Background Image

...

Like Everyone, I'm Saddened And Horrified By This. All I'll Say Is That I'm Personally Trying To Pay More Attention To The Victims Than To Their Murderer. I Certainly Will Not Be Mentioning The Murderer. I Don't Think He Warrants Our Attention-particularly Since He So Clearly Wanted It.

-John Green

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

Like Everyone, I'm Saddened

John Green

...

Like Everyone, I'm Saddened And Horrified By This. All I'll Say Is That I'm Personally Trying To Pay More Attention To The Victims Than To Their Murderer. I Certainly Will Not Be Mentioning The Murderer. I Don't Think He Warrants Our Attention-particularly Since He So Clearly Wanted It.

Views: 6

Topic

More From John Green

Coal Miners Don't Get Coal Miners' Block.

It Always Shocked Me When I Realized That I Wasn’t The Only Person In The World Who Thought And Felt Such Strange And Awful Things.

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.

I Felt The Unfairness Of It, The Inarguable Injustice Of Loving Someone Who Might Have Loved You Back But Can't Due To Deadness.

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

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

Teenagers Think They Are Invincible

But If You Consider All The Unlikely Things Together, At Least One Of Them Will Probably Happen To Each Of Us.

I Always Felt Like You Had To Be Important To Have Enemies.

Teenagers Are Extremely Funny, And Extremely Clever And Intellectually Curious. But They're Also Willing To Ask Questions About The Meaning Of Life Without Disguising Them Around Irony, And Ask Questions About What Are Our Responsibilities To Other People Without Having To Couch It In Irony.

What Can We Do?" Mom Asked Again. I Shrugged. But She Kept Asking, As If There Were Something She Could Do, Until I Just Kind Of Crawled Across The Couch Into Her Lap And My Dad Came Over And Held My Legs Really Tight And I Wrapped My Arms All The Way Around My Mom's Middle And They Held On To Me For Hours While The Tide Rolled In.

We Are As Indestructible As We Believe Ourselves To Be.

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.

You Matter As Much As The Things That Matter To You Do.

Things That Matter

I’ve Stopped Thinking About It. I Don’t Have Time To Have A Girlfriend. I Have Like A Full-time Job Learning How To Be Blind.

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

So Dawn Goes Down Today... Nothing Gold Can Stay. -- Robert Frost

I Leaned In Toward Her, Suddenly Overwhelmed With The Feeling That We Must Kiss.

But It Was Sure A Privilege To Love Him, Huh?" I Nodded Into His Shirt. "gives You An Idea How I Feel About You," He Said. My Old Man. He Always Knew Just What To Say.

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.

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.

The Town Was Paper, But The Memories Were Not.

It's Hard To Believe In Coincidence, But It's Even Harder To Believe In Anything Else.

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

Just Spend A Few More Months Playing Video Games. That Hand-eye Coordination Will Come In Handy When You Get To Third Base.

We're Going To Get Gored To Death By A Feral Fugging Hog And Your Best Strategy Is To Pretend It's A Grizzly Bear?

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

We Are Engaged Here In The Most Important Pusuit In History. The Search For Meaning. What Is What Is The Nature Of Being A Person? What Is The Best Way To Go About Being A Person?how Did We Come To Be, And Wha Will Become Of Us When We Are No Longer? In Short: What Are The Rules This Game, And How Might We Best Play It?

You Die In The Middle Of Your Life.

Fault In Our Stars

Dear Teens At Starbucks Wearing 'abstain From Sex 2 Attain Ur Goals' T-shirts: Doesn't It Depend On What My Goals Are?

..there She Is, And I Am Watching Her Through Plexiglass, And She Looks Like Margo Roth Spiegelman, This Girl I Have Known Since I Was Two–this Girl Who Was An Idea That I Loved. And It Is Only Now, When She Closes Her Notebook And Places It Inside A Backpack Next To Her And Then Stands Up And Walks Toward Us, That I Realize That The Idea Is Not Only Wrong By Dangerous. What A Treacherous Thing It Is To Believe That A Person Is More Than A Person.

Of Course I Tensed Up When He Touched Me. To Be With Him Was To Hurt Him-inevitably. And That's What I'd Felt As He Reached For Me: I'd Felt As Though I Were Committing An Act Of Violence Against Him, Because I Was.

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

Love Is The Most Common Miracle.

Keys Show Up When You Reconcile Yourself To The Bus.

