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

-John Green

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I Find It Really

John Green

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

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We All Want To Do Something To Mitigate The Pain Of Loss Or To Turn Grief Into Something Positive, To Find A Silver Lining In The Clouds. But I Believe There Is Real Value In Just Standing There, Being Still, Being Sad.

When Did We See Each Other Face-to-face? Not Until You Saw Into My Cracks And I Saw Into Yours. Before That, We Were Just Looking At Ideas Of Each Other, Like Looking At Your Window Shade But Never Seeing Inside. But Once The Vessel Cracks, The Light Can Get In. The Light Can Get Out.

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

The Phrase Booze And Mischief Left Me Worrying I'd Stumbled Into What My Mother Referred To As "the Wrong Crowd," But For The Wrong Crowd, They Both Seemed Awfully Smart.

You Say Into My Cracks And I Saw Into Yours.

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

That While The World Wasn't Built For Humans, We Were Built For The World.

So I Was Ugly. I Was Never Fat, Really, And I Never Wore Headgear Or Had Zits Or Anything. But I Was Ugly. I Don't Even Know How Ugly And Pretty Get Decided - Maybe There's Like A Secret Cabal Of Boys Who Meet In The Locker Room And Decide Who's Ugly And Who's Hot, Because As Far As I Can Remember, There Was No Such Thing As A Hot Fourth-grader. - Lindsey Lee Wells

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

The Colonel Led All The Cheers. Cornbread!" He Screamed. Chicken!" The Crowd Responded. Rice!" Peas!" And Then, All Together: "we Got Higher Sats." Hip Hip Hip Hooray!" The Colonel Cried. You'll Be Workin' For Us Someday!

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

It's Not Life Or Death, The Labyrinth. Suffering. Doing Wrong And Having Wrong Things Happen To You. That's The Problem. Bolivar Was Talking About The Pain, Not About The Living Or Dying. How Do You Get Out Of The Labyrinth Of Suffering?

Does He Have Ugly Hands? Sometimes Beautiful People Have Ugly Hands." "no He Has Kind Of Amazing Hands.

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.

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

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

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

Walt Whitman Is Hot! I Mean, That Guy Could Sound His Barbaric Yawps Over The Roofs Of My World Any Time.

Do You Know What Your Problem Is? You Can't Live With The Idea That Someone Might Leave.

I Make A Gesture That Is Intended To Convey, "hey, No Hurry, Talk As Long As You'd Like," And Probably Actually Conveys, "hey, Look At Me! I Have Spastic Hands.

"and We'll Call You... Hmmm. Pudge." "huh?" "pudge," The Colonel Said. "because You're Skinny. It's Called Irony, Pudge. Heard Of It? Now, Let's Go Get Some Cigarettes And Start This Year Off Right."

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.

It Looked Like An Old Painting, But Real - Everything Achingly Idyllic In The Morning Light - And I Thought About How Wonderfully Strange It Would Be To Live In A Place Where Almost Everything Had Been Built By The Dead.

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?

Whether You're Studying Electrical Engineering Or Poetry, College Is Not About Maximizing Income, It's About Becoming A Better And More Informed Observer Of The Universe. And For Me, At Least, That What's Leads To A More Fulfilling Life.

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.

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

You Either Have A Great Social Life And Shitty Taste In Music, Or A Fantastic Taste In Music With Barely Any Social Life.

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

You're Awfully Philosophical For A Girl That Just Got Busted.

She Loved Mysteries So Much That She Became One.

You Cannot Invent An Algorithm That Is As Good At Recommending Books As A Good Bookseller, And That's The Secret Weapon Of The Bookstore - Is That No Algorithm Will Ever Understand Readers The Way That Other Readers Can Understand Readers.

If You Were To Go, And Hopefully Someday You Will, You Would See A Lot Of Paintings Of Dead People. You'd See Jesus On The Cross, And You'd See A Dude Get Stabbed In The Neck, And You'd See People Dying At Sea And In Battle And A Parade Of Martyrs. But Not. One. Single. Cancer. Kid. Nobody Biting It From The Plague Or Smallpox Or Yellow Fever Or Whatever, Because There Is No Glory In Illness. There Is No Meaning To It. There Is No Honor In Dying Of.

