Background Image

...

Let Me Just Acknowlege That The Function Of Grammar Is To Make Language As Efficent And Clear And Transparent As Possible. But If We’re All Constantly Correcting Each Other’s Grammar And Being Really Snotty About It, Then People Stop Talking Because They Start To Be Petrified That They’re Going To Make Some Sort Of Terrible Grammatical Error And That’s Precisely The Opposite Of What Grammar Is Supposed To Do, Which Is To Facilitate Clear Communication.

-John Green

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

Let Me Just Acknowlege

John Green

...

Let Me Just Acknowlege That The Function Of Grammar Is To Make Language As Efficent And Clear And Transparent As Possible. But If We’re All Constantly Correcting Each Other’s Grammar And Being Really Snotty About It, Then People Stop Talking Because They Start To Be Petrified That They’re Going To Make Some Sort Of Terrible Grammatical Error And That’s Precisely The Opposite Of What Grammar Is Supposed To Do, Which Is To Facilitate Clear Communication.

Views: 6

Topic

More From John Green

There's A Stark Difference Between The Words 'prodigy' And 'genius.' Prodigies Can Very Quickly Learn What Other People Have Already Figured Out; Geniuses Discover That Which No One Has Ever Previously Discovered. Prodigies Learn; Geniuses Do.

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

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.

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

The Town Was Paper, But The Memories Were Not.

But The Fascinating And Unbelievable-but-true Thing About Dr. Jefferson Jeffersonis That He Was Not A Doctor Of Any Kind. He Was Just An Orange Juice Salesman Named Jefferson Jefferson. When He Became Rich And Powerful, He Went To Court, Made "jefferson" His Middle Name, And Then Changed His First Name To "dr." Capital D. Lowercase R. Period.

The Punch Connected, But (1) Colin Forgot To Close His Fist, So He Was Slapping Not Hitting, And (2) Instead Of Slapping Toc, He Ended Up Slapping Hassan Flush Across The Cheek, Whereupon Hassan Finally Succeeded In Falling Down.

I'd Had Nearly Four Years Of Experience Looking At These Clocks, But Their Sluggishness Never Ceased To Surprise. If I Am Ever Told That I Have One Day To Live, I Will Head Straight To The Hallowed Halls Of Winter Park High School, Where A Day Has Been Known To Last A Thousand Years.

One Of Those Moments He Knew He'd Remember And Look Back On, One Of Those Moments That He'd Try To Capture In The Stories He Told. Nothing Was Happening, Really, But The Moment Was Thick With Mattering.

Television Is A Passivity.

There Was Quite A Lot Of Competitiveness About It, With Everybody Wanting To Beat Not Only Cancer Itself, But Also The Other People In The Room. Like, I Realize That This Is Irrational, But When They Tell You That You Have, Say, A 20 Percent Chance Of Living Five Years, The Math Kicks In And You Figure That’s One In Five . . . So You Look Around And Think, As Any Healthy Person Would: I Gotta Outlast Four Of These Bastards.

Youth Is Counted Sweetest By Those Who Are No Longer Young.

When You’re As Charming And Physically Attractive As Myself, It’s Easy Enough To Win Over People You Meet. But Getting Strangers To Love You...now, That’s The Trick.

You've Got A Lifetime To Mull Over The Buddhist Understanding Of Interconnectedness." He Spoke Every Sentence As If He'd Written It Down, Memorized It, And Was Now Reciting It. "but While You Were Looking Out The Window, You Missed The Chance To Explore The Equally Interesting Buddhist Belief In Being Present For Every Facet Of Your Daily Life, Of Being Truly Present. Be Present In This Class. And Then, When It's Over, Be Present Out There," He Said, Nodding Toward The Lake And Beyond.' ~dr. Hyde, Pg 50

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

We're All Just Facilitators. The Real Business Is Done By Readers.

Did I Help You Toward A Fate You Didn't Want, Alaska, Or Did I Just Assist In Your Willful Self-destruction?

The Way I Figure It, Everyone Gets A Miracle.

Collin Singleton Could No More Stay Cool Than A Blue Whale Could Stay Skinny Or Bangladesh Could Stay Rich

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

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'd Hoped That He'd Be Eulogizing Me.