Even If It’s A Dumb Story, Telling It Changes People Just The Slightest Little Bit, Just As Living The Story Changes Me. An Infinitesimal Change. And That Infinetisimal Change Ripples Outward —ever Smaller But Everlasting. I Will Get Forgotten, But The Stories Will Last. And So We All Matter —maybe Less Than A Lot, But Always More Than None.

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.

Nerd Girls Are The World's Greatest Under-utilized Romantic Resource.

I Am Still Bowled Over By This Great Young Adult Novel By David Levithan Called 'every Day,' Which Is About A Character With No Gender Or Body Who Wakes Up Every Day In The Body Of A Different Person. It's A Really Impressive Execution Of A Really Great Premise.

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.

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

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.

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.

If Drunk Were Cookies, I'd Be Famous Amos

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?

Thank You For Wearing That Dress Which Is Like Whoa.

Tiny Cooper Is Not The World's Gayest Person, And He Is Not The World's Largest Person, But I Believe He May Be The World's Largest Person Who Is Really, Really Gay, And Also The World's Gayest Person Who Is Really, Really Large.

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

I Don't Have A Favourite Book, I Have Hundreds.

I Tried To Tell Myself That It Could Be Worse, That The World Was Not A Wish-granting Factory, That I Was Living With Cancer Not Dying Of It, That I Mustn't Let It Kill Me Before It Kills Me.

And He Found Himself Thinking That Maybe Stories Don't Just Make Us Matter To Each Other - Maybe They're Also The Only Way To The Infinite Mattering He'd Been After For So Long.

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

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.

So Keeping The Box Closed Just Keeps You In The Dark, Not The Universe.

Whatever. Great Day. Today. Best Day Of My Life.

No Headboards Were Broken.

When People Call People Nerds, Mostly What They're Saying Is, 'you Like Stuff.' Which Is Not A Good Insult At All, Like, 'you Are Too Enthusiastic About The Miracle Of Human Conscience.

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.

But What Could I Lose By Continuing That Had Not Already Been Lost?

You Know What Ambrosia Tastes Like? It Tastes Like All The Things You Can't Eat On Weight Watchers. Cheeseburgers, Sugar Cookies, Regular Freaking Ice Cream Instead Of, Like, Ice Cream That's Made Out Of Air And Human Hope.

Weight Watchers

I Never Liked Writing Concluding Paragraphs To Papers - Where You Repeat What You've Already Said With Phrases Like 'in Summation', And 'to Conclude'.

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.

I'm A Grenade And At Some Point I'm Going To Blow Up And I Would Like To Minimize The Casualties, Okay?

Don't Make Fun Of Her," The Duke Said. "she Needs Gentle Encouragement. Carla, Baby, We Love You. You Are Such A Good Car. And We Believe In You One Hundred Percent." ... "don't Listen To Him, Carla. You're Gonna Do This." ... "i Love You, Carla. You Know That, Don't You? I Wake Up Every Morning And The First Thing I Think Is That I Love Tobin's Mom's Car. I Know That's Weird, Baby, But I Do. I Love You. And I Know You Can Do This." ... "carla," The Duke Said, "it's Time To Tell You The Truth. I'm In Love With You. I Want To Be With You, Carla. I've Never Felt This Way About A C-

Great Books Help You Understand, And They Help You Feel Understood.

If People Were Like Rain, I Was Like Drizzle And She Was A Hurricane.

We Cannot Be Born, And We Cannot Die. Like All Energy, We Can Only Change Shapes And Sizes And Manifestations.

We Do An Epically Bad Job Of Acknowledging One Another's Work And Checking Our Sources.

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.

If You Don't Imagine, Nothing Ever Happens At All.

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

Imagining Things

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.

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.

Tonight, Darling, We Are Going To Right A Lot Of Wrongs. And We Are Going To Wrong Some Rights. The First Shall Be Last; The Last Shall Be First; The Meek Shall Do Some Earth-inheriting. But Before We Can Radically Reshape The World, We Need To Shop.

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

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.

[this] Is Very Important To Remember When Reading Or Writing Or Talking Or Whatever: You Are Never, Ever Choosing Whether To Use Symbols. You Are Choosing Which Symbols To Use.

I Am In The Midst Of A Soliloquy! I Wrote This Out And Memorized It And If You Interrupt Me I Will Completely Screw It Up,' Augustus Interrupted. 'please To Be Eating Your Sandwich And Listening.