The Real Heroes Anyway Aren't The People Doing Things; The Real Heroes Are The People Noticing Things, Paying Attention.

Your Driving Is Unpleasant, But It Isn't Technically Unsafe.

It's Embarrassing That We All Just Walk Through Life Blindly Accepting That Scrambled Eggs Are Fundamentally Associated With Mornings.

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

Congratulations! You're A Woman. Now Die.

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You Couldn't Be More Wrong," I Said. "you Are Buying Into The Cross-stitched Sentiments Of Your Parents' Throw Pillows. 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." "you're A Hard Person To Comfort," Augustus Said. "easy Comfort Isn't Comforting," I Said.

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

Right, Well, He'd Been Sick For A While And His Nurse Said To Him, 'you Seem To Be Feeling Better This Morning,' And Isben Looked At Her And Said, 'on The Contrary,' And Then He Died.

I Don't Think Pandemics Make Us Afraid Of Death, I Think They Make Us Afraid Of Oblivion. They Force Us To Grapple With The Futility Of Effort. Also They Make Us Barf Which Isn't Fun Either... Wash Your Hands, Cover Your Coughs, And Find A Way To Hold In Balance The Futility Of Effort With The Necessity To Struggle.

Nostalgia Is Inevitably A Yearning For A Past That Never Existed And When I'm Writing, There Are No Bees To Sting Me Out Of My Sentimentality. For Me At Least, Fiction Is The Only Way I Can Even Begin To Twist My Lying Memories Into Something True.

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I Always Felt Like You Had To Be Important To Have Enemies.

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You Can't Just Make Me Different And Then Leave. You Can't. You Can't Change Me And Make My Whole Life Centered Around You, Then Leave.

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

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Some Wars," He Said Dismissively. "what Am I At War With? My Cancer. And What Is My Cancer? My Cancer Is Me. The Tumors Are Made Of Me. They're Made Of Me As Surely As My Brain And My Heart Is Made Of Me. It Is A Civil War, Hazel Grace, With A Predetermined Winner.

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

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She Didn’t Understand Why It Was Happening,” He Said. “i Had To Tell Her She Would Die. Her Social Worker Said I Had To Tell Her. I Had To Tell Her She Would Die, So I Told Her She Was Going To Heaven. She Asked If I Would Be There, And I Said That I Would Not, Not Yet. But Eventually, She Said, And I Promised That Yes, Of Course, Very Soon. And I Told Her That In The Meantime We Had Great Family Up There That Would Take Care Of Her. And She Asked Me When I Would Be There, And I Told Her Soon. Twenty-two Years Ago.

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

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

You Die In The Middle Of Your Life.

Fault In Our Stars

I Don't Even Know How Ugly And Pretty Get Decided.

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

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.

Maybe All The Strings Inside Him Broke.

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.

Feeling - Probably For The First Time In My Life - The Fear And Excitement Of Living In A Place Where You Never Know What's Going To Happen Or When.

Standing In Line Is A Form Of Oppression

Standing In Line

We Are Greater Than The Sum Of Our Parts.

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

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

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

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

The Way I Figure It, Everyone Gets A Miracle.

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.

All Along — Not Only Since She Left, But For A Decade Before — I Had Been Imagining Her Without Listening, Without Knowing That She Made As A Poor A Window As I Did. And So I Could Not Imagine Her As A Person Who Could Feel Fear, Who Could Feel Isolated In A Roomful Of People, Who Could Be Shy About Her Record Collection Because It Was Too Personal To Share. Someone Who Might Have Read Travel Books To Escape Having To Live In The Town That So Many People Escape To. Someone Who — Because No One Thought She Was A Person — Had No One To Really Talk To.

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.

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.

Of Course, Sweetie," His Mom Said. "we'll Be Here All Day. You Just Come Down Whenever You Want And We Love You And You're So So Special, Colin, And You Can't Possibly Let This Girl Make You Think Otherwise Because You Are The Most Magnificent, Brilliant Boy-" And Right Then, The Most Special, Magnificent, Brilliant Boy Bolted Into His Bathroom And Puked His Guts Out. An Explosion, Sort Of.