But I Was Not In The Band, Because I Suffer From The Kind Of Tone Deafness That Is Generally Associated With Actual Deafness

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.

I Told Him They Built A Statue Of Schultz, And Then He Said That A Monument Is Cold Comfort To A Dead Man, And Then I Said That The Statue Was Built Not For Schultz, But For Us--to Remind Us How To Be Human.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

I Got My Wish, I Suppose. I Left My Scar.

Last Words Are Always Harder To Remember When No One Knows That Someone's About To Die.

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

The Act Of Leaning In To Kiss Someone, Or Asking Them, Is Fraught With The Possibility Of Rejection, So The Person Least Likely To Get Rejected Should Do The Leaning In Or The Asking.

I Don't Think Ministering Requires A Religious Context. The Number One Thing Is That Every Parent Is Extremely Worried About Their Kid. Of Course, When A Chaplain Shows Up, That Can Exacerbate This Worry Rather Than Calm It.

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

Every Time I Try To Set Something In Chicago, I Get Intimidated By 'augie March.' It's Easy To Set Something In Indianapolis - We Don't Have 'augie March' Here. But I Love Writing About Chicago, And I Love Being There And Imagining Lives In Chicago. I Hope To Set Something There In The Future, But It's Intimidating.

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.

The Whole Thing Was The Precise Opposite Of What I Figured It Would Be: Slow And Patient And Quiet And Neither Particularly Painful Nor Particularly Ecstatic

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

Waffles аrе јust Awesome Bread.

When I Was In College, I Remember Fearing That The Dreary Grind Of Adulthood Would Feature Infinitely More Existential Dread Than Frat Parties Had, But The Opposite Has Been True For Me. I'm Much Less Likely To Feel That Gnawing Fear Of Aimlessness And Nihilism Than I Used To Be And That's Partly Because Education Gave Me Job Opportunities, But It's Mostly Because Education Gave Me Perspective And Context.

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.

Sometimes You Lose A Battle. But Mischief Always Wins The War

I Don't Think Your Missing Pieces Ever Fit Inside You Again Once They Go Missing.

I Tried--i Swear I Tried. But You Didn't Want To Hear What I Was Saying, And I Used That As An Excuse To Let It Go On.

Our Children Are Weird. Nicely Phrased.

Love Is Tied To Truth.

Thomas Edison's Last Words Were 'it's Very Beautiful Over There'. I Don't Know Where There Is, But I Believe It's Somewhere, And I Hope It's Beautiful.

You Say Into My Cracks And I Saw Into Yours.

Nerdighters Make Me Believe In America Again.

We Think That We Are Invincible Because We Are.

Good Friends Are Hard To Find And Impossible To Forget.

Impossible To Forget

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.

And As We Kept Driving North, The Whole Family In The Care Together, It Got Darker, And Snowier, Until Finally The Road Delivered Us To The One Place That All My Youthful Trips West Never Could: Home.

He'd Fought Hard, Lida Told Me, As If There Was Another Way To Fight.

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

I Wouldn't Have Cared If My Girlfriend Was A Jaguar-driving Cyclops With A Beard - I'd Have Been Grateful Just To Have Someone To Make Out With.

Caroline Was Always Moody And Miserable, But I Liked It. I Liked Feeling As If She Had Chosen Me As The Only Person In The World Not To Hate, And So We Spent All This Time Together Just Ragging On Everyone, You Know?

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

And As Paralyzing And Upsetting As All The Never Agains Were, The Final Leaving Felt Perfect. Pure. The Most Distilled Possible Form Of Liberation. Everything That Mattered Except One Lousy Picture Was In The Trash, But It Felt So Great. I Started Jogging, Wanting To Put Even More Distance Between Myself And School. It Is So Hard To Leave—until You Leave. And Then It Is The Easiest Goddamned Thing In The World.

I Couldn't Hear A Thing In The World But You. And It Was So Cold Then, And So Silent, And I Loved You So Much. Now It's Hot And Dead Quiet Again, And I Love You Still.

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

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.

