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

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

He Liked The Mere Act Of Reading, The Magic Of Turning Scratches On A Page Into Words Inside His Head.

Nerdighters Make Me Believe In America Again.

Boys Are Much More Likely To Objectify Girls Bodies, While Boys Are Seen By Girls As Whole People.

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

This Is It. I Can't Even Not Smoke Anymore

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.

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

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.

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.

Reading With An Eye Towards Metaphor Allows Us To Become The Person We’re Reading About, While Reading About Them. That’s Why There Is Symbols In Books And Why Your English Teacher Deserves Your Attention. Ultimately, It Doesn’t Matter If The Author Intended The Symbol To Be There Because The Job Of Reading Is Not To Understand The Author’s Intent. The Job Of Reading Is To Use Stories As A Way Into Seeing Other People As A We Ourselves.

The Minister Said, “let Us Pray,” But As Everyone Else Bowed Their Head, I Could Only Stare Slack-jawed At The Sight Of Peter Van Houten. After A Moment, He Whispered, “we Gotta Fake Pray,” And Bowed His Head.

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

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 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.

There Will Come A Time, When All Of Us Are Dead. All Of Us. There Will Come A Time When There Are No Human Beings Remaining To Remember That Anyone Ever Existed Or That Our Species Ever Did Anything.

We Must Strike Down The Insidious Lie That A Book Is The Creation Of An Individual Soul Labouring In Isolation. We Must Strike It Down Because It Threatens The Overall Quality And Breadth Of American Literature.

Miles, As In 'to Go Before I Sleep'?

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

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

I May Die Young, But At Least I'll Die Smart.

And I Put The Latte Down On A Table, Awash In The Happy Middle Of My Greatest Adventure.

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.

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

What Is The Point Of Being Alive If You Don't At Least Try To Do Something Remarkable?

The Food Was So Good That With Each Passing Course, Our Conversation Devolved Further Into Fragmented Celebrations Of Its Deliciousness: 'i Want This Dragon Carrot Risotto To Become A Person So I Can Take It To Las Vegas And Marry It.

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

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.

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.

But Monotony Doesn't Make For Painlessness.

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 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.

The Five Of Us Walking Confidently In A Row, I'd Never Felt Cooler. The Great Perhaps Was Upon Us, And We Were Invincible. The Plan May Have Had Faults, But We Did Not.

We Idealize Them As Gods Or Dismiss Them As Animals.

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

He Specialized In The Murder Of Dreams, Hazel Grace.

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.

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

I Wanted So Badly To Lie Down Next To Her On The Couch, To Wrap My Arms Around Her And Sleep... Just Sleep Together, In The Most Innocent Sense Of The Phrase. But I Lacked The Courage And She Had A Boyfriend And I Was Gawky And She Was Gorgeous And I Was Boring And She Was Endlessly Fascinating. So I Walked Back To My Room And Collapsed On The Bottom Bunk, Thinking That If People Were Rain, I Was Drizzle And She Was A Hurricane.

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.

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.

Most Loves Don't Last. But Some Do.

Poetry Is Just So Emo." He Said. "oh, The Pain. The Pain. It Always Rains. In My Soul.

Like The Way The Sun Is Right Now, With The Long Shadows, And That Kind Of Bright, Soft Light You Get When The Sun Isn't Quite Setting? That's The Light That Makes Everything Better, Everything Prettier, And Today, Everything Just Seemed To Be In That Light.

As Long As We Don't Die, This Is Gonna Be One Hell Of A Story.

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.

I Didn’t Need You, You Idiot. I Picked You. And Then You Picked Me Back.

I Can Almost Imagine A Happiness Without Her, The Ability To Let Her Go, To Feel Our Roots Are Connected Even If I Never See That Leaf Of Grass Again.'

Leaves Of Grass

Why Don’t We Break Up? I Guess I Stay With Her Because She Stays With Me. And That’s Not An Easy Thing To Do.

In General, Watching Children's Television Is A Dark And Surreal Descent Into Madness Where The Characters On The Screen Talk Directly To You.

She Spoke Quietly Then, The Tiniest Crack In Her Voice, And All At Once Lacey Pemerton Was Not Lacey Pemberton. She Was Just—like, A Person.

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.

Dad Had A Sign Of His Own. My Beautiful Family, It Read, And Then Underneath That (and Gus).

We Are All Going, I Thought, And It Applies To Turtles And Turtlenecks, Alaska The Girl And Alaska The Place, Because Nothing Can Last, Not Even The Earth Itself. The Buddha Said That Suffering Was Caused By Desire, We'd Learned, And That The Cessation Of Desire Meant The Cessation Of Suffering. When You Stopped Wishing Things Wouldn't Fall Apart, You'd Stop Suffering When They Did.

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.

