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I Found Myself Thinking About President William Mckinley, The Third American President To Be Assassinated. He Lived For Several Days After He Was Shot, And Towards The End, His Wife Started Crying And Screaming, "i Want To Go Too! I Want To Go Too!" And With His Last Measure Of Strength, Mckinley Turned To Her And Spoke His Last Words: "we Are All Going.

-John Green

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I Found Myself Thinking

John Green

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I Found Myself Thinking About President William Mckinley, The Third American President To Be Assassinated. He Lived For Several Days After He Was Shot, And Towards The End, His Wife Started Crying And Screaming, "i Want To Go Too! I Want To Go Too!" And With His Last Measure Of Strength, Mckinley Turned To Her And Spoke His Last Words: "we Are All Going.

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

"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."

It's Fine," I Repeated. And Whatever. It Was Fine. It Had To Be.

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

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

If He Is Anything Other Than A Total Gentleman, I’m Going To Gouge His Eyes Out.” “so You’re Into It.” “withholding Judgment! When Can I See You?” “certainly Not Until You Finish An Imperial Affliction.” I Enjoyed Being Coy. “then I’d Better Hang Up And Start Reading.” “you’d Better,” I Said, And The Line Clicked Dead Without Another Word. Flirting Was New To Me, But I Liked It.

That Deep, Can-still-taste-her-in-my-mouth Sleep.

You Can Say A Lot Of Bad Things About Tiny Cooper. I Know, Because I Have Said Them. But For A Guy Who Knows Absolutely Nothing About How To Conduct His Own Relationships, Tiny Cooper Is Kind Of Brilliant When It Comes To Dealing With Other People's Heartbreak. Tiny Is Like Some Gigantic Sponge Soaking Up The Pain Of Lost Love Everywhere He Goes.

The Marks Humans Leave Are Too Often Scars.

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.

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

Labyrinth Looking For Alaska

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

What I Love About The Sculpture Is That It Makes The Bones That We Are Always Walking And Playing On Manifest, Like In A World That So Often Denies The Reality Of Death And The Reality That We Are Surrounded By And Outnumbered By The Dead. Here, Is A Very Playful Way Of Acknowledging That And Acknowledging That And That Always, Whenever We Play, Whenever We Live, We Are Living In Both Literal And Metaphorical Ways On The Memory And Bones Of The Dead.

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.

But Ultimately I Do Not Believe That She Was Only Matter. The Rest Of Her Must Be Recycled, Too. I Believe Now That We Are Greater Than The Sum Of Our Parts. If You Take Alaska's Genetic Code And You Add Her Life Experiences And The Relationships She Had With People, And Then You Take The Size And Shape Of Her Body, You Do Not Get Her. There Is Something Else Entirely. There Is A Part Of Her Greater Than The Sum Of Her Knowable Parts. And That Part Has To Go Somewhere, Because It Cannot Be Destroyed

Without Pain, How Could We Know Joy?

Imagining Isn't Perfect. You Can't Get All The Way Inside Someone Else...but Imagining Being Someone Else, Or The World Being Something Else, Is The Only Way In. It Is The Machine That Kills Fascists.

Q, You're Going To Go To Duke. You're Going To Be A Very Successful Lawyer-or-something And Get Married And Have Babies And Live Your Whole Little Life, And Then You're Going To Die, And In The Last Moments, When You're Chocking On Your Own Bile In The Nursing Home, You'll Say To Yourself:'well, I Wasted My Whole Goddamned Life, But At Least I Broke Into Seaworld With Margo Roth Spiegelman My Senior Year Of High School. At Least I Carpe'd That One Diem.

You Say Into My Cracks And I Saw Into Yours.

Colin Had Always Preferred Baths; One Of His General Policies In Life Was Never To Do Anything Standing Up That Could Just As Easily Be Done Lying Down

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.

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?

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?

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

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.

Lonley, Vaguely Pedophilic Swing Set Seeks The Butts Of Children.

It's More Impressive," I Said Out Loud. "from A Distance, I Mean. You Can't See The Wear On Things, You Know? You Can't See The Rust Or The Weeds Or The Paint Cracking. You See The Place As Someone Once Imagined It.

Idiotically, It Occurred To Me That My Pink Underwear Didn’t Match My Purple Bra, As If Boys Even Notice Such Things.

...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.

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

Indiana,’ He Said. ‘they Steal The Land From The Indians And Leave The Name, Yes?

