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

-John Green

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I Believe The Universe

John Green

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

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The Ideas Of Directing Attention Outward, Trying To Imagine Other People Complexly, Trying Not To See Myself As The Center Of The Universe - These Concepts Have Become Important To Me, And I Hope They're At Work In My Life On A Minute-by-minute Basis.

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.

The Problem Is Not Suffering Itself Or Oblivion Itself But The Depraved Meaninglessness Of These Things, The Absolutely Inhuman Nihilism Of Suffering.

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

Come Over Here So I Can Examine Your Face With My Hands And See Deeper Into Your Soul Than A Sighted Person Ever Could.

I Know He's Been Looking Forward To This--and I Know That I've Been Looking Forward To This. But Now I Have To Stop Looking Forward And Start Looking At Where I Am. It's Hard.

Looking Forward

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.

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

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

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.

The Risen Sun Too Bright In Her Losing Eyes.

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

The Rules Of Capitalization Are So Unfair To Words In The Middle Of A Sentence.

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.

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

The Consequences Of Being Un-cool Feel So Big That A Lot Of Times You End Of Not Finding Ways To Have Open And Honest Conversations.

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

And Then I Screwed Up And The Colonel Screwed Up And Takumi Screwed Up And She Slipped Through Our Fingers.

Labyrinth Looking For Alaska

Getting You A Date To Prom Is So Hard That The Hypothetical Idea Itself Is Used To Cut Diamonds.

Life Has Become The Future.

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

Ergo: Girls Should Always Make The First Move, Because (a) They Are, On The Whole, Less Likely To Be Rejected Than Guys, (b) That Way, Girls Will Never Get Kissed Unless They Want To Be Kissed.

This One's For Alaska Young!

Something About Me Has Always Liked The Drama And Inconvience Of Bad Weather. The Worse The Better, Really.

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

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

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

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.

Everywhere Man Blames Nature And Fate, Yet His Fate Is Mostly But The Echo Of His Character, And Passions, His Mistakes, And Weaknesses."--democritus An Abundance Of Katherines---john Green

We're Going To Get Gored To Death By A Feral Fugging Hog And Your Best Strategy Is To Pretend It's A Grizzly Bear?

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.

I Know What Happens A The End Of Falling-landing.

Falling In Love

There Are Infinite Numbers Between 0 And 1.

Nerdighters Make Me Believe In America Again.

I Was Struck By An Awful Thought, The Kind That Cannot Be Taken Back Once It Escapes Into The Open Air Of Consciousness; It Seemed To Me That This Was Not A Place You Go To Live. It Was A Place You Go To Die.

She Raised One Leg And Gave Me All Her Weight As A I Dipped Her. She Either Trusted Me Or Wanted To Fall.

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

No, I Don’t Think You’re Gonna Be Single Forever, And Also I Don’t Understand Your Obsession With Romantic Love. There Are Other Ways To Have Fulfilling Relationships That Can Sustain You And Make Your Life Great And Fun Other Than Having A Sexualized Relationship. It’s Not The Only Kind Of Fulfilling Human Interaction. So, Even If You Are Single Forever, That Doesn’t Mean That You’ve Had Some Kind Of Failed Life.

So Dawn Goes Down Today... Nothing Gold Can Stay. -- Robert Frost

Are You Currently At Your House?" He Asked. "um, No," I Said. "that Was A Trick Question. I Knew The Answer, Because I Am Currently At Your House.

There's Not A Lot Of Room For Un-ironic Emotion In Contemporary Culture. I Think That Irony Is An Important Tool In Dealing With The World As We Find It. It's A Tool Of Protection, But It Can Also Be A Tool Of Incision To Get To Some Truth. But Along The Way Maybe We've Lost Some Of What I Think Of As The Power Of Straightforward Emotion And Earnestness And Seriousness.

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.

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

If We Restructure Things To See That The Hero's Journey Is A Degree In Astrophysics Rather Than A Journey To Star In A Reality Show, That's A Better World.

