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

-John Green

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I Knew That Time

John Green

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

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She Smiled With All The Delight Of A Kid On Christmas Morning And Said, "y'all Smoke To Enjoy It. I Smoke To Die." - Alaska

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

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

There's No Reason Whatsoever To Drink Eight Glasses Of Water A Day Unless You, For Whatever Reason, Particularly Like The Taste Of Water

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

I Love You Present Tense.

Sorry," I Said To The Duke. "eh, It's Not Your Fault. It's Carla's Fault. You Were Turning The Wheel. Carla Just Wasn't Listening. I Knew I Shouldn't Have Loved Her. She's Like All The Others, Tobin; As Soon As I Confess My Love, She Abandons Me." I Laughed. "i Never Abandoned You," I Said Patting On Her Back. "yeah, Well, (a.) I Never Confessed My Love To You, And (b.) I'm Not Even Female To You.

Memories Fall Apart Too.

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

Nothing Is As Boring As Other People's Dreams.

I'll Just Go Over To The Duke's," I Said. "her Parents Already Told Me I Could Stay There. I'll Go Over There And Open All My Presents, And Talk About How My Parents Neglect Me, And Then Maybe The Duke Will Give Me Some Of Her Presents Because She Feels So Bad About How My Mom Doesn't Love Me.

Hazel Has To Realize That Her Mom Was Wrong When She Said, “i Won’t Be A Mother Anymore.” The Truth Is, After Hazel Dies (assuming She Dies), Her Mom Will Still Be Her Mom, Just As My Grandmother Is Still My Grandmother Even Though She Has Died. As Long As Either Person Is Still Alive, That Relationship Survives. (it Changes, But It Survives.)

What I Eventually Realized Is That The Real Business Of Books Is Not Done By Awards Committees Or People Who Turn Trees Into Paper Or Editors Or Agents Or Even Writers. We're All Just Facilitators. The Real Business Is Done By Readers.

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

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

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

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.

You And Me Will Read A Book And Find Three Interesting Things That We Remember. But Colin Finds Everything Intriguing. He Reads A Book About Presidents And He Remembers More Of It Because Everything He Reads Clicks In His Head As Fugging Interesting.

Harry Potter Isn’t Real? Oh No! Wait, Wait, What Do You Mean By Real? Is This Video Blog Real? Am I Real If You Can See Me And Hear Me, But Only Through The Internet? Are You Real If I Can Read Your Comment But I Don’t Know Who You Are Or What Your Name Is Or Where You’re From Or What You Look Like Or How Old You Are? I Know All Of Those Things About Harry Potter. Maybe Harry Potter’s Real And You’re Not.

Like Many People, I Feel Like Celebrating. Remember This Feeling. It Is Human, And Can Help Us Understand When Others Express Bloodlust.

You Could Drive Past It Without Noticing And From What I Understand, You Ought To.

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

The Sun Was A Toddler Insistently Refusing To Go To Bed: It Was Past Eight Thirty And Still Light.

One Of The Great Rules Of Economics According To John Green If You Are Rich, You Have To Be An Idiot Not To Stay Rich. And If You Are Poor, You Have To Be Really Smart To Get Rich.

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

You Can Trust That Caring, As A Rule, Ends Poorly,” Which Is True. Caring Doesn’t Sometimes Lead To Misery. It Always Does.

I Wouldn’t Have A Career If It Weren’t For Independent Bookstores.

"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."

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

You're Not Boring. You've Got To Stop Saying That, Or People Will Start Believing You.

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

Keeping Promises

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

Given The Final Futility Of Our Struggle, Is The Fleeting Jolt Of Meaning That Art Gives Us Valuable? Or Is The Only Value In Passing The Time As Comfortable As Possible? What Should A Story Seek To Emulate, Augustus? A Ringing Alarm? A Call To Arms? A Morphine Drip? Of Course, Like All Interrogation Of The Universe, This Line Of Inquiry Inevitably Reduces Us To Asking What It Means To Be Human And Whether—to Borrow A Phrase From The Angst-encumbered Sixteeen-year-olds You No Doubt Revile—there Is A Point To It All.