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...

That's How Writing Works, At Least For Me: Even The Stuff That Doesn't Work Out Gets Funneled Into The Stuff That Does Work Out.

I've Lived Here For Eighteen Years And I Have Never Once In My Life Come Across Anyone Who Cares About Anything That Matters.

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.

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.

Being In A Relationship, That's Something You Choose. Being Friends, That's Something You Just Are.

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.

I Don't Know Why Boys Expect Us To Like Boy Movies. We Don't Expect Them To Like Girl Movies.

In The Ensuing Silence, I Have Time To Contemplate The Word Cute— How Dismissive It Is, How It’s The Equivalent Of Calling Someone Little, How It Makes A Person Into A Baby, How The Word Is A Neon Sign Burning Through The Dark Reading, “feel Bad About Yourself.

And In My Classes, I Will Talk Most Of The Time, And You Will Listen Most Of The Time. Because You May Be Smart, But I've Been Smart Longer.

I Have Never Really Thought Of Him As A Person, Either.... A Guy Whose Strings Were Broken, Who Didn’t Feel The Root Of His Leaves Of Grass Connected To The Field, A Guy Who Was Cracked. Like Me.

One Of The Things I Like About Making Stuff In The Age Of The Internet, Is That People Make Stuff In Response To It. You Can See People Respond To Your Work Visually Or Musically Or With Writing.

In The Darkest Days, The Lord Puts The Best People Into Your Life." (p. 28)

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Ashes To Ashes. Garage Sale To Garage Sale,” I Said.

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I Pulled The Oxygen Tubes From My Nostrils And Raised The Tube Up Over My Head, Handing It To Dad. I Wanted It To Be Just Me And Just Him.

My Inner Goddess Is Doing The Merengue With Some Salsa Moves.

It Hurts Because It Mattered.

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The Pure And Simple Truth Is Rarely Pure And Never Simple. What's A Boy To Do When Lies And Truth Are Both Sinful?

So Keeping The Box Closed Just Keeps You In The Dark, Not The Universe.

There Is No Try. There Is Only Do.

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

Hazel Grace!” He Shouted. “you Did Not Use Your One Dying Wish To Go To Disney World With Your Parents.” “also Epcot Center,” I Mumbled. “oh, My God,” Augustus Said. “i Can’t Believe I Have A Crush On A Girl With Such Cliché Wishes.

The Universe Is Biased Toward Consciousness Because The Universe Wants To Be Noticed. It's A Way Into Existential Hope That Doesn't Have Too Much Cliché Wrapped Around It.

We Are Now As I Wished We Could Be Then.

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.

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I Believe In That Line From An Imperial Affliction. 'the Risen Sun Too Bright In Her Losing Eyes.' That's God, I Think, The Rising Sun, And The Light Is Too Bright And Her Eyes Are Losing But They Aren't Lost.

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Maybe There Is Something You're Afraid To Say, Or Someone You're Afraid To Love, Or Somewhere You're Afraid To Go. It's Gonna Hurt. It's Gonna Hurt Because It Matters.

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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!

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."

Scared Isn't A Good Excuse. Scared Is The Excuse Everyone Has Always Used.

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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.

She Taught Me Everything I Knew About Crawfish And Kissing And Pink Wine And Poetry. She Made Me Different.

You Don't Get To Choose If You Get Hurt In This World...but You Do Have Some Say In Who Hurts You. I Like My Choices.

Here's To All The Places We Went. And All The Places We'll Go. And Here's To Me, Whispering Again And Again And Again And Again: Iloveyou

Again And Again

The Degree To Which I Am Blessed Staggers Me... The Degree To Which I Take That For Granted Shames Me. -streetwalking With Jesus

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

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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.

He Specialized In The Murder Of Dreams, Hazel Grace.

Amsterdam Is Like The Rings Of A Tree: It Gets Older As You Get Closer To The Center.

I've Gotten Really Hot Since You Went Blind.

The Venn Diagram Of Boys Who Don’t Like Smart Girls And Boys You Don’t Wanna Date Is A Circle.

...it Occurred To Me That The Voracious Ambition Of Humans Is Never Sated By Dreams Coming True, Because There Is Always The Thought That Everything Might Be Done Better And Again.

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 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.