"patience, Grasshopper," I Counseled. "you Don't Want To Seem Overeager." "right, That's Why I Said Tomorrow," He Said. "i Want To See You Again Tonight. But I'm Willing To Wait All Night And Much Of Tomorrow." I Rolled My Eyes. "i'm Serious," He Said."you Don't Even Know Me," I Said. I Grabbed The Book From The Center Console. "how About I Call You When I Finish This?""but You Don't Even Have My Phone Number," He Said."i Strongly Suspect You Wrote It In This Book."he Broke Out Into That Goofy Smile. "and You Say We Don't Know Each Other."

So Why Don't You Go Home For Vacations?' I Asked Her. I'm Just Scared Of Ghosts, Pudge. And Home Is Full Of Them.

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

You Know Your Problem, Quentin? You Keep Expecting People Not To Be Themselves.

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

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.

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.

Just Remember That Sometimes, The Way You Think About A Person Isn't The Way They Actually Are... People Are Different When You Can Smell Them And See Them Up Close.

Books Are Seldom Useful Unless They Are Also Beautiful.

In The Contemporary World Where Things Fall Apart, And The Centre Cannot Hold, You Have To Imagine A Community Where There Is No Centre. Hank, At The End Of This Year I Started Thinking That A Lot Of Life Is About Doing Things That Don’t Suck With People Who Don’t Suck.

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.

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

Just Deleting Vandalism On The Chuck Norris Page," Radar Said. "for Instance, While I Do Think That Chuck Norris Specializes In The Roundhouse Kick, I Don't Think It's Accurate To Say, 'chuck Norris's Tears Can Cure Cancer, But Unfortunately He Has Never Cried.

I Think Teenagers Bring A Lot Of Intellectual Sophistication. They're Wrestling With Big Questions. It's Just That, A Lot Of Times They Do That Separately From Adults.

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.

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

Throughout The Book, She Refers To Herself As "the Side Effect," Which Is Just Totally Correct. Cancer Kids Are Essentially Side Effects Of The Relentless Mutation That Made The Diversity Of Life On Earth Possible.

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

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.

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

He Reached Up T0 Grab One And Came Down With Several, And They Kept Coming, Washing Over Him, Floating All Around Him. Never Have Tampon Strings Seemed So Beautiful As They Rolled Up And Down With The Wind, Landing On The Ground And Then Twirling And Floating Up Again, Falling And Rising And Falling And Rising.

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

I Know He's Been Looking Forward To This--and I Know That I've Been Looking Forward To This. But Now I Have To Stop Looking Forward And Start Looking At Where I Am. It's Hard.

Looking Forward

It Has Been My Experience That Maximizing Income Is A Helluva Lot Less Important Than Maximizing Passion And Fulfillment In Your Both Professionally And Personally.

"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."

Our Fearlessness Shall Be Our Secret Weapon.

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

Books Belong To Their Readers.

When I Look At My Room, I See A Girl Who Loves Books.

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

It Is Saying These Things That Keeps Us From Falling Apart. And Maybe By Imagining These Futures We Can Make Them Real, And Maybe Not, But Either Way We Must Imagine Them. The Light Rushes Out And Floods In.

It's Easy To Like Someone From A Distance. But When She Stopped Being This Amazing Unattainable Thing Or Whatever, And Started Being, Like, Just A Regular Girl With A Weird Relationship With Food And Frequent Crankiness Wh's Kind Of Bossy--then I Had To Basically Start Liking A While Different Person.

What Else? She Is So Beautiful. You Don’t Get Tired Of Looking At Her. You Never Worry If She Is Smarter Than You: You Know She Is. She Is Funny Without Ever Being Mean. I Love Her. I Am So Lucky To Love Her, Van Houten. You Don’t Get To Choose If You Get Hurt In This World, Old Man, But You Do Have Some Say In Who Hurts You. I Like My Choices. I Hope She Likes Hers.

I Spy With My Little Eye A Great Story.

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

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.

People Will Say It's Sad That She Leaves A Lesser Scar, That Fewer Remember Her, That She Was Loved Deeply But Not Widely. But It's Not Sad, Van Houten. It's Triumphant. It's Heroic. Isn't That The Real Heroism? Like The Doctors Say: First, Do No Harm.

We Play The Broken String Of Our Instruments One Last Time

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

Need Is Never A Good Basis For Any Relationship.

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

All Hurt Is Brain Hurt.