That's The Thing About Pain, It Demands To Be Felt.

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.

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

And So That Is The Question I Leave You With In This Final: What Is Your Cause For Hope?

Everlasting Life

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.

By Saying You Don’t Care If The World Falls Apart, In Some Small Way You’re Saying You Want It To Stay Together, On Your Own Terms.

Nerdfighter Pwns Woot. Everyone Knows That.

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.

This Is The Fear That Made Fish Crawl Out Onto Dry Land And Evolve Lungs, The Fear That Teaches Us To Run, The Fear That Makes Us Bury Our Dead.

What About The Rest Of Your Life?" She Shrugged. "what About It?" "aren't You Worried About, Like, Forever?" "forever Is Composed Of Nows," She Says.

Rest Of Your Life

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

While I Did Not Fancy Myself A Particularly Good Person, I Never Thought My First Real Sexual Action Would Be Prostitutional.

...it Sounded Like A Dragon Breathing In Time With Me, Like I Had This Pet Dragon Who Was Cuddled Up Next To Me And Cared Enough About Me To Time His Breaths To Mine.

What Do You Mean By Meant? Given The Final Futility Of Our Struggle, Is The Fleeting Jolt Of Meaning That Art Gives Us Valuable? Or Is It The Only Value Passing Time As Comfortably As Possible?

Here's My Answer To The Very Real Existential Crisis That Grips Me Midway Through Everything I've Ever Tried To Do: I Think Stories Help Us Fight The Nihilistic Urges That Constantly Threaten To Consume Us.

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.

To Be Human Is To Catch The Falling Person.

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

One Day, You’re 17 And You’re Planning For Someday. And Then Quietly, Without You Ever Really Noticing, Someday Is Today. And Then Someday Is Yesterday. And This Is Your Life.

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.

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?

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

We Got Off At The Next Exit, Quietly, And, Switching Drivers, We Walked In Front Of The Car. We Met And I Held Him, My Hands Balled Into Tight Fists Around His Shoulders, And He Wrapped His Short Arms Around Me And Squeezed Tight, So That I Felt The Heaves Of His Chest As We Realized Over And Over Again That We Were Still Alive. I Realized It In Waves And We Held On To Each Other Crying And I Thought, 'god We Must Look So Lame,' But It Doesn't Matter When You Have Just Now Realized, All The Time Later, That You Are Still Alive.

The Pleasure Of Remembering Had Been Taken From Me, There Was No Longer Anyone To Remember With.

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

...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.

Teenagers Think They Are Invincible

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

I'm Not Sure If I'm Depressed. I Mean, I'm Not Exactly Sad. But I'm Not Exactly Happy Either. I Can Laugh And Joke And Smile During The Day, But Sometimes When I'm Alone At Night I Forget How To Feel.

Writing Is Something You Do Alone. It's A Profession For Introverts Who Wanna Tell You A Story But Don't Wanna Make Eye Contact While Telling It

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.

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.

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.

I Feel Like Crying, So I Must Be Crying, But It's Impossible To Tell Because I'm Underwater.

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.

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

I Realized That All My Life, My Values Were Based Upon Typical Middle-class American Values: Hard Work, Doing Good, Living Well, Owning Things, Following The Rules & Being The Best I Can Be... But God Clearly Says, "those Are Not My Values. I Value Justice, Mercy & Humility.

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.

We Were Very Different, And We Disagreed About A Lot Of Things, But He Was Always So Interesting, You Know?

I Thought You Hung The Moon.

I Know So Many Last Words. But I Will Never Know Hers.

It's Just That Most Really Good-looking People Are Stupid, So I Exceed Expectations.' 'right, It's Primarily His Hotness,' I Said. 'it Can Be Sort Of Blinding,' He Said. 'it Actually Did Blind Our Friend Isaac,' I Said. 'terrible Tragedy, That. But Can I Help My Own Deadly Beauty?' 'you Cannot.' 'it Is My Burden, This Beautiful Face.' 'not To Mention Your Body.' '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.