The Challenge Is The Same Whether Or Not I'm Collaborating: To Empathize With Your Reader And To Tell A Story That Will Matter To Him Or Her. But The Mechanics Of Going About That Challenge Change When You're Collaborating, Because You Have Someone To Help Refine Your Thinking And Expand Your Vision Of What Might Happen.

Memories Fall Apart Too.

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.

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

He Wanted To Draw Out The Moment Before The Moment- Because As Good As Kissing Feels, Nothing Feels As Good As The Anticipation Of It.

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

But My Miracle Was Different. My Miracle Was This: Out Of All The Houses In All The Subdivisions In All Of Florida, I Ended Up Living Next Door To Margo Roth Spiegelman.

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

There Is No Shortage Of Fault To Be Found Amid Our Stars

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.

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

Books Are The Ultimate Dumpees: Put Them Down And They’ll Wait For You Forever; Pay Attention To Them And They Always Love You Back.

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

I Have Two Kinds Of Facebook Friends: Those Who Know What 'dftba' Means, And Those Who Don't.

…god, It’s Over. Takumi, You Gotta Stop Stealing Other People’s Problems And Get Some Of Your Own.

But Of Course There Is Always A Hamartia And Yours Is That Oh, My God, Even Though You Had Freaking Cancer You Give Money To A Company In Exchange For The Chance To Acquire Yet More Cancer.

Nerd Girls Are The World's Greatest Under-utilized Romantic Resource.

I Know It's Impossible For You To See Your Peers This Way, But When You're Older, You Start To See Them--the Bad Kids And The Good Kids And All Kids--as People. They're Just People, Who Deserve To Be Cared For.

They Couldn't Bear The Idea Of Death Being A Big Black Nothing.

I Hope We Get Pulled Over, He Says. I'd Like To See How The Cop Responds To A Black Man Wearing A Confederate T-shirt Over A Black Dress.

Tiny Cooper Is Not The World's Gayest Person, And He Is Not The World's Largest Person, But I Believe He May Be The World's Largest Person Who Is Really, Really Gay, And Also The World's Gayest Person Who Is Really, Really Large.

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

I'm A Grenade And At Some Point I'm Going To Blow Up And I Would Like To Minimize The Casualties, Okay?

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.

Wait, Wait. I Don't Get It.' 'that Is Because You Only Have Eight Functioning Brain Cells.

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

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.

It's Not Life Or Death, The Labyrinth. Suffering. Doing Wrong And Having Wrong Things Happen To You.

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

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.

Sometimes People Don't Understand The Promises They're Making When They Make Them.

Keeping Promises

I Think When You're 16, If You Have Good Parents, They Generally Just Fade In The Background. I Had Great Parents, And Because They Were Great, I Thought Very Little About Them In High School.

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

True Love Will Triumph In The End—which May Or May Not Be A Lie, But If It Is A Lie, It's The Most Beautiful Lie We Have.

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.

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

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

I Call My Mom From The Car. I Tell Her That Neutral Milk Hotel Is Playing At The Hideout And She Says, "who? What? You're Hiding Out?" And Then I Hum A Few Bars Of One Of Their Songs And Mom Says, "oh, I Know That Song. It's On The Mix You Made Me," And I Say, "right," And She Says, "well You Have To Be Back By Eleven," And I Say, "mom This Is A Historical Event. History Doesn't Have A Curfew," And She Says, "back By Eleven," And I Say, "fine. Jesus," And Then She Has To Go Cut Cancer Out Of Someone.

And The Moral Of The Story Is That You Don't Remember What Happened. What You Remember Becomes What Happened. And The Second Moral Of The Story, If A Story Can Have Multiple Morals, Is That Dumpers Are Not Inherently Worse Than Dumpees - Breaking Up Isn't Something That Gets Done To You; It's Something That Happens With You.

Moral Of The Story

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

I Like To Know The Places I Write About. I Feel Like It Helps Me Ground The Novel. My Novels Are 'realistic Novels,' But They Can Also Be Fantastical, So It's Nice To Have A Setting That Grounds Them A Little Bit.

Thank You For Wearing That Dress Which Is Like Whoa.

If We'd Put Them In A Vase In The Living Room, They Would Have Been Everyone's Flowers. I Wanted Them To Be My Flowers.

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

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

Francois Rabelais. He Was A Poet. And His Last Words Were "i Go To Seek A Great Perhaps." That's Why I'm Going. So I Don't Have To Wait Until I Die To Start Seeking A Great Perhaps.

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

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

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.