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.

You Like Someone Who Can't Like You Back Because Unrequited Love Can Be Survived In A Way That Once-requited Love Cannot.

Unrequited Love

The World Is Not A Wish-granting Factory.

You Can’t Know, Sweetie, Because You’ve Never Had A Baby Become A Brilliant Young Reader With A Side Interest In Horrible Television Shows, But The Joy You Bring Us Is So Much Greater Than The Sadness We Feel About Your Illness.

Too Pissed Off To Cry, I Said, 'this Is Only Making Me Hate Her. I Don't Want To Hate Her. And What's The Point, If That's All It's Making Me Do?' Still Refusing To Answer How And Why Questions. Still Insisting On An Aura Of Mystery. I Leaned Forward, Head Between By Knees, And The Colonel Placed A Head On My Upper Back. 'the Point Is That There Are Always Alsweres, Pudge.' And Then He Pushed Air Out Between His Pursed Lips And I Could Hear The Angry Quiver In His Voice As He Repeated, 'there Are Always Answers. We Just Have To Be Smart Enough.' ~miles/pudge And Chip/the Colonel, Pg 168

Television Is A Passivity.

Mom Sobbed Something Into Dad's Chest That I Wish I Hadn't Heard, And That I Hope She Never Finds Out That I Did Hear. She Said, "i Won't Be A Mom Anymore." It Gutted Me Pretty Badly.

I Just Want To Fly Under The Radar, Because When You Start To Make Yourself Into A Big Deal, That's When You Get Shot Down.

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

The Truth Is That In Our Lives We Are All Going To Encounter Questions That Should Be Answered, That Deserve To Be Answered, And Yet Prove Unanswerable.

All Good American Literature Is Always Interested In People Who Are Ambiguously Heroic, Like Gatsby.

The Darkest Nights Produce The Brightest Stars.

When Adults Say, "teenagers Think They Are Invincible" With That Sly, Stupid Smile On Their Faces, They Don't Know How Right They Are. We Need Never Be Hopeless, Because We Can Never Be Irreparably Broken. We Think That We Are Invincible Because We Are. We Cannot Be Born, And We Cannot Die. Like All Energy, We Can Only Change Shapes And Sizes And Manifestations. They Forget That When They Get Old. They Get Scared Of Losing And Failing. But That Part Of Us Greater Than The Sum Of Our Parts Cannot Begin And Cannot End, And So It Cannot Fail.

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

March 4th, The Only Day That Is Also A Sentence

I'm Not Embarrassed By My Faith, And I'm Also Not Embarrassed By My Doubt.

There Is Only One Things In This World Shittier Than Biting It From Cancer When You're Sixteen, And That's Having A Kid Who Bites It From Cancer.

Teenagers Have More Intense Reading Experiences Because They've Had Fewer Of Them. It's Like The First Time You Fall In Love. You Have A Connection To That First Person You Fell In Love With Because It Was So Intense And Unprecedented.

Falling In Love

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

You’re Joining Us For Dinner, I Hope?” Asked His Mom. She Was Small And Brunette And Vaguely Mousy. “i Guess?” I Said. “i Have To Be Home By Ten. Also I Don’t, Um, Eat Meat?” “no Problem. We’ll Vegetarianize Some,” She Said. “animals Are Just Too Cute?” Gus Asked. “i Want To Minimize The Number Of Deaths I Am Responsible For,” I Said. Gus Opened His Mouth To Respond But Then Stopped Himself.

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

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

Is The Labyrinth Living Or Dying?

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.

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

The Beautiful Thing About Driving Was That It Stole Just Enough Of His Attention - Car Parked On The Side, Maybe A Cop, Slow To Speed Limit, Time To Pass This Sixteen-wheeler, Turn Signal, Check Rearview, Crane Neck To Check Blind Spot And Yes, Okay, Left Lane.

He Puts The Killing Thing In His Mouth But Doesn't Give It The Power To Kill Him.

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

If I Ever End Up Being The Kind Of Person Who Has One Kid And Seven Bedrooms. Do Me A Favor And Shoot Me.

I Feel Like I Might Start Crying And That I'm Going To Cry Pee.

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

My Stomach Sank. Jp Had Come So Close. His Immigrant Parents Had Sacrificed So Much.

Immigrant Parents

Stupid Truth, Always Resisting Simplicity

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

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.

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.

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.

