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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.

-John Green

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Muhammad Brought The Promise

John Green

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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.

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Truth Resists Simplicity.

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.

Grief Doesn't Change You. It Reveals You.

Something About Me Has Always Liked The Drama And Inconvience Of Bad Weather. The Worse The Better, Really.

We Just Did An Awesome Job Of Not Dying.

As Far As All Of Our Identities Are Dependent On How Other People Imagine Us We Are All Making Ourselves And Each Other Up All The Time

She Smiled With All The Delight Of A Kid On Christmas Morning And Said, "y'all Smoke To Enjoy It. I Smoke To Die." - Alaska

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

You Know How We Make A Scotch And Water In This Home?" "no, Sir," Gus Said. "we Pour Scotch Into A Glass And Then Call To Mind Thoughts Of Water, And Then We Mix The Actual Scotch With The Abstracted Idea Of Water.

We All Want To Do Something To Mitigate The Pain Of Loss Or To Turn Grief Into Something Positive, To Find A Silver Lining In The Clouds. But I Believe There Is Real Value In Just Standing There, Being Still, Being Sad.

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

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

I Try To Live Life So That I Can Live With Myself.

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

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

You Don't Get To Choose If You Get Hurt In This World...but You Do Have Some Say In Who Hurts You. I Like My Choices.

Yeah, So If That Guy Can Make It In Drunk, Surely We Can Make It In Sober. I Mean, We’re Ninjas.' 'well, Maybe You’re A Ninja,' I Said. 'you’re Just A Really Loud, Awkward Ninja,' Margo Said, 'but We Are Both Ninjas.

Do You Ever Wonder Whether People Would Like You More Or Less If They Could See Inside You? But I Always Wonder About That. If People Could See Me The Way I See Myself—if They Could Live In My Memories—would Anyone, Anyone, Love Me?

Your Driving Is Unpleasant, But It Isn't Technically Unsafe.

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

It's Not Life Or Death, The Labyrinth. Suffering. Doing Wrong And Having Wrong Things Happen To You. That's The Problem. Bolivar Was Talking About The Pain, Not About The Living Or Dying. How Do You Get Out Of The Labyrinth Of Suffering?

To Be Fair To Monica," I Said, "what You Did To Her Wasn't Very Nice Either." "what'd I Do To Her?" He Asked, Defensive. "you Know, Going Blind And Everything." "but That's Not My Fault," Isaac Said. "i'm Not Saying It Was Your Fault. I'm Saying It Wasn't Nice.

[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.

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

I'm A Bad Boyfriend. She's A Bad Girlfriend. We Deserve Each Other.

Looking For Alaska Book

Something About Telling That Story Made My Gut Grow Back Together." What?" Oh, Nothing. Just Thinking Out Loud." That's Who You Really Like. The People You Can Think Out Loud In Front Of." The People Who've Been In Your Secret Hiding Places." The People You Bite Your Thumb In Front Of." Hi." Hi." ..." ..." Wow. My First Lindsey." My Second Colin." That Was Fun. Let's Try It Again." Sold." ..." ..." ...".

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.

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.

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

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.

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

Imagining The Future

Every Second Of Your Definitionally Temporary Consciousness, You Are Choosing How You Spend Something That Will Not Last Forever.

Don't Swear In The Literal Heart Of Jesus.

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

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.'

It Is So Hard To Leave-until You Leave.

You Gave Me A Forever Within The Numbered Days, And I'm Grateful.

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

There Was Time Before Organisms Experienced Consciousness, And There Will Be Time After. And If The Inevitability Of Human Oblivion Worries You, I Encourage You To Ignore It.

"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."

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?

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.

But Even If We Survive The Collapse Of Our Sun, We Will Not Survive Forever.

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Let Us Go, Through Certain Half-deserted Streets, / The Muttering Retreats / Of Restless Nights In One-night Cheap Hotels / And Sawdust Restaurants With Oyster-shells: / Streets That Follow Like A Tedious Argument / Of Insidious Intent / To Lead You To An Overwhelming Question.../ Oh, Do Not Ask, 'what Is It?' / Let Us Go And Make Our Visit"' 'i'm In Love With You,' He Said Quietly.

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

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

This Is So Much Fun, But I’m So Sleepy. To Be Continued?

As He Read, I Fell In Love The Way You Fall Asleep: Slowly, And Then All At Once.

The Universe Is Biased Toward Consciousness Because The Universe Wants To Be Noticed. It's A Way Into Existential Hope That Doesn't Have Too Much Cliché Wrapped Around It.

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

"i Think Forever Is An Incorrect Concept," I Answered. He Smirked. "you're An Incorrect Concept." "i Know. That's Why I'm Being Taken Out Of The Rotation".

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.

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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.

That Didn’t Happen, Of Course. Things Never Happened The Way I Imagined Them.