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

It Seems To Me That The Great Pleasure Of Human Life Is Not In Having An Opinion, But Rather In Learning All The Ways You Are Wrong, And All The Nuances You Failed To Account For, And All The Truths That Turned Out To Be Not As Simple As You Once Believed. And It Seems To Me That One Of The Central Pleasures Of Attending School Is That You Get To Read With Really Well-informed People Who Can Help Welcome You Into A Complex World Stuffed With Rich And Maddening Ambiguity.

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

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 Talk About The Courage Of Cancer Patients, And I Do Not Deny That Courage. I Had Been Poked And Stabbed And Poisoned For Years, And Still I Trod On. But Make No Mistake: In That Moment, I Would Have Been Very, Very Happy To Die.

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.

And I Don't Really Have Anyone Upon Whom I Want To Rain Down My Wrath," I Said, Because In Truth I Didn't. I Always Felt Like You Had To Be Important To Have Enemies. Example: Historically, Germany Has Had More Enemies Than Luxembourg, Margo Roth Spiegelman Was Germany. And Great Britain. And The United States. And Czarist Russia. Me, I'm Luxembourg. Just Sitting Around, Tending Sheep, And Yodeling.

When I Think About [characters], I Like To Think Of Them In Their Relationships To Each Other. In The Same Way, I Think That's How Humans Are Ultimately Defined. We Are Our Relationships To One Another. And A Lot Of What's Interesting About Us Happens In The Context Of Other People.

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

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.

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.

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'm Sorry," She Says. I Wheel Around. "you Know, You're A Total Know-it-all. And It's Incredibly Rude Sometimes; I Mean, You're Not Perfect Either, And You Act Like It's My Fault But It's Not My Fault For Being Quiet Or Your Fault For Being A Know-it-all. It's Not Your Problem Or My Problem; It's Their Problem. They're The Demented Ones, Not Us, So Don't Take It Out On Me, Because The Only Thing That Holds Things Together For Me Is Having Someone Else On The Not Demented Team.

My Lungs Sucked At Being Lungs.

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

The Right Story Needs The Right Telling.

We Were Kissing. I Thought: This Is Good. I Thought: I Am Not Bad At This Kissing. Not Bad At All. I Thought: I Am Clearly The Greatest Kisser In The History Of The Universe. Suddenly She Laughed And Pulled Away From Me. She Wiggled A Hand Out Of Her Sleeping Bag And Wiped Her Face. "you Slobbered On My Nose," She Said, And Laughed

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.

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

I Did Some Research On This A Couple Years Ago," Augustus Continued. "i Was Wondering If Everybody Could Be Remembered. Like, If We Got Organized, And Assigned A Certain Number Of Corpses To Each Living Person, Would There Be Enough Living People To Remember All The Dead People?" "and Are There?" "sure, Anyone Can Name Fourteen Dead People. But We're Disorganized Mourners, So A Lot Of People End Up Remembering Shakespeare And No One Ends Up Remembering The Person He Wrote Sonnet Fifty-five About

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

"please Stop," I Said. "you're Upsetting The Black Santas."

She Would Stay On The Road And In Hiding, A Balloon Floating Through The Sky, Eating Up Hundreds Of Miles A Day With A Help Of The Perpetual Tailwind.

So Zeno Is Most Famous For His Tortoise Paradox. Let Us Imagine That You Are In A Race With A Tortoise. The Tortoise Has A Ten-yard Head Start. In The Time It Takes You To Run That Ten Yards, The Tortoise Has Moved One Yard. And Then In The Time It Takes You To Make Up That Distance, The Tortoise Goes A Bit Farther, And So On Forever. You Are Faster Than The Tortoise But You Can Never Catch Him; You Can Only Decrease His Lead.

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.

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

For Me, The Hero’s Journey Is Not The Voyage From Weakness To Strength. The True Hero’s Journey Is The Voyage From Strength To Weakness.

I’ve Always Sort Of Preferred People Who Are Not Entirely Likable.

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

Whenever I'm Asked What Advice I Have For Young Writers, I Always Say That The First Thing Is To Read, And To Read A Lot. The Second Thing Is To Write. And The Third Thing, Which I Think Is Absolutely Vital, Is To Tell Stories And Listen Closely To The Stories You're Being Told.

