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...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.

-John Green

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...kaitlyn Never Wore Open-toed

John Green

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...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.

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

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

It's A Metaphor, See: You Put The Killing Thing Right Between Your Teeth, But You Don't Give It The Power To Do Its Killing.

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.

Falling In Love

Keys Show Up When You Reconcile Yourself To The Bus.

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

Grief Does Not Change You, Hazel. It Reveals You.

That's Always Seemed So Ridiculous To Me, That People Want To Be Around Someone Because They're Pretty. It's Like Picking Your Breakfeast Cereals Based On Color Instead Of Taste.

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

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

I Hate The Rich Snots Here With A Fervent Passion I Usually Reserve Only For Dental Work And My Father.

The Feeling Of Loving Her And Being Loved By Her Welled Up In Him, And He Could Taste The Adrenaline In The Back Of His Throat, And Maybe It Wasn't Over, And Maybe He Could Feel Her Hand In His Again And Hear Her Loud, Brash Voice Contort Itself Into A Whisper To Say I-love-you As If It Were A Secret, And An Immense One.

Shame About How We’re Gonna Die Here, Though. I Mean, Seriously. An Arab And A Half-jew Enter A Store In Tennessee. It’s The Beginning Of A Joke, And The Punch Line Is “sodomy’’.

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.

Augustus Waters Died Eight Days After His Prefuneral, At Memorial, In The Icu, When The Cancer, Which Was Made Of Him, Finally Stopped His Heart, Which Was Also Made Of Him.

No Woman Should Ever Lie About Another Woman. You've Violated The Sacred Covenant Between Women! How Will Stabbing One Another In The Back Help Women To Rise Above Patriarchal Oppression?

We Are Greater Than The Sum Of Our Parts.

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.

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

The Right Story Needs The Right Telling.

In Those Fifty, The Old Man Made Me Take Religion Seriously. I'd Never Been Religious, But He Told Us That Religion Is Important Whether Or Not We Believed In One, The Same Way That Historical Events Are Important Whether Or Not You Personally Lived Through Them.

I Don't Believe In Prom,' I Reminded Her As She Rounded A Corner. I Expertly Angled My Raisin Bran To Accomodate The G-forces. I'd Done This Before.

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.

Will Grayson, Will Grayson' Is About Two Guys Named Will Grayson Who Live In Different Chicago Suburbs Who Eventually Meet Each Other.

I Was So Tired Of Her Getting Upset For No Reason. The Way She Would Get Sulky And Make References To The Freaking Oppressive Nature Of Tragedy Or Whatever But Then Never Said What Was Wrong, Never Have Any Goddamned Reason To Be Sad. And I Just Think You Ought To Have A Reason. My Girlfriend Dumped Me, So I'm Sad. I Got Caught Smoking, So I'm Pissed Off. My Head Hurts, So I'm Cranky. She Never Had A Reason, Pudge. I Was Just So Tired Of Putting Up With Her Drama. And I Just Let Her Go. Christ.

You Can't Just Make Me Different, And Then Leave. Because I Was Fine Before, Alaska. I Was Just Fine With Me And Last Words And School Friends, And You Can't Just Make Me Different And Then Die.

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

Do The Thing You're Good At. Not Many People Are Lucky Enough To Be So Good At Something.

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

And Then We Were Kissing.....the Space Around Us Evaporated, And For A Weird Moment I Rally Like My Body; This Cancer-ruined Thing I'd Spent Years Dragging Around Suddenly Seemed Worth The Struggle.

I Was Born Into Bolívar's Labyrinth, And So I Must Believe In The Hope Of Rabelais' Great Perhaps.

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.

His Every Syllable Flirted. Honestly, He Kind Of Turned Me On. I Didn't Even Know That Guys Could Turn Me On-not, Like, In Real Life

To Find Margo Roth Spiegelman, You Must Become Margo Roth Spiegelman. And I Had Done Many Of The Things She Might Have Done: I Had Engineered A Most Unlikely Prom Coupling. I Had Quieted The Hounds Of Caste Warfare. I Had Come To Feel Comfortable Inside The Rat-infested Haunted House Where She Did Her Best Thinking. I Had Seen. I Had Listened. But I Could Not Yet Become The Wounded Person.

The French Verb Aimer Has Two Meanings. And That’s Why He Liked Her, And Loved Her. She Spoke To Him In A Language That, No Matter How Hard You Studied It, Could Not Be Completely Understood.

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.

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.

A Novel Is A Conversation Between A Reader And A Writer.

When You're Walking Home At Night, Do You Even Get Creeped Out And Even Though It's Silly And Embarrassing You Just Want To Run Home?" It Seemed Too Secret And Personal To Admit To Virtual Stranger, But I Told Her, "yeah, Totally." For A Moment, She Was Quiet. Then She Grabbed My Hand, Whispered, "run Run Run Run Run," And Took Off, Pulling Me Behind Her.