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I’ll Give You My Strength If I Can Have Your Remission.

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Sometimes People Don't Understand The Promises They're Making When They Make Them.

Keeping Promises

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

Life Has Become The Future.

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

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

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

Hazel Has To Realize That Her Mom Was Wrong When She Said, “i Won’t Be A Mother Anymore.” The Truth Is, After Hazel Dies (assuming She Dies), Her Mom Will Still Be Her Mom, Just As My Grandmother Is Still My Grandmother Even Though She Has Died. As Long As Either Person Is Still Alive, That Relationship Survives. (it Changes, But It Survives.)

She Cannot Possibly Be Dead, People Do Not Just Die

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.

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.

So Here's My Advice: Study Broadly And Without Fear. Learn A Language If You Can, Because That Will Make Your Life More Interesting. Read A Little Bit Every Day. But More Importantly, Surround Yourself With People Who You Like And Make Cool Stuff With Them. In The End, What You Do Isn't Going To Be Nearly As Interesting Or Important As Who You Do It With.

I'm Not Interested In Dating A Girl I'm Not Gonna Marry

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.

At Least It Was Instant. At Least There Wasn't Any Pain." I Knew He Was Only Trying To Help, But He Didn't Get It. There Was Pain. A Dul Endless Pain In My Gut That Wouldn't Go Away Even When I Knelt On The Stingingly Frozen Tile Of The Bathroom, Dry-heaving.

I Had A Moral Opposition To Eating Before Dawn On The Grounds That I Was Not A Nineteenth-century Russian Peasant Fortifying Myself For A Day In The Fields.

Thank You For Wearing That Dress Which Is Like Whoa.

We Can't Love Our Neighbors Till We Know How Crooked Their Hearts Are.

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.

I Can't Imagine Us Saying These Things To Each Other Out Loud. But Even If I Can't Imagine Hearing These Words, I Can Imagine Living Them. I Don't Even Picture It. Instead I'm In It. How I Would Feel With Him Here. That Peace. It Would Be So Happy, And It Makes Me Sad Because It Only Exists In Words.

I Liked That He Was A Tenured Professor In The Department Of Slightly Crooked Smiles With A Dual Appointments In The Department Of Having A Voice That Made My Skin Feel More Like Skin.

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

He Missed Her Like Crazycakes.

People, I Thought, Wanted Security. They Couldn't Bear The Idea Of Death Being A Big Black Nothing, Couldn't Bear The Thought Of Their Loved Ones Not Existing, And Couldn't Even Imagine Themselves Not Existing. I Finally Decided That People Believed In An Afterlife Because They Couldn't Bear Not To.

The Pleasure Isn't In Doing The Thing, The Pleasure Is In Planning It.

Boys Do Not Have The Monopoly In Staring Business, After All.

That's Why Those Tapes We Made Are Going To Be So Great One Day, Because They'll Tell Stories That Time Has Swallowed Up Or Distorted Or Whatever.

Suffering Is Universal.

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

People Are Different When You Can Smell Them And Look Up Close, You Know?

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

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.

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.

I Knew That Time Would Now Pass For Me Differently Than It Would For Him - That I, Like Everyone In That Room, Would Go On Accumulating Loves And Losses While He Would Not. And For Me, That Was The Final And Truly Unbearable Tragedy: Like All The Innumerable Dead, He'd Once And For All Been Demoted From Haunted To Haunter.

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

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

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

She Left Me Enough To Rediscover The Great Perhaps.

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

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

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.

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

Your Friendship With Her-it Sleeps With The Fishes.

The Right Story Needs The Right Telling.

... I Didn't Know Whether To Feel Angry At Her For Making Me Part Of Her Suicide Or Just To Feel Angry At Myself For Letting Her Go.

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.

Colder By The Hour, More Dead With Every Breath.

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.

The Easiest Way To Solve A Mystery Is To Decide That There Is No Mystery To Solve.

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.

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.

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.

And So Much Depends, I Told Augustus, Upon A Blue Sky Cut Open By The Branches Of The Trees Above. So Much Depends Upon The Transparent G-tube Erupting From The Gut Of The Blue-lipped Boy. So Much Depends Upon The Observer Of The Universe.

Our Children Are Weird. Nicely Phrased.

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.

You Cannot Invent An Algorithm That Is As Good At Recommending Books As A Good Bookseller.

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.

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

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.

History Doesn't Have A Curfew.

Maybe There Is Something You're Afraid To Say, Or Someone You're Afraid To Love, Or Somewhere You're Afraid To Go. It's Gonna Hurt. It's Gonna Hurt Because It Matters.

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 Believe Humans Have Souls, And I Believe In The Conservation Of Souls.