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.

Love Is The Most Common Miracle.

Standing In Line Is A Form Of Oppression

Standing In Line

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.

Unrequited Love

Did I Help You To A Fate You Didn't Want?

Nothing (at Least That Can Be Done By Humans) Immortalizes Anyone. The Fault In Our Stars Will Hopefully Have A Long And Wonderful Life, But It Will Eventually Go Out Of Print, And Eventually The Last Person Ever To Read It Will Die, And Then The Characters Will No Longer Live In Any Consciousness.also, That Is Okay. That Is Good, Actually. That Is How It Should Be. One Of The Things The Characters In This Novel Have To Grapple With Is The Reality Of Temporaryness. What Gus In Particular Must Reconcile Himself To Is That Being Temporary Does Not Mean Being Unimportant Or Meaningless.

To Be Abandoned Like That! Shut Out When You Most Need To Be Loved.

Your Friendship With Her-it Sleeps With The Fishes.

You Live For Pretentious Metaphors.

We Have This Habit Of Romanticizing The Lives Of Writers. I Remember When I Was A Kid, I Was Like, 'i Want To Be Kurt Vonnegut.'

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

I Don't See A Future Where We're All Taught By Robots. The Real Life, Physical Experience Of Being In A Classroom And Having Conversations With Knowledgeable People Is Immeasurably Valuable And Irreplaceable.

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

She Had The Kind Of Eyes That Predisposed You To Supporting Her Every Endeavor.

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.

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

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.

But It Is A Pipe." "no, It's Not," I Said. It's A Drawing Of A Pipe. Get It? All Representations Of A Thing Are Inherently Abstract. It's Very Clever.

I've Gotten Really Hot Since You Went Blind.

That Feeling Of Finishedness Does Not Come All At Once, And It Is Not Easily Won, But I Think Once You Get There It Is Hard To Go Back.

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

I Shaved This Morning For Precisely That Reason. I Was Like, 'well, You Never Know When Someone Is Going To Clamp Down On Your Calf And Try To Suck Out The Snake Poison.

We Are Now As I Wished We Could Be Then.

I Feel Like My Life Is So Scattered Right Now. Like It's All The Small Pieces Of Paper And Someone's Turned On The Fan. But, Talking To You Makes Me Feel Like The Fan's Been Turned Off For A Little Bit. Like Things Could Actually Make Sense. You Completely Unscatter Me, And I Appreciate That So Much.

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

So I Was Ugly. I Was Never Fat, Really, And I Never Wore Headgear Or Had Zits Or Anything. But I Was Ugly. I Don't Even Know How Ugly And Pretty Get Decided - Maybe There's Like A Secret Cabal Of Boys Who Meet In The Locker Room And Decide Who's Ugly And Who's Hot, Because As Far As I Can Remember, There Was No Such Thing As A Hot Fourth-grader. - Lindsey Lee Wells

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.

The Sky Is Like A Monochromatic Contemporay Painting, Drawing Me In Its Illusion Of Depth, Pulling Me Up.

I Was Blind And Heart Broken And Didn't Want To Do Anything And Gus Burst Into My Room And Shouted, "i Have Wonderful News!" And I Was Like, "i Don't Really Want To Hear Wonderful News Right Now," And Gus Said, "this Is Wonderful News You Want To Hear," And I Asked Him, "fine, What Is It?" And He Said, "you Are Going To Live A Good And Long Life Filled With Great And Terrible Moments That You Cannot Even Imagine Yet!

People Always Get Used To Beauty Though.

Girls Think They’re Only Allowed To Wear Dresses On Formal Occasions, But I Like A Woman Who Says, You Know, I’m Going Over To See A Boy Who Is Having A Nervous Breakdown, A Boy Whose Connection To The Sense Of Sight Itself Is Tenuous, And Gosh Dang It, I Am Going To Wear A Dress For Him.

Crying Is You, Plus Tears

Getting You A Date To Prom Is So Hard That The Hypothetical Idea Itself Is Actually Used To Cut Diamonds. Ben, Getting You A Date To Prom Is So Hard That The American Government Believes The Problem Cannot Be Solved With Diplomacy, But Will Instead Require Force.