It Is So Hard To Leave—until You Leave. And Then It Is The Easiest Goddamned Thing In The World.

Teenagers Think They Are Invincible

Long Week. Long Month. Long Life.

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.

You Gave Me A Forever Within The Numbered Days, And I'm Grateful.

Destiny Is Not Something That Happens All At Once-it's Something That Happens Only In Retrospect.

Is The Labyrinth Living Or Dying?

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

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

The Internet Is Necessarily Public. It Can Be Filtered-public Or Censored-public, But It Necessarily Has To Be Open And Available.

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

Maybe We're Grass—our Roots So Interdependent That No One Is Dead As Long As Someone Is Still Alive.

We Live In A Universe Devoted To The Creation, And Eradication, Of Awareness. Augustus Waters Did Not Die After A Lengthy Battle With Cancer. He Died After A Lengthy Battle With Human Consciousness, A Victim - As You Will Be - Of The Universe's Need To Make And Unmake All That Is Possible.

All The Characters Are Made Out Of Words. With Reading, I Understand That The People Aren't Real But The Fact That They Are Made Out Of Language And Are Made Out Of Words Is Extremely Powerful To Me. It Becomes Transformative For Me. Different People Have Different Ways Of Trying To Make Stories Using Language.

Anything That Happens All At Once Is Just As Likely To Unhappen All At Once, You Know?

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!

I Kind Of Conned You Into Believing You Were Falling In Love With A Healthy Person.

Falling In Love

It Hurts Because It Mattered.

Nerdighters Make Me Believe In America Again.

You Can't Just Make Yourself Matter And Then Die, Alaska, Because Now I Am Irretrievably Different.

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

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

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.

We Did A Few Things Worth Remembering, And I Wish For Someone To Remember Them.

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.

I Just Want The Pleasure Of Noticing These Things At A Safe Distance.

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.

I Pointed At The Little Kids Goading Each Other To Jump From Rib Cage To Shoulder And Gus Answered Just Loud Enough For Me To Hear Over The Din, 'last Time, I Imagined Myself As The Kid. This Time, The Skeleton.

Saying 'i Notice You're A Nerd' Is Like Saying, 'hey, I Notice That You'd Rather Be Intelligent Than Be Stupid, That You'd Rather Be Thoughtful Than Be Vapid, That You Believe That There Are Things That Matter More Than The Arrest Record Of Lindsay Lohan. Why Is That?' In Fact, It Seems To Me That Most Contemporary Insults Are Pretty Lame. Even 'lame' Is Kind Of Lame. Saying 'you're Lame' Is Like Saying 'you Walk With A Limp.' Yeah, Whatever, So Does 50 Cent, And He's Done All Right For Himself.

There's A Place In The Brain For Knowing What Cannot Be Remembered.

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

She Said, "it's Not Life Or Death, The Labyrinth." "um, Okay. So What Is It?" "suffering," She Said. "doing Wrong And Having Wrong Things Happen To You. That's The Problem. Bolivar Was Talking About The Pain, Not About The Living Or Dying. How Do You Get Out Of The Labyrinth Of Suffering?... Nothing's Wrong. But There's Always Suffering, Pudge. Homework Or Malaria Or Having A Boyfriend Who Lives Far Away When There's A Good-looking Boy Lying Next To You. Suffering Is Universal. It's The One Thing Buddhists, Christians, And Muslims Are All Worried About."

Life Has Become The Future.

I'm Starting To Realize That People Lack Good Mirrors. It's So Hard For Anyone To Show Us How We Look, & So Hard For Us To Show Anyone How We Feel.

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

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. I'd Hoped That He'd Be Eulogizing Me.

More Than Anything, I Felt The Unfairness Of It, The Inarguable Injustice Of Loving Someone Who Might Have Loved You Back But Can't Due To Deadness, And Then I Leaned Forward, My Forehead Against The Back Of Takumi's Headrest, And I Cried, Whimpering, And I Didn't Even Feel Sadness So Much As Pain.

And I Don’t Blame Him. I Don’t Even Trust Me.

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

Worry Is Yet Another Side Effect Of Dying.