'cause I'm Just - I Want To Go To Amsterdam, And I Want Him To Tell Me What Happens After The Book Is Over, And I Just Don't Want My Particular Life, And Also The Sky Is Depressing Me, And There Is This Old Swing Set Out Here That My Dad Made For Me When I Was A Kid.' 'i Must See This Old Swing Set Of Tears Immediately,' He Said. 'i'll Be Over In Twenty Minutes.'

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.

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

From The Front Rdar Announces, "don't You Go Talking Bad About Gofast Bars. Do You Want Me To Stop This Car?" "whenever I Eat A Gofast Bar," Ben Says, "i'm Always Like, 'so This Is What Blood Tastes Like To Mosquitoes.

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.

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

We Kiss. Her Hands Are Freezing On My Face, And She Tastes Like Coffee And The Smell Of The Onion Is Still Stuck In My Nose, And My Lips Are All Dry From The Endless Winter. And It's Awesome.

This Is What I Love About Novels - Both Reading Them And Writing Them. They Jump Into The Abyss To Be With You Where You Are.

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?

That Deep, Can-still-taste-her-in-my-mouth Sleep.

Random Questions Are The Least Random Of All Questions.

It Was Not Enough To Be The Last Guy She Kissed. I Wanted To Be The Last One She Loved. And I Knew I Wasn’t. I Knew It, And I Hated Her For It. I Hated Her For Not Caring About Me. I Hated Her For Leaving That Night, And I Hated Myself , Too, Not Only Because I Let Her Go But Because If I Had Been Enough For Her, She Wouldn’t Have Even Wanted To Leave. She Would Have Just Lain With Me And Talked And Cried, And I Would Have Listened And Kissed At Her Tears As They Pooled In Her Eyes.

The Prospect Of A World That Contains Neither Humans Nor Z's Is Not So Terrifying. Nature Will Take Its World Back. Animals Will Frolic And Fight. There Will Be No Lord Of The Manor, Which Is Not Such A Bad Thing, Because It Seems To Me That People Have Done A Pretty Poor Job Of Guiding The Biosphere For The Last Few Thousand Years.

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.

Colin's Skin Was Alive With The Feeling Of Connection To Everyone In That Car And Everyone Not In It. And He Was Feeling Not-unique In The Very Best Possible Way.

Tonight, Darling, We Are Going To Right A Lot Of Wrongs.

I Learned That Myth Doesn’t Mean A Lie; It Means A Traditional Story That Tells You Something About People And Their Worldview And What They Hold Sacred. Interesting.

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

Isaac Out Of Surgery. It Went Well. He's Officially Nec. Nec Meant "no Evidence Of Cancer." A Second Text Came A Few Seconds Later. I Mean, He's Blind. So That's Unfortunate.

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

It Seems To Me That All The Things We Keep In Sealed Boxes Are Both Alive And Dead Until We Open The Box, That The Unobserved Is Both There And Not.

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.

But That Wasn't Quite Right. I Called It A Nine Because I Was Saving My Ten. And Here It Was, The Great And Terrible Ten, Slamming Me Again And Again As I Lay Still And Alone In My Bed Staring At The Ceiling, The Waves Tossing Me Against The Rocks Then Pulling Me Back Out To Sea So They Could Launch Me Again Into The Jagged Face Of The Cliff, Leaving Me Floating Faceup On The Water, Undrowned.

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.

You're Arguing That The Fragile, Rare Thing Is Beautiful Simply Because It Is Fragile And Rare. But That's A Lie, And You Know It.

We Have To Live With Ambiguity. We Have To Give Ourselves Over To It. The Question Is: How? How Are We Going To Live In A Universe Where Important Questions Will Always Go Unanswered?

Sometimes I Don't Get You,' I Said. She Didn't Even Glance At Me. She Just Smiled Toward The Television And Said, 'you Never Get Me. That's The Whole Point.

You Completely Unscatter Me, And I Appreciate That Too Much.

Well, But You Can Eat Grandma's Cookies. They're Not Bad For You. They Were Made By Grandma. Grandma Wouldn't Hurt You.

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.

Love Is Always A Miracle, Everywhere,every Time. But For Us, It's A Little Different. I Don't Want To Say It's More Miraculous,...it Is Though.

Need Is Never A Good Basis For Any Relationship.

Everybody Should Have True Love, And It Should Last At Least As Long As Your Life Does.

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.

People Thought He Was A Glutton For Punishment, That He Liked Getting Dumped. But It Wasn't Like That. He Could Just Never See Anything Coming, And As He Lay On The Solid, Uneven Ground With Hassan Pressing Too Hard On His Forehead, Colin Singleton's Distance From His Glasses Made Him Realize The Problem: Myopia. He Was Nearsighted. The Future Lay Before Him, Inevitable But Invisible.

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

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

We Didn't Talk Much. But We Didn't Need To.