It Was Kind Of A Beautiful Day, Finally Real Summer In Indianapolis, Warm And Humid - The Kind Of Weather That Reminds You After A Long Winter That While The World Wasn't Built For Humans, We Were Built For The World.

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.

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

Dutch Is Not So Much A Language As An Ailment Of The Throat.

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.

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

Let's Make A Deal: You Figure Out What The Labyrinth Is And How To Get Out Of It, And I'll Get You Laid. -alaska Young

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.

Real Gangster-ass Nerdfighters Don't Run From Nothing... 'cause Real Gangster-ass Nerdfighters Can't Run Fast.

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

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.

But I Could Always Tell In Her Eyes If She Got Really Pissed At Me, And Her Eyes Were Still Pretty Smiley

... She Called It A Paper Town. Like, You Know, Everything So Fake And Flimsy.

And On The Last Day, The Bad Days Become So Difficult To Recall, Because One Way Or Another, She Had Made A Life Here, Just As I Had. The Town Was Paper, But The Memories Were Not. All The Things I’d Done Here, All The Love And Pity And Compassion And Violence And Spite, Kept Welling Up Inside Me.

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

I'm Not Saying That Everything Is Survivable. Just That Everything Except The Last Thing Is.

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.

A Margo For Each Of Us--and Each More Mirror Than Window.

Some People Don't Understand The Promises They're Making When They Make Them," I Said. "right, Of Course. But You Keep The Promise Anyway. That's What Love Is. Love Is Keeping The Promise Anyway.

Keeping Promises

You Can't Just Make Me Different, And The Leave. Because I Was Fine Before.

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.

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.

Caroline Is No Longer Sufffering From Personhood.

Have You Really Read All Those Books In Your Room?” Alaska Laughing- “oh God No. I’ve Maybe Read A Third Of ‘em. But I’m Going To Read Them All. I Call It My Life’s Library. Every Summer Since I Was Little, I’ve Gone To Garage Sales And Bought All The Books That Looked Interesting. So I Always Have Something To Read.

We Imagine People As Animals Or Gods. -but She Was Just A Person, A Girl.

Without Pain, How Could We Know Joy?

Not To Ask The Obvious Question, But Why Alaska?

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

Good Friends Are Hard To Find And Impossible To Forget.

Impossible To Forget

Because There Is No Glory In Illness. There Is No Meaning To It. There Is No Honor In Dying Of.

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

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

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

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

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

Physical Intimacy Isn’t And Can Never Be An Effective Substitute For Emotional Intimacy.

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

What's That?" "the Laundry Basket?" "no, Next To It." "i Don't See Anything Next To It." "it's My Last Shred Of Dignity. It's Very Small.

Just Move To The Internet, Its Great Here. We Get To Live Inside Where The Weather Is Always Awesome.

Don't Swear In The Literal Heart Of Jesus.

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

I Was A Bit Of A Victorian Lady, Fainting-wise.

Pg. 231-232: They'd Given Me A Minivan. They Could Have Picked Any Car And They Picked A Minivan. A Minivan. O God Of The Vehicular Justice, Why Dost Thou Mock Me? Minivan, You Albatross Around My Neck! You Mark Of Cain! You Wretched Beast High Ceilings And Few Horsepower!

It Is Worth It To Leave Behing My Minor Life For Grander Maybes.

Cold One Day, Sweet The Next; Irresistibly Flirty One Moment, Resistibly Obnoxious The Next.

Interesting Capitalization,' I Said. 'yeah. I'm A Big Believer In Random Capitalization. The Rules Of Capitalization Are So Unfair To Words In The Middle.

The Snow May Be Falling In The Winter Of My Discontent, But At Least I've Got Sarcastic Company.

How Can You Read And Talk At The Same Time?” I Asked. “well, I Usually Can’t, But Neither The Book Nor The Conversation Is Particularly Intellectually Challenging.

We Look Back To The Most Important Moment In Our History, And That Becomes The Dividing Line Between What We Were And What We Are Now.

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

Imagining Things

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

I Didn't Know Whether To Trust Alaska, And I'd Certainly Had Enough Of Her Unpredictability - Cold One Day, Sweet The Next; Irresistibly Flirty One Moment, Resistibly Obnoxious The Next. I Preferred The Colonel: At Least When He Was Cranky, He Had A Reason.

Maybe Our Favorite Quotations Say More About Us Than About The Stories And People We're Quoting.

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

And He Was Feeling Not-unique In The Very Best Possible Way.

I Wrote My First Novel And My Second Novel In Chicago. It Was The Place Where I Became A Writer. It's My Favorite City.

According To The Conventions Of The Genre, Augustus Waters Kept His Sense Of Humor Till The End, Did Not For A Moment Waiver In His Courage, And His Spirit Soared Like An Indomitable Eagle Until The World Itself Could Not Contain His Joyous Soul.

