their Existence, But He'd Never Seen On In The Wild, And Didn't Really Care To.

Stop Thinking About The Landing, Because It's All About Falling.

I Liked Being A Person. I Wanted To Keep At It.

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.

Oh, My God," Augustus Said. "i Can't Believe I Have A Crush On A Girl With Such Cliché Wishes." "i Was Thirteen," I Said Again, Although Of Course I Was Only Thinking "crush Crush Crush Crush Crush". I Was Flattered But Changed The Subject Immediately.

When Was The Last Good Kiss You Had?

Hazel Grace Lancaster

When I Was In College, I Remember Fearing That The Dreary Grind Of Adulthood Would Feature Infinitely More Existential Dread Than Frat Parties Had, But The Opposite Has Been True For Me. I'm Much Less Likely To Feel That Gnawing Fear Of Aimlessness And Nihilism Than I Used To Be And That's Partly Because Education Gave Me Job Opportunities, But It's Mostly Because Education Gave Me Perspective And Context.

Caroline Was Always Moody And Miserable, But I Liked It. I Liked Feeling As If She Had Chosen Me As The Only Person In The World Not To Hate, And So We Spent All This Time Together Just Ragging On Everyone, You Know?

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

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.

But It Is A Pipe." "no, It's Not," I Said. It's A Drawing Of A Pipe. Get It? All Representations Of A Thing Are Inherently Abstract. It's Very Clever.

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.

What's The Point In Being Alive If You Don't At Least Try To Do Something Remarkable? How Very Odd, To Believe God Gave You Life, And Yet Not Think That Life Asks More Of You Than Watching Tv.

Waffles аrе јust Awesome Bread.

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

The Tales Of Our Exploits Will Survive As Long As The Human Voice Itself,' He Said. 'and Even After That, When The Robots Recall The Human Absurdities Of Sacrifice And Compassion, They Will Remember Us.

Osteosarcoma Sometimes Takes A Limb To Check You Out. The, If It Like You, It Takes The Rest.

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

Nothing Really Ever Happens Like You Imagine It Will.

What About The Rest Of Your Life?" She Shrugged. "what About It?" "aren't You Worried About, Like, Forever?" "forever Is Composed Of Nows," She Says.

Rest Of Your Life

Margo Always Loved Mysteries. And In Everything That Came Afterward, I Could Never Stop Thinking That Maybe She Loved Mysteries So Much That She Became One.

As Much As Life Can Suck, It Always Beats The Alternative.

Does My Eye Look Okay To You?

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

She Spoke Quietly Then, The Tiniest Crack In Her Voice, And All At Once Lacey Pemerton Was Not Lacey Pemberton. She Was Just—like, A Person.

Weltschmerz: Its The Depression You Feel When The World As It Is Does Not Line Up With The World As You Think It Should Be.

I Think One Of The Most Important Differences Between Us Is That You Are Excellent At Living In A Way That Is Commensurate With Your Values, Whereas I Am Not. For Instance, I Didn’t Recycle Until I Watched An Inconvenient Truth And I’m Still Sort Of Iffy On It. And Also, I Didn’t Vote In 2000, Even Though I Could Have Voted In Florida *hits Self On Head Repeatedly* Ahh George Bush! It’s All My Fault! God! So Stupid! *sigh* Let’s Change The Subject. Also, We Have Vastly Different Happy Dances.

I'd Rather Wonder Than Get Answers I Couldn't Live With.

Because You Are Beautiful. I Enjoy Looking At Beautiful People, And I Decided A While Ago Not To Deny Myself The Simpler Pleasures Of Existence

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.

Standing In Line Is A Form Of Oppression

Standing In Line

You Could Hear The Wind In The Leaves, And On That Wind Traveled The Screams Of The Kids On The Playground In The Distance, Little Kids Figuring Out How To Be Alive, How To Navigate A World That Wasn't Made For Them By Navigating A Playground That Was.

You Can’t Know, Sweetie, Because You’ve Never Had A Baby Become A Brilliant Young Reader With A Side Interest In Horrible Television Shows, But The Joy You Bring Us Is So Much Greater Than The Sadness We Feel About Your Illness.

We Left. We Did Not Say: Don't Drive, You're Drunk. We Did Not Say: We Aren't Letting You In That Car When You Are Upset. We Did Not Say: We Insist On Going With You. We Did Not Say: This Can Wait Until Tomorrow. Anything-everything-can Wait.

Well," Peter Van Houten Said, Extending His Hand To Me. "it Is At Any Rate A Pleasure To Meet Such Ontologically Improbable Creatures." I Shook His Swollen Hand, And Then He Shook Hands With Augustus. I Was Wondering What Ontologically Meant. Regardless, I Liked It. Augustus And I Were Together In The Improbable Creatures Club: Us And Duck-billed Platypuses.