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

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

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She Cannot Possibly Be Dead, People Do Not Just Die

People Always Get Used To Beauty Though.

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

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.

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Uh-uh, Dude. I Tried It Your Way With The Dating And The Girls And The Kissing And The Drama, And Man, I Didn't Like It. Plus, My Best Friend Is A Walking Cautionary Tale Of What Happens To You When Romantic Relationships Don't Involve Marriage. Like You Always Say, Kafir, Everything Ends In Breakup, Divorce, Or Death. I Want To Narrow My Misery Options To Divorce Or Death - That's All.

I Don't Think You Can Ever Fill The Empty Space With The Thing You Lost.

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

In The End The Listening Exposes You Even More Than It Exposes The People You're Trying To Listen To.

Nerd Life Is Just So Much Better Than Regular Life.

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

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I Wasn't Disappointed. My Expectations Had Been Met.

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

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

We All Romanticize The People We Adore.

The Darkest Nights Produce The Brightest Stars.

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

Waffles Are Just Awesome Bread.

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

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

I Kept It For Myself Like A Keepsake, As If Sharing The Memory Might Lead To Its Dissipation.

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

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It Felt Like Everything Was Rising Up In Me, Like I Was Drowning In This Weirdly Painful Joy, But I Couldn't Say It Back. I Just Looked At Him And Let Him Look At Me Until He Nodded, Lips Pursed And Turned Away, Placing The Side Of His Head Against The Window.

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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.

I'm Really Not Up For Answering Any Questions That Start With How, When, Where, Why Or What.

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Colder By The Hour, More Dead With Every Breath.

They Belong To Their Readers Now, Which Is A Great Thing–because The Books Are More Powerful In The Hands Of My Readers Than They Could Ever Be In My Hands.

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

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

Frankly, I Kind Of Want You To Be Haunted By The Unansweredness Of The Question, Because I Think Being Haunted By Such Things Is A Valuable Part Of Being A Person.

In The End, What You Do Isn't Going To Be Nearly As Interesting Or Important As Who You Do It With.

Don't Worry. Worry Is Useless. I Worried Anyway

We Have Bottled All The Stars This Evening, My Young Friend.

Margo Says, "i Know What She's Talking About. The Something Deeper And More Secret. It's Like Cracks Inside Of You. Like There Are These Fault Lines Where Things Don't Meet Up Right.

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

The Not Knowing Would Not Keep Me From Caring.

Dude, You're Such A Geek. And That's Coming From An Overweight Star Trek Fan Who Scored A 5 On The Ap Calculus Test. So You Know Your Condition Is Grave

A Taste So Profound And Complex That It Can't Even Be Compared To Other Tastes, Only To Emotions. Cheesy Waffles, I Was Thinking, Tastes Like Love Without The Fear Of Love's Dissolution.

We Just Did An Awesome Job Of Not Dying.

Because So Many People Use Goodreads, It Is An Amazingly Good—and Amazingly Underutilized—resource For Understanding What People Read, Why, And How They Feel About Their Reading Experiences.

He Let His Mind Wander. It Went To A Predictable Place, And He Missed Her

You Are Valuable And Rare And Worthy Of Love.

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

See, Popularity Is Complicated. You Have To Spend A Lot Of Time Thinking About Liking; You Have To Really Like Being Liked, And Also Sort Like Being Disliked.

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.

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

Different Authors Write Different Ways, Have Different Relationships With Their Audiences, And Those Are All Legitimate.

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.

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.

I Have A Great Affection For People Who Are Intellectually Engaged With The World, And Who Don't Treat Everything Superficially. And I Think, When People Talk About Nerdiness, What They're Really Talking About Is Smart People Who Who Are Trying To Think Hard About The World. And I Don't Think That's An Insult, I Think That's A Great Thing.

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.

If I Had Cared About Her As I Should Have, As I Thought I Did, How Could I Have Let Her Go?