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

Patience, Grasshopper," I Counseled. "you Don't Want To Seem Overeager." "right, That's Why I Said Tomorrow," He Said. "i Want To See You Again Tonight. But I'm Willing To Wait All Night And Much Of Tomorrow.

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

The Prospect Of A World That Contains Neither Humans Nor Z's Is Not So Terrifying. Nature Will Take Its World Back. Animals Will Frolic And Fight. There Will Be No Lord Of The Manor, Which Is Not Such A Bad Thing, Because It Seems To Me That People Have Done A Pretty Poor Job Of Guiding The Biosphere For The Last Few Thousand Years.

He Missed Her Like Crazycakes.

You Just Gotta Tell Her, Man,’ I Said. ‘you Just Gotta Say, “angela, I Really Like You, But There’s Something You Need To Know: When We Go To My House And Hook Up, We’ll Be Watched By The Twenty-four Hundred Eyes Of Twelve Hundred Black Santas.

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.

When Was The Last Good Kiss You Had?

Hazel Grace Lancaster

Do Not Worry Too Much About Your Lawn. You Will Soon Find If You Haven't Already That Almost Every Adult American Devotes Tremendous Time And Money To The Maintenance Of An Invasive Plant Species Called Turf Grass That We Can't Eat. I Encourage You To Choose Better Obsessions.

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

Because No One Thought She Was A Person, She Had No One To Really Talk To.

I Stood Under The Awning For A Moment, But Finally I Decided That Being In A Bad Mood With Your Friends Beats Being In A Bad Mood Without Them.

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.

Ahhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!' He Screamed. 'so That's Sara,' I Said. 'yes.' 'she Seems Nice.

...and In Freedom, Most People Find Sin.

Nerd Girls Are The World’s Most Underutilized Romantic Resource. And Guys, Do Not Tell Me That Nerd Girls Are Not Hot Because That Shows A Paris Hilton-esque Failure To Understand Hotness.

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

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 Bet If You Look At The Average Teenager And The Average Adult, The Average Teenager Has Read More Books In The Last Year Than The Average Adult. Now Of Course The Adult Would Be All Like, 'i'm Busy, I Got A Job, I Got Stuff To Do.' Whatever! Read! I Mean, You're Watching Csi: Miami. Why Would You Be Watching Csi: Miami, When You Could Be Reading Csi: Miami, The Novelization?

Stupid Truth, Always Resisting Simplicity

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

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

And I Wondered If Hurdlers Ever Thought, You Know, 'this Would Go Faster If We Just Got Rid Of The Hurdles.

I Don't Suppose I Can Wear The Flamingo Tie," He Said As He Pulled On Black Socks. "it's A Bit Festive, Given The Occasion," I Responded. "can't Wear It To The Opera," Said The Colonel, Almost Smiling. "can't Wear It To A Funeral. Can't Use It To Hang Myself. It's A Bit Useless, As Ties Go." I Gave Him A Tie.

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.

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

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...

Maybe 'okay' Will Be Our 'always

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

We're All Just Facilitators. The Real Business Is Done By Readers.

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

Do You Guys Remember That Time When We Were All Definitely Going To Die And Then Ben Grabbed The Steering Wheel And Dodged A Ginormous Freaking Cow And Spun The Car Like The Teacups At Disney World And We Didn't Die?

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

But If You Consider All The Unlikely Things Together, At Least One Of Them Will Probably Happen To Each Of Us.

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.

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

Night Falls Fast. Today Is The Past.

You Don't Want Romantic Advice From Me, You Want Romantic Advice From Edward Cullen. I Completely Understand But He Is Completely Unavailable Right Now And I'll Tell You Why. He Doesn't Exist.

And Since She Drove To Work Every Morning, I Could Only Use The Car On Weekends. Well, Weekends And The Middle Of The Goddamned Night.