How Will I Ever Get Out Of This Labyrinth!" In Reality, "how Will I Ever Get Out Of This Labyrinth!" Were Probably Not Simon Bolivar's Last Words (although He Did, Historically, Say Them). His Last Words May Have Been "jose! Bring The Luggage. They Do Not Want Us Here." The Significant Source For "how Will I Ever Get Out Of This Labyrinth!" Is Also Alaska's Source, Gabriel Garcia Marquez's The General In His Labyrinth.

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

I Think Maybe I Know Why,' She Finally Said. 'why?' 'maybe All The Strings Inside Him Broke,' She Said.

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

My Responsibility Is To Try To Tell True Stories. To Me A True Story Is Always Hopeful, But Never Simply, Uncomplicatedly Happy.

Gratitude Is The Proper Response For The Absolute Astonishment Of Getting To Be Alive, And Aware, And An Essential Part Of This Crazy, Sprawling Story.

She Had The Kind Of Fingers You Want To Interlace With Your Own.

All Salvation Is Temporary

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

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.

My Love, I Cannot Tell You How Thankful I Am For Our Little Infinity, ~ Hazel Lancaster.

But The Fascinating And Unbelievable-but-true Thing About Dr. Jefferson Jeffersonis That He Was Not A Doctor Of Any Kind. He Was Just An Orange Juice Salesman Named Jefferson Jefferson. When He Became Rich And Powerful, He Went To Court, Made "jefferson" His Middle Name, And Then Changed His First Name To "dr." Capital D. Lowercase R. Period.

But You Want To See Shapes; You Want To See Stories, So You Pick Them Out Of The Sky.

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

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

Augustus, Perhaps You’d Like To Share Your Fears With The Group.” “my Fears?” “yes.” “i Fear Oblivion,” He Said Without A Moment’s Pause. “i Fear It Like The Proverbial Blind Man Who’s Afraid Of The Dark.” “too Soon,” Isaac Said, Cracking A Smile. “was That Insensitive?” Augustus Asked. “i Can Be Pretty Blind To Other People’s Feelings.

You Are So Busy Being You That You Have No Idea How Utterly Unprecedented You Are.

Writing Does Not Resurrect. It Buries.

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

We Idealize Them As Gods Or Dismiss Them As Animals.

I'm A Big Believer In Pairing Classics With Contemporary Literature, So Students Have The Opportunity To See That Literature Is Not A Cold, Dead Thing That Happened Once But Instead A Vibrant Mode Of Storytelling That's Been With Us A Long Time - And Will Be With Us, I Hope, For A Long Time To Come.

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

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

I Don't Think We Should See The World Of Books As Fundamentally Separate From The World Of The Internet. Yes, The Internet Contains A Lot Of Videos Of Squirrels Riding Skateboards, But It Can Also Be A Place That Facilitates Big Conversations About Books.

She Has Great Breasts," The Colonel Said Without Looking Up From The Whale. "do Not Objectify Women's Bodies!" Alaska Shouted. Now He Looked Up. "sorry. Perky Breasts." "that's Not Any Better!

The Point Is That There Are Always Answers.

I Can Almost Imagine A Happiness Without Her, The Ability To Let Her Go, To Feel Our Roots Are Connected Even If I Never See That Leaf Of Grass Again.'

Leaves Of Grass

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.

That's What We Should Do, Hazel Grace: We Should Team Up And Be This Disabled Vigilante Duo Roaring Through The World, Righting Wrongs, Defending The Weak, Protecting The Endangered.

But I Will Say This: When The Scientists Of The Future Show Up At My House With Robot Eyes And They Tell Me To Try Them On, I Will Tell The Scientists To Screw Off, Because I Do Not Want To See A World Without Him.

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...

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

I Hated Hurting Him. Most Of The Time, I Could Forget About It, But The Inexorable Truth Is This: They Might Be Glad To Have Me Around, But I Was The Alpha And The Omega Of My Parents' Suffering.

Keys Show Up When You Reconcile Yourself To The Bus.

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

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

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.

I Was Blind And Heart Broken And Didn't Want To Do Anything And Gus Burst Into My Room And Shouted, "i Have Wonderful News!" And I Was Like, "i Don't Really Want To Hear Wonderful News Right Now," And Gus Said, "this Is Wonderful News You Want To Hear," And I Asked Him, "fine, What Is It?" And He Said, "you Are Going To Live A Good And Long Life Filled With Great And Terrible Moments That You Cannot Even Imagine Yet!

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. And Agloe Is A Place Where A Paper Creation Became Real. A Dot On The Map Became A Real Place, More Real Than The People Who Created The Dot Could Never Have Imagined. I Thought Maybe The Paper Cutout Of A Girl Could Start Becoming Real Here Also. And It Seemed Like A Way To Tell That Paper Girl Who Cared About Popularity And Clothes And Everything Else: 'you Are Going To The Paper Towns. And You Are Never Coming Back.

People Thought He Was A Glutton For Punishment, That He Liked Getting Dumped. But It Wasn't Like That. He Could Just Never See Anything Coming, And As He Lay On The Solid, Uneven Ground With Hassan Pressing Too Hard On His Forehead, Colin Singleton's Distance From His Glasses Made Him Realize The Problem: Myopia. He Was Nearsighted. The Future Lay Before Him, Inevitable But Invisible.