"you Are Fairly Smart," I Said After A While. "you Are Fairly Good At Compliments," He Answered.

One Of The Others Shouted A Translation: "the Beautiful Couple Is Beautiful.

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

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?

One Of The Pitfalls About Writing About Illness Is That It Is Very Easy To Imagine People With Cancer As Either These Wise-beyond-their-years Creatures Or These Sad-eyed Tragic People. And The Truth Is, People Living With Cancer Are Very Much Like People Who Are Not Living With Cancer. They're Every Bit As Funny And Complex And Diverse As Anyone Else.

Meriwether Lewis's Last Words Were, 'i Am Not A Coward, But I Am So Strong. So Hard To Die.' I Don't Doubt That It Is, But It Cannot Be Much Harder Than Being Left Behind.

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.

Above Us, The Wind Blew And The Branching Shadows Rearranged Themselves On Our Skin. Gus Squeezed My Hand. "it Is A Good Life, Hazel Grace.

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

I Still Think That Maybe The "afterlife" Is Just Something We Made Up To Ease The Pain Of Loss, To Make Our Time In The Labyrinth Bearable. Maybe We Are Just Matter, And Matter Gets Recycled

There Is A Part Of Her Greater Than The Sum Of Her Knowable Parts. And That Part Has To Go Somewhere, Because It Cannot Be Destroyed.

She Said Robert Joyner Had Killed Himself With A Gun. And Then I Asked Why, And Then She Told Me That He Was Getting A Divorce And Was Sad About It.' 'lots Of People Get Divorces And Don't Kill Themselves,' I Said. 'i Know,' She Said, Excitement In Her Voice. 'that's What I Told Her.

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

You'll Live Forever In Our Hearts, Big Man. That Particularly Galled Me, Because It Implied The Immortality Of Those Left Behind: You Will Live Forever In My Memory, Because I Will Live Forever! I Am Your God Now, Dead Boy! I Own You!

Life Has Become The Future. Every Moment Of Your Life Is Lived For The Future.

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

The Nature Of The Labyrinth, I Scribbled Into My Spiral Notebook, And The Way Out Of It. This Teacher Rocked. I Hated Discussion Classes. I Hated Talking, And I Hated Listening To Everyone Else Stumble On Their Words And Try To Phrase Things In The Vaguest Possible Way So They Wouldn't Sound Dumb, And I Hated How It Was All Just A Game Of Trying To Figure Out What The Teacher Wanted To Hear And Then Saying It. I'm In Class, So Teach Me.

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

The Catholic Hierarchy Has Become More Conservative. What We Don't Know Is Whether [catholic Voters] Will Become Increasingly Conservative, Or .. Stay Swing Voters.

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.

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 Gotta Do Something About This Frigging Swing Set,' He Said. 'i'm Telling You, It's Ninety Percent Of The Problem.

He Lit A Cigarette And Handed It To Me. I Inhaled. Coughed. Wheezed. Gasped For Breath. Coughed Again. Considered Vomiting. Grabbed The Swinging Bench, Head Spinning, And Threw The Cigarette To The Ground And Stomped On It, Convinced My Great Perhaps Did Not Involve Cigarettes.

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.

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.

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. You Left Me Perhapsless, Stuck In Your Goddamned Labyrinth. And Now I Don't Even Know If You Chose The Straight And Fast Way Out, If You Left Me Like This On Purpose. And So I Never Knew You, Did I? I Can't Remember, Because I Never Knew.

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

Y'all Smoke To Enjoy It. I Smoke To Die.

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.

Crying Adds Something: Crying Is You, Plus Tears. But The Feeling Colin Had Was Some Horrible Opposite Of Crying. It Was You, Minus Something. He Kept Thinking About One Word - Forever - And Felt The Burning Ache Just Beneath His Rib Cage.

I Hated Cranberry Sauce, But For Some Reason My Mom Persisted In Her Lifelong Belief That It Was My Very Favorite Food, Even Though Every Single Thanksgiving I Politely Declined To Include It On My Plate.

Trending Author

Brian McDermott

Florynce Kennedy

Category