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

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

The Sky Is Like A Monochromatic Contemporay Painting, Drawing Me In Its Illusion Of Depth, Pulling Me Up.

I Came Here Looking For A Great Perhaps, For Real Friends And A More-than-minor Life.

Labyrinth Looking For Alaska

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

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

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.

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.

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

Every Paper Girl Needs At Least One String.

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

'do You Know,' He Asked In A Delicious Accent, 'what Dom Pérignon Said After Inventing Champagne?' 'no?' I Said. 'he Called Out To His Fellow Monks, 'come Quickly: I Am Tasting The Stars!'

But We Can't Know Better Until Knowing Better Is Useless.

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.

My Lungs Sucked At Being Lungs.

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

Waffles аrе јust Awesome Bread.

Isn't It Also That On Some Fundamental Level We Find It Difficult To Understand That Other People Are Human Beings In The Same Way That We Are? We Idealize Them As Gods Or Dismiss Them As Animals.

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.

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.

It's Hard As Hell To Hold On To Your Dignity When The Risen Sun Is Too Bright In Your Losing Eyes, And That's What I Was Thinking About As We Hunted For Bad Guys Through The Ruins Of A City That Didn't Exist.

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

Gus: "it Tastes Like..." Me: "food." Gus: "yes, Precisely. It Tastes Like Food, Excellently Prepared. But It Does Not Taste, How Do I Put This Delicately...?" Me: "it Does Not Taste Like God Himself Cooked Heaven Into A Series Of Five Dishes Which Were Then Served To You Accompanied By Several Luminous Balls Of Fermented, Bubbly Plasma While Actual And Literal Flower Petals Floated Down Around Your Canal-side Dinner Table." Gus: "nicely Phrased." Gus's Father: "our Children Are Weird." My Dad: "nicely Phrased."

Ya Gotta Live Somewhere, But Also You Get To Live Somewhere.

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

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.

How Can You Read And Talk At The Same Time?” I Asked. “well, I Usually Can’t, But Neither The Book Nor The Conversation Is Particularly Intellectually Challenging.

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

I Have Guts, Just Not When It Counts.

The Z’s Will Kill Us All, And Then The Z’s Will Die Out And In Sixty Years There Will Be No One To Remember Our Silly War, Caroline’s Wasted Ammunition, My Year Of Zombic Survivalism, Rene Descartes’s Musings, Or Michelangelo’s Sculptures. And That Is Really Only The Sadness Here As I Drink A Thousand-dollar Bottle Of Wine Down Here In The Cellar: We Did A Few Things Worth Remembering, And I Wish For Someone To Remember Them.

All Sorts Of Yayness Floods My Brain. Love Is Such A Drug.

Nothing Is As Boring As Other People's Dreams.

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

That Feeling Of Finishedness Does Not Come All At Once, And It Is Not Easily Won, But I Think Once You Get There It Is Hard To Go Back.

Just Spend A Few More Months Playing Video Games. That Hand-eye Coordination Will Come In Handy When You Get To Third Base.

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?

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

Sometimes It's Okay To Cheat On Things - But Don't Ever Cheat On People. Because Once You Start, It's Very Hard To Stop. You Find Out How Easy It Is To Do.

In My Opinion, Actual Heroism, Like Actual Love, Is A Messy, Painful, Vulnerable Business—and I Wanted To Try To Reflect That.

Suffering Can Bend & Break Us. But It Can Also Break Us Open To Become The Persons God Intended Us To Be. It Depends On What We Do With The Pain. If We Offer It Back To God, He Will Use It To Do Great Things In Us & Through Us, Because Suffering Is Fertile... It An Grow New Life.

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.

Books Belong To Their Readers.

If My Public Existence Does Anything Worthwhile, Hopefully It At Least Demystifies The Author A Bit, Because I Know When I Was Younger I Felt Like Authors Were Like Wizards Or Something. Turns Out They're Total Muggles.

Books—they Weren't Ladders Out Of The Abyss, But They Were Companions.