He Lit A Cigarette And Handed It To Me. I Inhaled. Coughed. Wheezed. Gasped For Breath. Coughed Again. Considered Vomiting. Grabbed The Swinging Bench, Head Spinning, And Threw The Cigarette To The Ground And Stomped On It, Convinced My Great Perhaps Did Not Involve Cigarettes.

...it Sounded Like A Dragon Breathing In Time With Me, Like I Had This Pet Dragon Who Was Cuddled Up Next To Me And Cared Enough About Me To Time His Breaths To Mine.

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.

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.

She Would Stay On The Road And In Hiding, A Balloon Floating Through The Sky, Eating Up Hundreds Of Miles A Day With A Help Of The Perpetual Tailwind.

All Salvation Is Temporary

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

I Thought Of The One Thing About Home That I Missed, My Dad's Study With Its Built-in, Floor-to-ceiling Shelves Sagging With Thick Biographies And The Black Leather Chair That Kept Me Just Uncomfortable Enough To Keep From Feeling Sleepy As I Read.

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?

She Never Liked Me Much, But She Sure Loved Me

Something About Telling That Story Made My Gut Grow Back Together." What?" Oh, Nothing. Just Thinking Out Loud." That's Who You Really Like. The People You Can Think Out Loud In Front Of." The People Who've Been In Your Secret Hiding Places." The People You Bite Your Thumb In Front Of." Hi." Hi." ..." ..." Wow. My First Lindsey." My Second Colin." That Was Fun. Let's Try It Again." Sold." ..." ..." ...".

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 May Choose Your Song, But Know This: Tiny. Cooper. Hates. Over. The. Rainbow.

So You've Been Gone A Couple Days,' Alison Said. 'hmm, What'd You Miss...a Celebrity Did Drugs. Politicians Disagreed. A Different Celebrity Wore A Bikini That Revealed A Bodily Imperfection. A Team Won A Sporting Event, But Another Team Lost.

Crying Is You, Plus Tears

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

It's Just That Most Really Good-looking People Are Stupid, So I Exceed Expectations.' 'right, It's Primarily His Hotness,' I Said. 'it Can Be Sort Of Blinding,' He Said. 'it Actually Did Blind Our Friend Isaac,' I Said. 'terrible Tragedy, That. But Can I Help My Own Deadly Beauty?' 'you Cannot.' 'it Is My Burden, This Beautiful Face.' 'not To Mention Your Body.' 'seriously, Don't Even Get Me Started On My Hot Bod. You Don't Want To See Me Naked, Dave. Seeing Me Naked Actually Took Hazel Grace's Breath Away,' He Said, Nodding Toward The Oxygen Tank.

The Nature Of Impending Fatherhood Is That You Are Doing Something That You're Unqualified To Do, And Then You Become Qualified While Doing It.

You Live For Pretentious Metaphors.

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.

Hurt Tends To Drown Out Sorry.

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

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

We Just Did An Awesome Job Of Not Dying.

I Stand In This Parking Lot, Realizing That I’ve Never Been This Far From Home, And Here Is This Girl I Love And Cannot Follow. I Hope This Is The Hero’s Errand, Because Not Following Her Is The Hardest Thing I’ve Ever Done.

Love Is The Most Common Miracle.

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.

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.

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?

Muhammad Brought The Promise That Anyone Could Find Fulfillment And Everlasting Life Through Allegiance To The One True God. The Buddah Held Out Hope That The Suffering Could Be Transcended. Jesus Brought The Message That Even The Last Shall Be First, That Even The Tax Collectors And Lepers - The Outcasts - Had Cause For Hope. And So That Is The Question I Leave You With In This Final: What Is Your Cause For Hope.

So Why Don't You Go Home For Vacations?' I Asked Her. I'm Just Scared Of Ghosts, Pudge. And Home Is Full Of Them.

There Is No Try. There Is Only Do.

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

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

But I Had To Kill You, Because The Only Other Possible Ending Was Us Doing It, Which I Wasn't Really Emotionally Ready To Write About At Ten.' 'fair Enough,' I Say. 'but In The Revision, I Want To Get Some Action.

I Think People Who Are Religious Are More Likely To Want One Around, But It's A Very Secular Position.