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

People Are Supposed To Care. It's Good That People Mean Something To You, That You Miss People When They're Gone.

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

I Want To Minimize The Deaths I Am Responsible For.

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

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.

Her Primary Reason For Living And My Primary Reason For Living Were Awfully Entangled.

Books Are Like Tweets, Except Longer.

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.

I Try To Live Life So That I Can Live With Myself.

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

Life Has Become The Future.

Becoming A Father Made Me Much More Interested In The Parent Character In My Novels. I've Never Found Parents That Interesting.

You May Be Smart, But I've Been Smart Longer.

Whatever, Bro. We Both Had A Long Day. Too Much Drama. I'll Ttys." I Wanted To Ridicule Him For Using Chatspeak Irl, But I Found Myself Lacking The Energy.

Could The Two People Who Are Making Out Please Be Quiet?" The Colonel Asked Loudly From His Sleeping Bag. "those Of Us Who Are Not Making Out Are Drunk And Tired.

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.

Augustus: “you Probably Need Some Rest.” Me: “i’m Okay.” Augustus: “okay.” (pause.) “what Are You Thinking About?” Me: “you.” Augustus: “what About Me?” Me: “‘i Do Not Know Which To Prefer, / The Beauty Of Inflections / Or The Beauty Of Innuendos, / The Blackbird Whistling / Or Just After.’” Augustus: “god, You Are Sexy.” Me: “we Could Go To Your Room.” Augustus: “i’ve Heard Worse Ideas.

Why Don’t We Break Up? I Guess I Stay With Her Because She Stays With Me. And That’s Not An Easy Thing To Do.

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.

Once You Think A Thought, It Is Extremely Difficult To Unthink It.

Is That What Relationships Become? A Reduced Version Of The Hurt, Nothing Else Let In. It Was More Than That. I Know It Was More Than That.

"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 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.

I Always Liked Routine. I Suppose I Never Found Boredom Very Boring. I Doubted I Could Explain It To Someone Like Margo But Drawing Circles Through Life Struck Me As A Kind Of Reasonable Insanity.

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

Nothing Is As Boring As Other People's Dreams.

When I Think About [characters], I Like To Think Of Them In Their Relationships To Each Other. In The Same Way, I Think That's How Humans Are Ultimately Defined. We Are Our Relationships To One Another. And A Lot Of What's Interesting About Us Happens In The Context Of Other People.

I Want To See You Again Tonight. But I'm Willing To Wait All Night And Much Of Tomorrow.

My Heart Is Really Pounding," I Said. "that's How You Know You're Having Fun," Margo Said.

I Liked Augustus Waters. I Really, Really Really Liked Him. I Liked The Way His Story Ended With Someone Else. I Liked His Voice. I Liked That He Took Existentially-fraught Free Throws.

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.

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

I Love Making Youtube Videos. I Love Tumblr, I Love Twitter. I Love Talking With People I Find Interesting About Stuff I Find Interesting, And The Internet Is A Great Way To Do That.

I Needed, I Decided, To Really Know Her, Because I Needed More To Remember. Before I Could Begin The Shameful Process Of Forgetting The How And The Why Of Her Living And Dying, I Needed To Learn It: How. Why. When. Where. What.

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.

I Was Born Into Bolívar's Labyrinth, And So I Must Believe In The Hope Of Rabelais' Great Perhaps.

So Here's My Advice: Study Broadly And Without Fear. Learn A Language If You Can, Because That Will Make Your Life More Interesting. Read A Little Bit Every Day. But More Importantly, Surround Yourself With People Who You Like And Make Cool Stuff With Them. In The End, What You Do Isn't Going To Be Nearly As Interesting Or Important As Who You Do It With.

I Know That Books Seem Like The Ultimate Thing That's Made By One Person, But That's Not True. Every Reading Of A Book Is A Collaboration Between The Reader And The Writer Who Are Making The Story Up Together.

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.

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

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.

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

So I Wasn't Lying, Exactly. I Was Just Choosing Among Truths.

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.

I Didn't Even Know What The Feeling Was, Really, Just That There Was A Lot Of It.

The Kiss Lasted Forever As Otto Frank Kept Talking From Behind Me. "and My Conclusion Is," He Said, "since I Had Been In Very Good Terms With Anne, That Most Parents Don't Know Really Their Children.

The Whole Pleasure Of Being In A State Of Unknowing Is That As Long As You Don’t Know, All Possible Outcomes Feel As If They Are Happening.

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

I'm A Grenade, I Just Want To Stay Away From People And Read Books, And Think.

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

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

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.

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

I Always Wondered If There Was A Purpose To The Universe, If There Was A Plan, If There Was Some Sort Of Organizing Factor, Hopefully That I Played A Role In.

Right. I'd Forgotten About Her.' He Shook His Head. 'that Keeps Happening.

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.

People Believed In An Afterlife Because They Couldn't Bear Not To.

Truth Resists Simplicity.

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Bernadette Devlin

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