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Imagining The Future Is A Kind Of Nostalgia. (...) You Spend Your Whole Life Stuck In The Labyrinth, Thinking About How You'll Escape It One Day, And How Awesome It Will Be, And Imagining That Future Keeps You Going, But You Never Do It. You Just Use The Future To Escape The Present.

-John Green

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Imagining The Future Is

John Green

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Imagining The Future Is A Kind Of Nostalgia. (...) You Spend Your Whole Life Stuck In The Labyrinth, Thinking About How You'll Escape It One Day, And How Awesome It Will Be, And Imagining That Future Keeps You Going, But You Never Do It. You Just Use The Future To Escape The Present.

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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.

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

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.

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

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We Just Did An Awesome Job Of Not Dying.

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

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How About I Call You When I Finish This?” “but You Don’t Even Have My Phone Number,” He Said. “i Strongly Suspect You Wrote It In The Book.” He Broke Out Into That Goofy Smile. “a Nd You Say We Don’t Know Each Other.

I Would Argue That Stupidity Is Born Out Of Bad Reading, Bad Teaching And Bad Thinking!

She Had This Dark Cancer Water Dripping Out Of Her Chest. Eyes Closed. Intubated. But Her Hand Was Still Her Hand, Still Warm And The Nails Painted This Almost Black Dark Blue And I Just Held Her Hand And Tried To Imagine The World Without Us And For About One Second I Was A Good Enough Person To Hope She Died So She Would Never Know That I Was Going, Too. But Then I Wanted More Time So We Could Fall In Love. I Got My Wish, I Suppose. I Left My Scar.

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That's The Mystery, Isn't It? Is The Labyrinth Living Or Dying? Which Is He Trying To Escape---the World Or The End Of It?

It Always Happened Like This: He Would Look And Look For The Keys To Satan’s Hearse And Then Finally He’d Just Give Up And Say, “fine. I’ll Take The Fugging Bus,” And On His Way Out The Door, He’d See The Keys. Keys Show Up When You Reconcile Yourself To The Bus; Katherines Appear When You Start To Disbelieve The World Contains Another Katherine; And, Sure Enough, The Eureka Moment Arrived Just As He Began To Accept It Would Never Come.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

There Is No Try. There Is Only Do.

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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.

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

The Only Way Out Of The Labyrinth Of Suffering Is To Forgive.

I Don't Decide Where I Live. My Wife Decides. She's A Curator Of Contemporary Art, And She Works At An Art Museum, So We Go Wherever She Has A Job. All Basements Look The Same, So I Can Write From Whatever Basement I Happen To Be Living In.

That's Who You Really Like. The People You Can Think Out Loud In Front Of.

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.

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Maybe All The Strings Inside Him Broke.

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Augustus," I Said. "really. You Don't Have To Do This." "sure I Do," He Said. "i Found My Wish." "god, You're The Best," I Told Him. "i Bet You Say That To All The Boys Who Finance Your International Travel," He Answered.

"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."

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

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

You Can Love Someone So Much...but You Can Never Love People As Much As You Can Miss Them.

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

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

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My Days Had A Pleasant Identicalness About Them. I Had Always Liked That: I Liked Routine. I Liked Being Bored. I Didn’t Want To But I Did.

And, Since They Are Theater People, They Are All Talking. All Of Them. Simultaneously. They Do Not Need To Be Heard; They Only Need To Be Speaking.

You're Funny, And You're Smart, And You May Show Up Late, But You Always Show Up Eventually.

Me: "if You Want Me To Be A Teenager, Don't Send Me To Support Group. Buy Me A Fake Id So I Can Go To Clubs, Drink Vodka, And Take Pot." Mom: "you Don't Take Pot, For Starters." Me: "see, That's The Kind Of Thing I'd Know If You Got Me A Fake Id.

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.

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

Dear Jane, Just So You Know: E. E. Cummings Cheated On Both Of His Wives. With Prostitutes. Yours, Will Grayson

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.

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.

All Salvation Is Temporary

You Shall Love Your Neighbour With Your Crooked Heart, It Says So Much About Love And Brokenness -- It's Perfect.

The Future Will Erase Everything--there's No Level Of Fame Or Genius That Allows You To Transcend Oblivion. The Infinite Future Makes That Kind Of Mattering Impossible.

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

I'm In Love With You, And I'm Not In The Business Of Denying Myself The Simple Pleasure Of Saying True Things.

Happy Valentines Day

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

Almost Everyone Is Obsessed With Leaving A Mark Upon The World. Bequeathing A Legacy. Outlasting Death. We All Want To Be Remembered. I Do, Too. That’s What Bothers Me Most, Is Being Another Unremembered Casualty In The Ancient And Inglorious War Against Disease.

But There Are A Thousand Ways To Look At It: Maybe The Strings Break, Or Maybe Our Ship S Sink, Or Maybe We're Grass--our Roots So Interdependent That No One Is Dead As Long As Someone Is Still Alive. We Don't Suffer From A Shortage Of Metaphors, Is What I Mean. But You Have To Be Careful Which Metaphor You Choose, Because It Matters.

What Is An "instant" Death Anyway? How Long Is An Instant? Is It One Second? Ten? The Pain Of Those Seconds Must Have Been Awful As Her Heart Burst And Her Lungs Collapsed And There Was No Air And No Blood To Her Brain And Only Raw Panic. What The Hell Is Instant? Nothing Is Instant. Instant Rice Takes Five Minutes, Instant Pudding An Hour. I Doubt That An Instant Of Blinding Pain Feels Particularly Instantaneous.

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.

The Only Person I Really Wanted To Talk To About Augustus Water's Death With Was Augustus Waters.