This Is Unbearable ... God. These Books She'll Never Read. Her Life's Library.

I Really Think That Reading Is Just As Important As Writing When You're Trying To Be A Writer Because It's The Only Apprenticeship We Have, It's The Only Way Of Learning How To Write A Story.

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.

I Can't Remember, Because I Never Knew.

…because Nerds Like Us Are Allowed To Be Unironically Enthusiastic About Stuff… Nerds Are Allowed To Love Stuff, Like Jump-up-and-down-in-the-chair-can’t-control-yourself Love It. Hank, When People Call People Nerds, Mostly What They’re Saying Is ‘you Like Stuff.’ Which Is Just Not A Good Insult At All. Like, ‘you Are Too Enthusiastic About The Miracle Of Human Consciousness’.

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.

Because Everybody Who Has Ever Lost Their Way In Life Has Felt The Nagging Insistence Of That Question. At Some Point We All Look Up And Realize We Are Lost In A Maze, And I Dont Want Us To Forget Alaska, And I Don't Want To Forget That Even When The Material We Study Seems Boring, We're Trying To Und3erstand How People Answered That Question And The Question Each Of You Posed In Your Papers--how Different Traditions Have Come To Terms With What Chip, In His Final, Called 'people's Rotten Lots In Life.

We Need Never Be Hopeless Because We Can Never Be Irreperably Broken.

I Do My Precalc Homework, And Then When I'm Done I Actually Sit With The Textbook For Like Three Hours And Try To Understand What I Just Did. That's The Kind Of Weekend It Is--the Kind Where You Have So Much Time You Go Past The Answers And Start Looking Into The Ideas.

According To Maslow, I Was Stuck On The Second Level Of The Pyramid, Unable To Feel Secure In My Health And Therefore Unable To Reach For Love And Respect And Art And Whatever Else, Which Is, Utter Horseshit: The Urge To Make Art Or Contemplate Philosophy Does Not Go Away When You Are Sick. Those Urges Just Become Transfigured By Illness. Maslow's Pyramid Seemed To Imply I Was Less Human Than Other People, And Most People Seemed To Agree With Him.

He May Be A Malevolent Sorcerer, But Tiny Cooper Is His Own Goddamned Man, And If He Wants To Be A Gigantic Skipper, Then That's His Right As A Huge American.

I Have Spent My Life Falling. Not The Kind That Tiny's Talking About. He's Talking About Love. I'm Talking About Life. In My Kind Of Falling, There's No Landing. There's Only Hitting The Ground. Hard. Dead, Or Wanting To Be Dead. So The Whole Time You're Falling, It's The Worst Feeling In The World. Because You Feel You Have No Control Over It. Because You Know How It Ends.

You Spend Your Whole Life Stuck In The Labyrinth.

Imagining The Future

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.

Before Any Of It Could Make Sense, It Had To Be Heard.

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

At Some Point We All Look Up And Realize We Are Lost In A Maze.

She Left Me Enough To Rediscover The Great Perhaps.

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

I Jog Through The Halls And Then Go Upstairs To Jane’s Locker And Carefully Slip The Note I Wrote Last Night Through The Vent: To: The Locker Houdini From: Will Grayson Re: An Expert In The Field Of Good Boyfriends? Dear Jane, Just So You Know: E. E. Cummings Cheated On Both Of His Wives. With Prostitutes. Yours, Will Grayson

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.

I Leave, And The Leaving Is So Exhilarating I Know I Can Never Go Back. But Then What? Do I Just Keep Leaving Places, And Leaving Them, And Leaving Them, Tramping A Perpetual Journey?

Maybe Life Is Not About Accomplishing Some Bullshit Markers.

Colin Emphatically Pushed The Book Cover Shut When He Finished Reading. "did You Like It?" His Dad Asked. "yup," Colin Said. He Liked All Books, Because He Liked The Mere Act Of Reading, The Magic Of Turning Scratches On A Page Into Words Inside His Head.

Waffles Are Just Awesome Bread.

The Fourth Way To Get A Boy To Like You Is To Be Yourself. Now, I Am Contractually Obligated As An Adult To Give That Advice, Even Though It Doesn't Work. But Yeah, Be Yourself, Even Though No One Has Any Idea What It Means To Be Yourself. Like Whose Self Would I Otherwise Be Being?

If I Could Just Stay Alive For A Week, I’d Know The Unwritten Secrets Of Anna’s Mom And The Dutch Tulip Guy.

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

Memories Fall Apart Too.

Home Is Where The Heart Is, Good Friends Are Hard To Find And Impossible To Forget. True Love Is Born From Hard Times.

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

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.

Without Pain, We Couldn't Know Joy.

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.

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.

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.