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 Told Him They Built A Statue Of Schultz, And Then He Said That A Monument Is Cold Comfort To A Dead Man, And Then I Said That The Statue Was Built Not For Schultz, But For Us--to Remind Us How To Be Human.

He Flipped Himself Onto His Side And Kissed Me. "you're So Hot," I Said, My Hand Still On His Leg. "i'm Starting To Think You Have An Amputee Fetish," He Answered, Still Kissing Me. I Laughed. "i Have An Augustus Waters Fetish," I Explained.

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

I Found His Last Words Without Too Much Searching. Captured By The Bolivian Army, Guevara Said, 'shoot, Coward. You Are Only Going To Kill A Man.

What Do You Mean By Meant? Given The Final Futility Of Our Struggle, Is The Fleeting Jolt Of Meaning That Art Gives Us Valuable? Or Is It The Only Value Passing Time As Comfortably As Possible?

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

What Matters To You Defines Your Mattering.

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.

Without Pain, We Couldn't Know Joy.

Everybody Was So Kind. Strong, Too. In The Darkest Days, The Lord Puts The Best People Into Your Life." "quick, Give Me A Throw Pillow And Some Thread Because That Needs To Be An Encouragement.

Nothing Is As Boring As Other People's Dreams.

My Interest As A Writer Is Not In Reflecting Actual Human Speech, Which, Of Course, Does Not Occur In Sentences And Is Totally Undiagrammable. My Interest Is In Trying To Reflect The Reality Of Experience - How We Feel When We Talk To Each Other, How We Feel When We're Engaging With Questions That Interest Us.

I Never Really Understood That Massive Collaboration Involving Hundreds Of People Is What Makes Movies Possible, And It's Also Why I Would Agree That Curiosity Is Not The Most Important Human Trait; The Urge To Collaborate Is. Heck . . . Only We Have The Ability To Cooperate To Make Like Online Communities And Space Telescopes And Imaginariums And Movies. So The Great Thrill Of This Whole Experience [my Novel Being Made Into A Movie] For Me Was . .. .seeing Humanity Do What It's Best At, Which Ultimately Is Not Competing But Cooperating.

And So That Is The Question I Leave You With In This Final: What Is Your Cause For Hope?

Everlasting Life

I Wanted To Know That He Would Be Okay If I Died. I Wanted To Not Be A Grenade, To Not Be A Malevolent Force In The Lives Of People I Loved.

My Regret Was Immediate And Permanent And Useless.

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

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

One Of The Reasons That Metaphor And Symbolism Are Important In Books Is Because They Are Also Important To Life. Like, For Example Say You're In High School And You're A Boy And You Say To A Girl: "do You Like Anyone Right Now?" - That's Not The Question You're Asking. The Question You're Asking Is, "do You Like Me Right Now."

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.

It Is Not My Fault That My Parents Own The World's Largest Collection Of Black Santas.

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

Nerd Life Is Just So Much Better Than Regular Life.

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.

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.

But Once That String Gets Cut, Kid, You Can't Uncut It. Do You Get What I'm Saying?

For She Had Embodied The Great Perhaps--she Had Proved To Me That It Was Worth It To Leave Behind My Minor Life For Grander Maybes, And Now She Was Gone And With Her My Faith In Perhaps.

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.

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

It Is Very Sad To Me That Some People Are So Intent On Leaving Their Mark On The World That They Don’t Care If That Mark Is A Scar.

I've Read A Lot Of Bad Books. I Used To Review Books For A Living, And When You're A Reviewer You Read Tons Of Terrible Books.

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

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

I'm Not Saying It Was Your Fault. I'm Saying It Wasn't Nice.

Jesus, I'm Not Going To Be One Of Those People Who Sits Around Talking About What They're Going To Do. I'm Just Going To Do It.

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

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.

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

As A Child I Was An Inveterate Liar. As Opposed To Now, I Am A Novelist.

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

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

The World May Be Broken, But Hope Is Not Crazy.

The Joy You Bring Us Is So Much Greater Than The Sadness We Feel About Your Illness.

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

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

A Paper Town For A Paper Girl.

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.

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