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

There Was Time Before Organisms Experienced Consciousness, And There Will Be Time After. And If The Inevitability Of Human Oblivion Worries You, I Encourage You To Ignore It.

The Future Lay Before Him, Inevitable But Invisible.

The World Is Not A Wish-granting Factory.

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

…because Nerds Like Us Are Allowed To Be Unironically Enthusiastic About Stuff… Nerds Are Allowed To Love Stuff, Like Jump-up-and-down-in-the-chair-can’t-control-yourself Love It. Hank, When People Call People Nerds, Mostly What They’re Saying Is ‘you Like Stuff.’ Which Is Just Not A Good Insult At All. Like, ‘you Are Too Enthusiastic About The Miracle Of Human Consciousness’.

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

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

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.

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.

Physical Intimacy Isn’t And Can Never Be An Effective Substitute For Emotional Intimacy.

You Say Into My Cracks And I Saw Into Yours.

...kaitlyn Never Wore Open-toed Shoes On Account Of How She Hated Her Feet Because She Felt Her Second Toes Were Too Long, As If The Second Toe Was A Window Into The Soul Or Something.

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

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.

Neither Novels Or Their Readers Benefit From Any Attempts To Divine Whether Any Facts Hide Inside A Story. Such Efforts Attack The Very Idea That Made-up Stories Can Matter, Which Is Sort Of The Foundational Assumption Of Our Species.

Made Up Stories

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

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

Waffles Are Just Awesome Bread.

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.

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

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

I Didn't Know Whether To Trust Alaska, And I'd Certainly Had Enough Of Her Unpredictability - Cold One Day, Sweet The Next; Irresistibly Flirty One Moment, Resistibly Obnoxious The Next. I Preferred The Colonel: At Least When He Was Cranky, He Had A Reason.

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

As The Tide Washed In, The Dutch Tulip Man Faced The Ocean: "conjoiner Rejoinder Poisoner Concealer Revelator. Look At It, Rising Up And Rising Down, Taking Everything With It." "what’s That?" Anna Asked. "water," The Dutchman Said. "well, And Time.

I Don't See Any Point In Nihilism... Just As I Suppose The Nihilist Sees No Point In Everything Else.

I Figured Something Out. The Future Is Unpredictable.

'cause I'm Just - I Want To Go To Amsterdam, And I Want Him To Tell Me What Happens After The Book Is Over, And I Just Don't Want My Particular Life, And Also The Sky Is Depressing Me, And There Is This Old Swing Set Out Here That My Dad Made For Me When I Was A Kid.' 'i Must See This Old Swing Set Of Tears Immediately,' He Said. 'i'll Be Over In Twenty Minutes.'

Imagine Others Complexly.

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

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

Don’t Make Stuff Because You Want To Make Money - It Will Never Make You Enough Money. And Don’t Make Stuff Because You Want To Get Famous - Because You Will Never Feel Famous Enough. Make Gifts For People - And Work Hard On Making Those Gifts In The Hope That Those People Will Notice And Like The Gifts.

Nerd Life Is Just So Much Better Than Regular Life.

I'll Fight It. I'll Fight It For You. Don't You Worry About Me, Hazel Grace. I'm Okay. I'll Find A Way To Hang Around And Annoy You For A Long Time.

Girls Think They’re Only Allowed To Wear Dresses On Formal Occasions, But I Like A Woman Who Says, You Know, I’m Going Over To See A Boy Who Is Having A Nervous Breakdown, A Boy Whose Connection To The Sense Of Sight Itself Is Tenuous, And Gosh Dang It, I Am Going To Wear A Dress For Him.

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.

How Are The Eyes?' 'oh, Excellent,' He Said. 'i Mean, They're Not In My Head Is The Only Problem.' 'awesome, Yeah,' Gus Said. 'not To One-up You Or Anything, But My Body Is Made Out Of Cancer.' 'so I Heard,' Issac Said, Trying Not To Let It Get To Him. He Fumbled Toward Gus's Hand And Found Only His Thigh. 'i'm Taken,' Gus Said.