And Yet Still I Worried. I Like Being A Person. I Wanted To Keep At It. Worry Is Yet Another Side Effect Of Dying.

You're Not Going To Impose The Patriarchal Paradigm On Me.

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

Falling In Love

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

Not The Brightest Gem In The Jewelry Shop, But You've Got To Admire His Single-minded Dedication To Drug Abuse.

The Worse The Haircut, The Better The Man.

I Nodded. I Liked Augustus Waters. I Really, Really, Really Liked Him. I Liked The Way His Story Ended With Someone Else. I Liked His Voice. I Liked That He Took Existentially Fraught Free Throws. I Liked That He Was A Tenured Professor In The Department Of Slightly Crooked Smiles With A Dual Appointment In The Department Of Having A Voice That Made My Skin Feel More Like Skin. And I Liked That He Had Two Names. I’ve Always Liked People With Two Names, Because You Get To Make Up Your Mind What You Call Them: Gus Or Augustus? Me, I Was Always Just Hazel, Univalent Hazel.

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.

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

I Was Not Religious, But I Liked Rituals. I Liked The Idea Of Connecting An Action With Remembering.

I Love You Present Tense,” I Whispered, And Then Put My Hand On The Middle Of His Chest And Said, “it’s Okay, Gus. It’s Okay. It Is. It’s Okay, You Hear Me?” I Had—and Have—absolutely No Confidence That He Could Hear Me. I Leaned Forward And Kissed His Cheek. “okay,” I Said. “okay.

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

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

I'm In Love With You," He Said Quietly. "augustus," I Said. "i Am," He Said. He Was Staring At Me, And I Could See The Corners Of His Eyes Crinkling. "i'm In Love With You, And I'm Not In The Business Of Denying Myself The Simple Pleasure Of Saying True Things. I'm In Love With You, And I Know That Love Is Just A Shout Into The Void, And That Oblivion Is Inevitable, And That We're All Doomed And That There Will Come A Day When All Our Labor Has Been Returned To Dust, And I Know The Sun Will Swallow The Only Earth We'll Ever Have, And I Am In Love With You.

...i Will Continue To Underscore That I Don't Think Authorial Intent Is All That Important To A Reading Experience, And I Certainly Don't Think The Job Of Reading Is To Divine Authorial Intent.

From The Front Rdar Announces, "don't You Go Talking Bad About Gofast Bars. Do You Want Me To Stop This Car?" "whenever I Eat A Gofast Bar," Ben Says, "i'm Always Like, 'so This Is What Blood Tastes Like To Mosquitoes.

Take A Picture Of This So Isaac Can See It When They Invent Robot Eyes.

But In Aia, Anna Decides That Being A Person With Cancer Who Starts A Cancer Charity Is A Bit Narcissistic, So She Starts A Charity Called The Anna Foundation For People With Cancer Who Want To Cure Cholera.

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

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

Entropy Increases. Things Fall Apart.

Television Is A Passivity.

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

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.

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

You Matter As Much As The Things That Matter To You. And I Got So Backwards Trying To Matter To Him. All This Time, There Were Real Things To Care About: Real, Good People Who Care About Me, And This Place. It's So Easy To Get Stuck. You Just Get Caught In Being Something, Being Special Or Cool Or Whatever, To The Point Where You Don't Even Know Why You Need It; You Just Think You Do.

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

It's Total Bullshit," He Said. "the Whole Thing. Eighty Percent Survival Rate And He's In The Twenty Percent? Bullshit. He Was Such A Bright Kid. It's Bullshit. I Hate It. But It Was Sure A Privilege To Love Him, Huh?

But Pizza Was Originally Italian, Although, Italian Pizza Doesn't Taste Much Like This Because This Pizza Is Fortified With Sodium. Which Is A Mineral...or A Vitamin. All I Know Is That It's Good For You.

Compromise Is When You Do What I Tell You And I Do What I Want. ~tiny Cooper

Our Fearlessness Shall Be Our Secret Weapon.

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