Is It Still Cool To Go To The Mall?' She Asked. 'i Take Quite A Lot Of Pride In Not Knowing What's Cool,' I Answered.

Okay, Maybe I'm Not Such A Shitty Writer. But I Can't Pull My Ideas Together, Van Houten. My Thoughts Are Stars I Can't Fathom Into Constellations.

And Since She Drove To Work Every Morning, I Could Only Use The Car On Weekends. Well, Weekends And The Middle Of The Goddamned Night.

Not That Smart. Not That Hot. Not That Nice. Not That Funny. That's Me: I'm Not That.

I Didn't Even Know What The Feeling Was, Really, Just That There Was A Lot Of It.

"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."

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

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.

Augustus: “you Probably Need Some Rest.” Me: “i’m Okay.” Augustus: “okay.” (pause.) “what Are You Thinking About?” Me: “you.” Augustus: “what About Me?” Me: “‘i Do Not Know Which To Prefer, / The Beauty Of Inflections / Or The Beauty Of Innuendos, / The Blackbird Whistling / Or Just After.’” Augustus: “god, You Are Sexy.” Me: “we Could Go To Your Room.” Augustus: “i’ve Heard Worse Ideas.

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

The Colonel Explained To Me That 1. This Was Alaska's Room, And That 2. She Had A Single Room Because The Girl Who Was Supposed To Be Her Roommate Got Kicked Out At The End Of Last Year, And That 3. Alaska Had Cigarettes, Although The Colonel Neglected To Ask Whether 4. I Smoked, Which 5. I Didn't.

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

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.

Tobin," Mom Said Disapprovingly. She Wasn't A Particularly Funny Person. It Suited Her Professionally - I Mean, You Don't Want Your Cancer Surgeon To Walk Into The Examination Room And Be Like, "guy Walks Into A Bar. Bartender Says, 'what'll Ya Have?' And The Guy Says, 'whaddya Got?' And The Bartender Says, 'i Don't Know What I Got, But I Know What You Got: Stage Iv Melanoma.

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

Failing To Grapple With Complexity Actually Turns Out To Be A Pretty Bad Life Strategy.

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

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.

I Always Had This Idea That You Should Never Give Up A Happy Middle In The Hopes Of A Happy Ending, Because There Is No Such Thing As A Happy Ending. Do You Know What I Mean? There Is So Much To Lose.

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

It Seemed Like Forever Ago, Like We've Had This Brief But Still Infinite Forever. Some Infinities Are Bigger Than Other Infinities.

As A Reader, I Don't Feel A Story Has An Obligation To Make Me Happy. I Want Stories To Show Me A Bigger World Than The One I Know.

Jp Shouted, "tell Them What You Just Did To Each Other!" "um," I Said. "we Kissed," The Duke Said. "that's Kinda Gay," Keun Said. "i Am A Girl." "yeah, I Know, But So Is Tobin," Keun Said.

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

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

People Always Get Used To Beauty Though.

The Town Was Paper, But The Memories Were Not.

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.

Love Is Keeping The Promise Anyway.

Keeping Promises

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

It Was An Indulgence, Learning Last Words. Other People Had Chocolate; I Had Dying Declarations.

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

You Realize That Trying To Keep Your Distance From Me Will Not Lessen My Affection For You. All Efforts To Save Me From You Will Fail.

You Had Been A Paper Boy To Me All These Years - Two Dimensions As A Character On The Page And Two Different, But Still Flat, Dimensions As A Person. But That Night You Turned Out To Be Real.

Videogame Players Essentially Choose Whether To Win The Game Or To Die Heroically. There's A Certain Glory In Both.

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.

So I Wasn't Lying, Exactly. I Was Just Choosing Among Truths.

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

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

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

Maybe 'okay' Will Be Our 'always

Only Now That I Loved A Grenade Did I Understand The Foolishness Of Trying To Save Others From My Own Impending Fragmentation: I Couldn’t Unlove Augustus Waters. And I Didn’t Want To.

If Drunk Were Cookies, I'd Be Famous Amos

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.

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.

Still, What Could I Say? That I Didn't Just Feel Depressed - Instead, It Was Like The Depression Was The Core Of Me, Of Every Part Of Me, From My Mind To My Bones? That If He Got Blue, I Got Black? That I Hated Those Pills So Much, Because I Knew How Much I Relied On Them To Live?

Everything That Comes Together Falls Apart.

I Told Augustus The Broad Outline Of My Miracle: Diagnosed With Stage Iv Thyroid Cancer When I Was Thirteen. (i Didn’t Tell Him That The Diagnosis Came Three Months After I Got My First Period. Like: Congratulations! You’re A Woman. Now Die.)

Congratulations

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

There Is Always The Risk: Something Is Good And Good And Good And Good, Then All At Once It Gets Awkward.

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.

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