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

"why Are Breakfast Food Breakfast Foods?" I Asked Them. "like, Why Don't We Have Curry For Breakfast?" "hazel, Eat." "but Why?" I Asked. "i Mean Seriously: How Did Scrambled Eggs Get Stuck With Breakfast Exclusivity? You Can Put Bacon On A Sandwich Without Anyone Freaking Out. But The Moment Your Sandwich Has An Egg, Boom, It's A Breakfast Sandwich."

In Retrospect Hank I Don't Know Why I Spent Four Years Writing This Book When I Could Have Just Made A Hit Sing-a-ma-jig Album.

The Marks Humans Leave Are Too Often Scars. You Build A Hideous Minimall Or Start A Coup Or Try To Become A Rock Star And You'll Think "they'll Remember Me Now," But (a) They Don't Remember You, And (b) All You Leave Behind Are More Scars. Your Coup Becomes A Dictatorship. Your Minimall Becomes A Lesion.

I Hated Being Careful, Too - Or Wanted To, At Least.

I Don't Want To Hear Another Negative Word About Cheerleaders. If It Weren't For Cheerleaders, Who Would Tell Us When And How To Be Happy During Athletic Events? If It Weren't For Cheerleaders, How Would America's Prettiest Girls Get The Exercise That's So Vital To A Healthy Life?

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

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

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.

Still, What Could I Say? That I Didn't Just Feel Depressed - Instead, It Was Like The Depression Was The Core Of Me, Of Every Part Of Me, From My Mind To My Bones? That If He Got Blue, I Got Black? That I Hated Those Pills So Much, Because I Knew How Much I Relied On Them To Live?

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.

Everything That Comes Together Falls Apart.

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

That's The Thing About Pain, It Demands To Be Felt.

We Just Did An Awesome Job Of Not Dying.

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

Dying Is The Last Thing I Would Ever Do!

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

You Are Valuable And Rare And Worthy Of Love.

"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."

People Always Get Used To Beauty, Though.” “i Haven’t Gotten Used To You Just Yet,” He Answered, Smiling. I Felt Myself Blushing. “thank You For Coming To Amsterdam,” He Said. “thank You For Letting Me Hijack Your Wish,” I Said. “thank You For Wearing That Dress Which Is Like Whoa

You Say You're Not Special Because The World Doesn't Know About You, But That's An Insult To Me. I Know About You.

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.

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.

In These Pages, And In My Memories, She Reminds Me That A Short Life Can Also Be A Good And Rich Life, That It Is Possible To Live With Depression Without Being Consumed By It, And That Meaning In Life Is Found Together, In Family And Friendship That Transcends And Survives All Manner Of Suffering. As The Poet Wrote In The Bible's Song Of Solomon, 'love Is Strong As Death.' Or Perhaps Even Stronger.

Can I Ask You About Caroline Mathers?" "and You Say There's No Afterlife.

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.

What A Treacherous Thing To Believe That A Person Is More Than A Person.

I Don't Think Your Missing Pieces Ever Fit Inside You Again Once They Go Missing.

She Is Close Enough To Me That I Can See Her, Because Even Now There Is The Outward Sign Of Visible Light, Even At Night In This Parking Lot On The Outskirts Of Algoe. After We Kiss, Our Foreheads Touch As We Stare At Each Other. Yes, I Can See Her Almost Perfectly In This Cracked Darkness.

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

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.

In The First Century Ce, Roman Authorities Punished St. Apollonia By Crushing Her Teeth One By One With Pliers. Colin Often Thought About This In Relationship To The Monotony Of Dumping: We Have Thirty-two Teeth. After A While, Having Each Tooth Individually Destroyed Probably Gets Repetitive, Even Dull. But It Never Stops Hurting.

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

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

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