There Are Infinite Numbers Between 0 And 1.

I Don’t Know A Perfect Person. I Only Know Flawed People Who Are Still Worth Loving.

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

The Red Wheelbarrow" By William Carlos Williams. So Much Depends Upom A Red Wheel Barrow Glazed With Rain Water Beside The White Chickens.

But When It Came Right Down To It, The Skin Of My Wrist Looked So White And Defensless That I Couldn't Do It. It Was As If What I Wanted To Kill Wasn't In That Skin Or The Thin Blue Pulse That Jumped Under My Thumb, But Somewhere Else, Deeper, More Secret, And A Whole Lot Harder To Get." 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.

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

Not To Ask The Obvious Question, But Why Alaska?

Without Pain, We Couldn't Know Joy.

And I Wanted To Tell Her That The Pleasure For Me Wasn't Planning Or Doing Or Leaving; The Pleasure Was In Seeing Our Strings Cross And Separate And Then Come Back Together.

Your Responsibility Is Not To The People You're Making The Gift For, But The Gift Itself.

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.

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

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

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

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...

I Knew That I Would Know More Dead People. The Bodies Pile Up. Could There Be A Space In My Memory For Each Of Them, Or Would I Forget A Little Of Alaska Every Day For The Rest Of My Life?

When You Leave A Place, It's Best To Leave.

I'm Not Interested In Writing For Adults. I Like Them As People! I Don't Like The Way They Publish Books In That World. Nothing Ever Gets A Chance.

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

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

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

It Is A Good Life, Hazel Grace.

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

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.

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

She Walks Lightly, Old Man. She Walks Lightly Upon The Earth.

And Yes, Again, That Was It Exactly. A Retyper And Not A Writer. A Prodigy And Not A Genius.

Colin Singleton

Maybe Life Is Not About Accomplishing Some Bullshit Markers.

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

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

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?

One Swing Set, Well Worn But Structurally Sound, Seeks New Home. Make Memories With Your Kid Or Kids So That Someday He Or She Or They Will Look Into The Backyard And Feel The Ache Of Sentimentality As Desperately As I Did This Afternoon. It's All Fragile And Fleeting, Dear Reader, But With This Swing Set, Your Child(ren) Will Be Introduced To The Ups And Downs Of Human Life Gently And Safely, And May Also Learn The Most Important Lesson Of All: No Matter How Hard You Kick, No Matter How High You Get, You Can't Go All The Way Around.

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?

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

She Was Up And Down—from Fire And Brimstone To Smoke And Ashes.

...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.

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.

Depression Is A Side Effect Of Dying. (almost Everything Is, Really).

But You Want To See Shapes; You Want To See Stories, So You Pick Them Out Of The Sky.

We All Miss You So Much. It Just Never Ends. It Feels Like We Were All Wounded In Your Battle, Caroline. I Miss You. I Love You.

Moms Aren’t The Best Audience For Medication Humor.

I Tore Open The Closet Door And Began Feverishly Sorting Through The Shirts Piled On The Floor In The Vain Hope That Inside That Pile There Might Be Some Wondrously Perfect Shirt Down There, A Nice And Tough But I'm Also A Surprisingly Good Listener With A True And Abiding Passion For Cheers And Those Who Lead Them.

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

People Are Supposed To Care. It's Good That People Mean Something To You, That You Miss People When They're Gone.

The Pleasure Of Remembering Had Been Taken From Me, Because There Was No Longer Anyone To Remember With. It Felt Like Losing Your Co-rememberer Meant Losing The Memory Itself, As If The Things We'd Done Were Less Real And Important Than They Had Been Hours Before.

The Not Knowing Would Not Keep Me From Caring.

That Is The Fear: I Have Lost Something Important, And I Cannot Find It, And I Need It. It Is Fear Like If Someone Lost His Glasses And Went To The Glasses Store And They Told Him That The World Had Run Out Of Glasses And He Would Just Have To Do Without.

God Will Punish The Wicked. And Before He Does, We Will.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

He Took A Long Drink, Then Grimaced. “i Do Not Have A Drinking Problem,” He Announced, His Voice Needlessly Loud. “i Have A Churchillian Relationship With Alcohol: I Can Crack Jokes And Govern England And Do Anything I Want To Do. Except Not Drink.

Sunlight Feels Warm And Rough Against Your Skin Like A Kiss On The Cheek From Your Dad.

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

So She Became Impulsive, Scared By Her Inaction Into Perpetual Action.

And Then Something Invisible Snapped Insider Her, And That Which Had Come Together Commenced To Fall Apart.

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.