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

Dying Is The Last Thing I Would Ever Do!

I Didn't Want To Look At Them, So I Looked Away, And To Look Away Was To Look At Augustus.

Chicago Is The Great American City, And It Was Really Great To Live There During A Time Of Economic Expansion And Opportunity And Growth. I Felt Like I Was Living At The Center Of The World. Unlike New York, No One Expects You To Be A Professional Writer.

The Fundamental Mistake I Had Always Made - And That She Had, In Fairness, Always Led Me To Make - Was This: Margo Was Not A Miracle. She Was Not An Adventure. She Was Not A Fine And Precious Thing. She Was A Girl.

Entropy Increases. Things Fall Apart.

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

You Could Hear The Wind In The Leaves, And On That Wind Traveled The Screams Of The Kids On The Playground In The Distance, The Little Kids Figuring Out How To Be Alive, How To Navigate A World That Was Not Built For Them By Navigating A Playground That Was. . . Who Am I To Say That These Things Might Not Be Forever? Who Is Pete Van Houten To Assert As Fact The Conjecture That Our Labor Is Temporary? All I Know Of Heaven And All I Know Of Death Is In This Park: An Elegant Universe In Ceaseless Motion, Teeming With Ruined Ruins And Screaming Children.

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

Falling In Love

"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."

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

Colin Singleton

There Are Many More Jobs Out There Than You Have Ever Heard Of. Your Dream Job Might Not Yet Exist. If You Had Told 'college Me' That I Would Become A Professional Youtuber, I Would've Been Like, "that Is Not A Word, And It Never Should Be."

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

Cold,” He Said, Pressing A Finger To My Pale Wrist. “not Cold So Much As Underoxygenated,” I Said. “i Love It When You Talk Medical To Me,” He Said. He Stood, And Pulled Me Up With Him, And Did Not Let Go Of My Hand Until We Reached The Stairs.

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

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

When You Stopped Wishing Things Wouldn't Fall Apart, You'd Stop Suffering When They Did.

Love Is Keeping The Promise Anyway.

Keeping Promises

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

You Can't Just Make Me Different And Then Leave. You Can't. You Can't Change Me And Make My Whole Life Centered Around You, Then Leave.

I Went On Spouting Bullshit Encouragements As Gus's Parents, Arm In Arm, Hugged Each Other And Nodded At Every Word. Funerals, I Had Decided, Are For The Living.

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

Without Pain, We Couldn't Know Joy.

A Small Olive-skinned Creature Who Had Hit Puberty But Never Hit It Very Hard, Ben Had Been My Best Friend Since Fifth Grade, When We Both Finally Owned Up To The Fact That Neither Of Us Was Likely To Attract Anyone Else As A Best Friend.

I Change My Keyboard Between Every Book. I Usually Shop Around. I'm Very Passionate About The Physical Feel Of Pressing The Keys. It's Got To Have The Right Springiness. I Tend To Find The Built-in Keys Very Unsatisfying, The Keys Are Low-profile And Don't Really Do Anything - I Want It To Feel Like I'm Typing.

Lacey Shrugged Bashfully. “do You Think I’m Superficial?” “well, Yeah.” I Thought Of Myself Standing Outside Becca’s Bedroom, Hoping She’d Take Her Shirt Off. “but So Am I,” I Added. “so Is Everyone.

It Was Not Enough To Be The Last Guy She Kissed. I Wanted To Be The Last One She Loved.

Without Pain, How Could We Know Joy?

My Regret Was Immediate And Permanent And Useless.

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

So I Let Her Go, Too. And I'm Sorry.

It Turns Out That, Somehow, There Are A Tremendous Number Of Things To Be Optimistic About.

Her Hair Is Ridiculous," I Said. "i Know. That Was The Only Thing I Said About Her That Was True. When You Say Nasty Things About People, You Should Never Say The True Ones, Because You Can't Really Fully And Honestly Take Those Back, You Know? I Mean, There Are Highlights. And There Are Streaks. And Then There Are Skunk Stripes.

But Mothers Lie. It's In The Job Description.

Because You Are Beautiful. I Enjoy Looking At Beautiful People, And I Decided A While Ago Not To Deny Myself The Simpler Pleasures Of Existence

I Inherited That Penchant For Intellectualism, A Character Flaw That These Days Can Only Be Thoroughly Eradicated By Getting Z’ed Up.

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

The Times That Were Most Fun Seemed Always To Be Followed By Sadness Now, Because It Was When Life Started To Feel Like It Did When She Was With Us That We Realized How Utterly Gone She Was.

I Just Want To Do Something That Matters. Or Be Something That Matters. I Just Want To Matter.

Agustus Asked If I Wanted To Go With Him To Support Group, But I Was Really Tired From My Busy Day Of Having Cancer, So I Passed.

Love Is Tied To Truth.

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