I'm Interested In Internet Cultures. I'm Interested In What The Teenagers Who Drive The Internet Culture Are Passionate About. I Follow Their Lead - They Go To Tumblr, I Go To Tumblr.

All Good American Literature Is Always Interested In People Who Are Ambiguously Heroic, Like Gatsby.

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.

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

You Know Your Problem, Quentin? You Keep Expecting People Not To Be Themselves.

The Worse The Haircut, The Better The Man.

So She Became Impulsive, Scared By Her Inaction Into Perpetual Action. When The Eagle Confronted Her With The Expulsion, Maybe She Blurted Out Marya's Name Because It Was The First That Came To Mind, Because In That Moment She Didn't Want To Get Expelled And She Couldn't Think Past That Moment. She Was Scared, Sure. But More Importantly, Maybe She'd Been Scared Of Being Paralyzed By Fear Again. ~miles/pudge On Alaska, Pg 120-121

People Will Say It's Sad That She Leaves A Lesser Scar, That Fewer Remember Her, That She Was Loved Deeply But Not Widely. But It's Not Sad, Van Houten. It's Triumphant. It's Heroic. Isn't That The Real Heroism? Like The Doctors Say: First, Do No Harm.

Love Is Just A Shout In The Void.

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 Have Guts, Just Not When It Counts.

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.

When Adults Say, "teenagers Think They Are 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. We Think That We Are Invincible Because We Are. We Cannot Be Born, And We Cannot Die. Like All Energy, We Can Only Change Shapes And Sizes And Manifestations. They Forget That When They Get Old. They Get Scared Of Losing And Failing. But That Part Of Us Greater Than The Sum Of Our Parts Cannot Begin And Cannot End, And So It Cannot Fail.

Radar Revs The Engine As To Say Hustle, And We Are Running Through The Parking Lot, Ben's Robe Flowing In The Wind So That He Looks Vaguely Like A Dark Wizard, Except That His Pale Skinny Legs Are Visible, And His Arms Hug Plastic Bags. I Can See The Back Of Lacey's Legs Beneath Her Dress, Her Calves Tight In Midstride. I Don't Know How I Look, But I Know How I Feel: Young. Goofy. Infinite.

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.

Well, But You Can Eat Grandma's Cookies. They're Not Bad For You. They Were Made By Grandma. Grandma Wouldn't Hurt You.

Do You Ever Wonder Whether People Would Like You More Or Less If They Could See Inside You? But I Always Wonder About That. If People Could See Me The Way I See Myself—if They Could Live In My Memories—would Anyone, Anyone, Love Me?

The World Went On, As It Does, Without My Full Participation, And I Only Woke Up From The Reverie When Someone Said My Name.

It's Just That I Learned A While Ago That The Best Way To Get People To Like You Is Not To Like Them Too Much.

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.

He Responded A Few Minutes Later. Okay. I Wrote Back. Okay. He Responded: Oh, My God, Stop Flirting With Me!

I Have An Augustus Waters Fetish.

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

Facts, Even False Ones, Cannot Be Copyrighted.

Half-drunk On Well-creamed Gas Station Coffee And The Exhilarating Loneliness Of A Freeway In Nighttime.

I Feel Like, Like, How You Matter Is Defined By The Things That Matter To You. You Matter As Much As The Things That Matter To You.

Things That Matter

‎"i Go To Seek A Great Perhaps.

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.

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.

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.

Colder By The Hour, More Dead With Every Breath.

There Is No Best And No Worst, ...those Judgments Have No Real Meaning Because There Is Only What Is

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

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

"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."

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.

The Missing Piece In His Stomach Hurt So Much-and Eventually He Stopped Thinking About The Theorem And Wondered Only How Something That Isn't There Can Hurt You.

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.

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

It's Hard To Get Movie Studios To Pay A Lot Of Money For Movies That Don't Have Robots Or Explosions.

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

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

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

I Do Not Say Goodbye. I Believe That's One Of The Bullshitiest Words Ever Invented. It's Not Like You're Given The Choice To Say Bad-bye, Or Awful-bye, Or Couldn't-care-less-about-you-bye. Everytime You Leave, It's Supposed To Be A Good One.

You Know, Like When You Look In The Mirror And The Thing You See Is Not The Thing As It Really Is.

What You Must Understand About Me Is That I’m A Deeply Unhappy Person.

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

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

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

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.

I Am A Giant Squid Of Anger.

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