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

Hazel Grace,” He Said. “hi,” I Said. “how Are You?” “grand,” He Said. “i Have Been Wanting To Call You On A Nearly Minutely Basis, But I Have Been Waiting Until I Could Form A Coherent Thought In Re An Imperial Affliction.” (he Said “in Re.” He Really Did. That Boy.)

There Comes A Time When We Realize That Our Parents Cannot Save Themselves Or Save Us, That Everyone Who Wades Through Time Eventually Gets Dragged Out To Sea By The Undertow- That, In Short, We Are All Going.

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.

Because You're Only Thinking They-might-not-like-me-they-might-not-like-me, And Guess What? When You Act Like That, No One Likes You.

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

I Like This World. I Like Drinking Champagne. I Like Not Smoking. I Like Dutch People Speaking Dutch.

There's Not Even Real *popularity* At My School." "that," Coli Said Emphatically, "is A Sentence That Has Only Ever Been Spoken By Popular People.

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.

I Could Try To Pretend That I Didn't Care Anymore, But It Could Never Be True Again. You Can't Just Make Yourself Matter, And Then Die, Alaska, Because Now, I Am Irretrievably Different, And I'm Sorry I Let You Go, Yes, But You Made The Choice.

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

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

Writing Does Not Resurrect. It Buries.

At The End, We Brought Her To New York, Where I Was Living, For A Series Of Experimental Tortures That Increased The Misery Of Her Days Without Increasing The Number Of Them.

Babies Are Made Through An Act That You Will Eventually Find Intriguing But For Right Now Will Just Sort Of Horrify You, And Also Sometimes People Do Stuff That Involves Baby-making Parts That Does Not Actually Involve Making Babies, Like For Instance Kiss Each Other In Places That Are Not On The Face.

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

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

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

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.

Imagining The Future Is A Kind Of Nostalgia.

Imagining The Future

Leaving Feels Too Good, Once You Leave.

I'd Rather Wonder Than Get Answers I Couldn't Live With.

Stop Thinking About The Landing, Because It's All About Falling.

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

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.

Margo's Beauty Was A Kind Of Sealed Vessel Of Perfection--uncracked And Uncrackable.

We're Invisible. I've Never Been Here With Someone Else. It's Different Being Invisible With Someone.

Chuck Parson Did Not Participate In Organized Sports, Because To Do So Would Distract From His Larger Goal Of His Life: To One Day Be Convicted Of Murder

That Doesn't Sound Like My Margo", She Said, And I Thought Of My Margo, And All Of Us Looking At Her Reflection In Different Funhouse Mirrors.

It Hurts Because It Mattered.

The Nature Of The Love Between A Parent And Child Really Is Literally Stronger Than Death. As Long As Either Person In That Relationship Is Alive, That Relationship Is Still Alive.

We Are Now As I Wished We Could Be Then.

It Is So Hard To Leave-until You Leave.

I Think It's Crazy, Crazy That Book Tours Lose So Much Money. They Shouldn't. Book Tours Should Be Part Of What Keeps Independent Bookstores Vibrant And Profitable.

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?

I Smiled. She Smiled. I Believed The Smile.

We Acknowledge That Being The Person God Made You Cannot Separate You From God's Love.

We Play The Broken String Of Our Instruments One Last Time

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

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

I Laughed And Pointed Out That "hash Browns Mean Nothing Without You" Was A Pretty Good Name For A Band. "or A Song," The Duke Said, And Then She Started Singing All Glam Rock, A Glove Up To Her Face Holding An Imaginary Mic As She Rocked Out An A Cappella Power Ballad. "oh, I Deep Fried For You / But Now I Weep 'n' Cry For You / Oh, Babe, This Meal Was Made For Two / And These Hash Browns Mean Nothing, Oh These Hash Browns Mean Nothing, Yeah These Hash Browns Mean Nothin' Without You.

Breaking Down That Wall Is The Kind Of Story That Might Have A Happy Middle - Oh, Look, We Broke Down This Wall, I'm Going To Look At You Like A Girl And You're Going To Look At Me Like A Boy, And We're Going To Play A Fun Game Called Can I Put My Hand There What About There What About There.

We Only Have So Long To Play In The Dirt And Ask Questions Of Rivers.

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

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!

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.

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

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 Think That Most Of Us [writers] Would Rather Have An Audience Than Countless Riches. If We Wanted To Be Rich, We'd Be Doing Smething Else.

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.

I'm On A Roller Coaster That Only Goes Up," He Said. "and It Is My Privilege And My Responsibility To Ride All The Way Up With You," I Said.

Truth Resists Simplicity.

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

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

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

I Have Guts, Just Not When It Counts.

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

I Kept Thinking There Were Two Kinds Of Adults: There Were...miserable Creatures Who Scoured The Earth In Search Of Something To Hurt. And Then There Were People Like My Parents, Who Walked Around Zombically, Doing Whatever They Had To Do To Keep Walking Around.