When People Have To Choose Between Civilization And Warm Genitals, They Choose Warm Genitals

The Amazing Thing Is That We're Right To Hold Onto Hope. The World May Be Broken But Hope Is Not Crazy.

That's The Great Thing About Being In The Third Grade. If You've Got One Polysyllabic Adjective, Everyone Thinks You're A Genius.

I Stand In This Parking Lot, Realizing That I’ve Never Been This Far From Home, And Here Is This Girl I Love And Cannot Follow. I Hope This Is The Hero’s Errand, Because Not Following Her Is The Hardest Thing I’ve Ever Done.

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

Ultimately What I Like About Reading Together Is That We All Make It Happen Together. Of Course Even Amid Shared Experience We’re Still Alone… Each Reading Of Each Book Is Unique. But What A Comfort It Is To Share Readings And Experiences. How Lucky We Are When We Get To Be Alone Together.

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

Writing Does Not Resurrect. It Buries.

You Could Hold Me And I Could Hold You. And It Would Be So Peaceful. Completely Peaceful. Like The Feeling Of Sleep, But Awake In It Together.

Maybe All The Strings Inside Him Broke.

Entropy Increases. Things Fall Apart.

He Loved The Scratching Of Pencil Against Paper When He Was Focused: It Meant Something Was Happening.

As A Child I Was An Inveterate Liar. As Opposed To Now, I Am A Novelist.

The Way I Figure It, Everyone Gets A Miracle.

I Was Thinking About This Girl You Love So Much," She Said, "and This Place I Love So Much. And How That Happens. How You Can Just Fall Into It.

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

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.

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

A Paper Town For A Paper Girl.

Those Of Us Who Frequent The Band Room Have Long Suspected That Becca Maintains Her Lovely Figure By Eating Nothing But The Souls Of Kittens And The Dreams Of Impoverished Children.

Read A Lot. Read Broadly... Tell Stories To Your Friends, And Pay Attention To When They Get Bored... Write A Lot.

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

Our Lives Are Composed Of A Finite Set Of Moments That We Choose How To Spend.

Cherish Every Moment

What You Must Understand About Me Is That I’m A Deeply Unhappy Person.

"and How Are You Feeling?" Asked Patrick."oh, I'm Grand." Augustus Waters Smiled With A Corner Of His Mouth. "i'm On A Roller Coaster That Only Goes Up, My Friend."

Why Are Breakfast Foods Breakfast Foods?

Language Buries, But Does Not Resurrect.

It's More Impressive," I Said Out Loud. "from A Distance, I Mean. You Can't See The Wear On Things, You Know? You Can't See The Rust Or The Weeds Or The Paint Cracking. You See The Place As Someone Once Imagined It.

Much Of My Life Had Been Devoted To Trying Not To Cry In Front Of People Who Loved Me, So I Knew What Augustus Was Doing. You Clench Your Teeth. You Look Up. You Tell Yourself That If They See You Cry, It Will Hurt Them, And You Will Be Nothing But A Sadness In Their Lives, And You Must Not Become A Mere Sadness, So You Will Not Cry, And You Say All Of This To Yourself While Looking Up At The Ceiling, And Then You Swallow Even Though Your Throat Does Not Want To Close And You Look At The Person Who Loves You And Smile.

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

Imagining The Future

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

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

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

Omnis Cellula E Cellula," He Said Again. "all Cells Come From Cells. Every Cell Is Born Of A Previous Cell, Which Was Born Of A Previous Cell. Life Comes From Life. Life Begets Life Begets Life Begets Life Begets Life.

Love Is Just A Shout In The Void.

All Of Us, Poor & Rich Alike, Have Been Conditioned By Our Upbringings. Impoverished Men & Women May Become Lulled Into A State Of "learned Helplessness" Without Hope To Change Their Lives. Likewise, The Wealthy Can Walk In A State Of "learned Blindness" Ignoring The Desperation Of The Local & Global Poor.

You Are Going To Live A Good And Long Life Filled With Great And Terrible Moments That You Cannot Even Imagine Yet.

We Think That We Are Invincible Because We Are.

Patience, Grasshopper," I Counseled. "you Don't Want To Seem Overeager." "right, That's Why I Said Tomorrow," He Said. "i Want To See You Again Tonight. But I'm Willing To Wait All Night And Much Of Tomorrow.

Life Has Become The Future.

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.

Trending Author

Jackie Robinson

Steven Morrissey

Category