The Not Knowing Would Not Keep Me From Caring.

Why Are Breakfast Foods Breakfast Foods?

Just A Word Of Advice. Whenever You're Furious With Your Parents Or You Think They're Terrible, Just Remember, You Vomited On Them And They Kept You.

I Really Like Umbrellas. It's Like, I Have A Roof! I Carry It With Me! Umbrellas Always Amuse Me.

I Wanted To, You Know, Get My Story Out In The World, Which, It Turns Out, Is A Very Misguided Notion.

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.

Reading A Good Book Helps Us To Feel Un-alone.

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

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.

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

I Thought You Hung The Moon.

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.

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

Look, Let Me Just Say It: He Was Hot. A Nonhot Boy Stares At You Relentlessly And It Is, At Best, Awkward And, At Worst, A Form Of Assault. But A Hot Boy . . . Well.

To Be Human Is To Catch The Falling Person.

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

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.

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 Am Crying, He Thought, Opening His Eyes To Stare Through The Soapy, Stinging Water. I Feel Like Crying, So I Must Be Crying, But It's Impossible To Tell Because I'm Underwater. But He Wasn't Crying. Curiously, He Felt Too Depressed To Cry. Too Hurt. It Felt As If She'd Taken The Part Of Him That Cried.

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.

Finally, I Decided That The Proper Strategy Was To Stare Back. Boys Do Not Have A Monopoly On The Staring Business, After All. So I Looked Him Over And Soon It Was A Staring Contest. After A While The Boy Smiled, And Then Finally His Blue Eyes Glanced Away. When He Looked Back At Me, I Flicked My Eyebrows Up To Say, I Win. He Shrugged

We're Professional Worriers. You're Constantly Imagining Things That Could Go Wrong And Then Writing About Them.

Imagining Things

Ma'am," Augustus Said, Nodding Toward Her, "your Daughter's Car Has Just Been Deservingly Egged By A Blind Man. Please Close The Door And Go Back Inside Or We'll Be Forced To Call The Police.

We Fell. We Got Up. We Ran.

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

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

Bro, It's Dark. You Can't Go To A Strange Building With A Mysterious Address In The Dark. Haven't You Ever Seen A Horror Movie?

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

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 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.

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

I Love You' Really Is The Gateway Drug Of Breaking Up.

There's No Way Of Knowing That Your Last Good Day Is Your Last Good Day. At The Time, It Is Just Another Good Day.

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.

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.

Some Tourists Think Amsterdam Is A City Of Sin, But In Truth It Is A City Of Freedom. And In Freedom, Most People Find Sin.

If By That You Mean That I Dislike Celebrity Magazines, Prefer Food To Anorexia, Refuse To Watch Tv Shows About Models, And Hate The Color Pink, Then Yes. I Am Proud To Be Not Really A Girl.

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

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 Was So Frustrated With Him. "i Just Want To Be Enough For You, But I Never Can Be. This Can Never Be Enough For You. But This Is All You Get. You Get Me, And Your Family, And This World. This Is Your Life. I'm Sorry If It Sucks. But You're Not Going To Be The First Man On Mars, And You're Not Going To Be An Nba Star, And You're Not Going To Hunt Nazis.

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.

We Landed, In Fact, Parallel To A Canal, Like There Were Two Runways: One For Us And One For Waterfowl.

You Know What I Hate? The Outdoors. I Mean, Generally. I Don't Like Outside. I'm An Inside Person. I'm All About Refrigeration And Indoor Plumbing And Judge Judy.

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.

He Missed His Imagined Future.

Entropy Increases. Things Fall Apart.

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

I Didn't Know What To Say To Her - I Was Caught In A Love Triangle With One Dead Side.

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

It Is A Good Life, Hazel Grace.

You Are A Side Effect," Van Houten Continued, "of An Evolutionary Process That Cares Little For Individual Lives. You Are A Failed Experiment In Mutation.

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

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.

...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.

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.

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

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

Imagining The Future Is A Kind Of Nostalgia. (...) You Spend Your Whole Life Stuck In The Labyrinth, Thinking About How You'll Escape It One Day, And How Awesome It Will Be, And Imagining That Future Keeps You Going, But You Never Do It. You Just Use The Future To Escape The Present.

Some People Have Lives; Some People Have Music.

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.

Late In The Winter Of My Seventeenth Year, My Mother Decided I Was Depressed, Presumably Because I Rarely Left The House, Spent Quite A Lot Of Time In Bed, Read The Same Book Over And Over, Ate Infrequently, And Devoted Quite A Bit Of My Abundant Free Time To Thinking About Death.

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

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

Does My Eye Look Okay To You?

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.

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.

History Reminds Us That Revolutions Are Not Events, So Much That They’re Processes – That For Tens Of Thousands Of Years, People Have Been Making Decisions That Irrevocably Shaped The World That We Live In Today; Just As Today, We Are Making Subtle, Irrevocable Decisions That People Of The Future Will Remember As Revolutions.

At Some Point, You Gotta Stop Looking Up At The Sky, Or One Of These Days You'll Look Back Down And See That You Floated Away, Too.

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

There Were So Many Of Us Who Would Have To Live With Things Done And Things Left Undone That Day. Things That Did Not Go Right, Things That Seemed Okay At The Time Because We Could Not See The Future. If Only We Could See The Endless String Of Consequences That Result From Our Smallest Actions. But We Can't Know Better Until Knowing Better Is Useless.

Memories Fall Apart Too.

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.

And Imagining That Future Keeps You Going, But You Never Do It. You Just Use The Future To Escape The Present.

Imagining The Future

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Nicholson Baker

Krist Novoselic

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