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

And I Vaguely Remember Her Smiling At Me From The Door Way The Glittering Ambiguity Of A Girls Smile, Which Seems To Promise An Answer To The Question, But Never Gives It. The Question, The One We’ve All Been Asking Since Girls Stopped Being Gross, The Question That Is To Simple To Be Uncomplicated: Does She Like Me Or Does She Like Me?

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

Falling In Love

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

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

Imagining Things

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

But Monotony Doesn't Make For Painlessness.

It Was Psychological Trick Called Empathic Listening. You Say What The Person Is Feeling So They Feel Understood.

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.

My Parents Always Liked It When I Cursed In Front Of Them. I Could See The Pleasure Of It In Their Faces. It Signified That I Trusted Them, That I Was Myself In Front Of Them.

At Some Point, You Just Pull Off The Band-aid, And It Hurts, But Then It's Over And You're Relieved.

I Love Making Youtube Videos. I Love Tumblr, I Love Twitter. I Love Talking With People I Find Interesting About Stuff I Find Interesting, And The Internet Is A Great Way To Do That.

You 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.

It's Bad For Your Brain Not To Unplug.

What's Your Name ? Hazel . No , Your Full Name . Um , Hazel Grace Lancaster .

How Are The Eyes?' 'oh, Excellent,' He Said. 'i Mean, They're Not In My Head Is The Only Problem.

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.

We Think That We Are Invincible Because We Are.

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

She Fell Apart Because That's What Happens.

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

...whatever You're Worried About, You're Bigger Than The Worries.

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.

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.

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

Go Spit In The Face Of Our Inevitable Obsolescence And Finish Your @#$&ng Novel.

This Is What Happens: Somebody—girl Usually—got A Free Spirit, Doesn't Get On Too Good With Her Parents. These Kids, They're Like Tied-down Helium Balloons. They Strain Against The String And Strain Against It, And Then Something Happens, And That String Gets Cut, And They Just Float Away. And Maybe You Never See The Balloon Again . . . Or Maybe Three Or Four Years From Now, Or Three Or Four Days From Now, The Prevailing Winds Take The Balloon Back Home . . . But Listen, Kid, That String Gets Cut All The Time.

"nothing," I Said. "i’m Just…" I Couldn’t Finish The Sentence, Didn’t Know How To. "i’m Just Very, Very Fond Of You."

That's Why I Like You. Do You Realize How Rare It Is To Come Across A Hot Girl Who Creates A Adjectival Version Of The Word Pedophile? You Are So Busy Being You That You Have No Idea How Utterly Unprecedented You Are.

Nothing To Be Gained By Worrying Between Now And Then.

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

If I Could Do It All Over Again," He Said, His Speech Slow And Vaguely Mangled By His Massive Lower Lip, "i'd Just Let Myself Be Trampled To Death By The Satan Pig.

Sexuality Is Important, But It's Certainly Not The Most Interesting Or Important Thing Happening To You Right Now. We Live In A World That Tells Us That There Are Only Two Important Things. One Is The Acquisition Of Goods And The Other Is Either The Acquisition Or Avoidance Of Sex, But It Turns Out That The Question Of Who's A Virgin And Who's A Virgout Is Not The Most Interesting Question.

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

Labyrinth Looking For Alaska

I Could Be Worse, You Know." "how?" I Asked, Teasing. "i Mean, I Have A Work Of Calligraphy Over My Toilet That Reads, 'bathe Yourself In The Comfort Of God's Words,' Hazel. I Could Be Way Worse." "sounds Unsanitary," I Said.

But Why Alaska?' I Asked Her. 'well, Later, I Found Out What It Means. It's From An Aleut Word, Alyeska. It Means 'that Which The Sea Breaks Against,' And I Love That. But At The Time, I Just Saw Alaska Up There. And It Was Big, Just Like I Wanted To Be.

For A Moment, She Was Quiet. Then She Grabbed My Hand, Whispered, “run Run Run Run Run,” And Took Off, Pulling Me Behind Her.

The Tales Of Our Exploits Will Survive As Long As The Human Voice Itself,' He Said. 'and Even After That, When The Robots Recall The Human Absurdities Of Sacrifice And Compassion, They Will Remember Us.

I Don't Know Where People Got The Idea That Characters In Books Are Supposed To Be Likable. Books Are Not In The Business Of Creating Merely Likeable Characters With Whom You Can Have Some Simple Identification With. Books Are In The Business Of Creating Great Stories That Make You're Brain Go Ahhbdgbdmerhbergurhbudgerbudbaaarr.

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

Falling In Love

You Are Valuable And Rare And Worthy Of Love.

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.

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David James Duncan

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