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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.

-John Green

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She Said Robert Joyner

John Green

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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.

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Colder By The Hour, More Dead With Every Breath.

What I Eventually Realized Is That The Real Business Of Books Is Not Done By Awards Committees Or People Who Turn Trees Into Paper Or Editors Or Agents Or Even Writers. We're All Just Facilitators. The Real Business Is Done By Readers.

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

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Issac:"i Dislike Living In A World Without Augustus Waters." Computer: "i Don't Understand-" Issac: "me Neither. Pause

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When It Comes To Girls (and In Colin's Case, It So Often Did), Everyone Has A Type. Colin Singleton's Type Was Not Physical But Linguistic: He Liked Katherines. And Not Katies Or Kats Or Kitties Or Cathys Or Rynns Or Trinas Or Kays Or Kates Or, God Forbid, Catherines. K-a-t-h-e-r-i-n-e. He Had Dated 19 Girls. All Of Them Had Been Named Katherine. And All Of Them- Every Single Solitary One- Had Dumped Him.

I Would Always Love Alaska Young, My Crooked Neighbor, With All My Crooked Heart.

Anyway, That Was The Last Good Day I Had With Gus Until The Last Good Day.

But A Lot Of Times, People Die How They Live. And So Last Words Tell Me A Lot About Who People Were, And Why They Became The Sort Of People Biographies Get Written About.

When We Read The Right Book Generously, It Can Change The Way Think About The World Around Us.

One Of The Jobs Of A Writer Is To Add Nuance And Ambiguity To That Straight Line That People Often Draw To Very Specific Kinds Of Heroism. Most Of Us Don't Get To Be Snooki. For Most Of Us Heroism Has To Be In Our Everyday Lives.

No Matter How Hard You Kick, No Matter How High You Get, You Can't Go All The Way Around.

How Can You Seperate Those Things Though? The People Are The Place Is The People.

It Looked Like An Old Painting, But Real - Everything Achingly Idyllic In The Morning Light - And I Thought About How Wonderfully Strange It Would Be To Live In A Place Where Almost Everything Had Been Built By The Dead.

The World Went On, As It Does, Without My Full Participation, And I Only Woke Up From The Reverie When Someone Said My Name.

Good Friends Are Hard To Find And Impossible To Forget.

Impossible To Forget

Most Loves Don't Last. But Some Do.

I Will Play Out The String. I Will Not Betray Your Trust. I Will Find You.

You Say You're Not Special Because The World Doesn't Know About You, But That's An Insult To Me. I Know About You.

Of Course, Sweetie," His Mom Said. "we'll Be Here All Day. You Just Come Down Whenever You Want And We Love You And You're So So Special, Colin, And You Can't Possibly Let This Girl Make You Think Otherwise Because You Are The Most Magnificent, Brilliant Boy-" And Right Then, The Most Special, Magnificent, Brilliant Boy Bolted Into His Bathroom And Puked His Guts Out. An Explosion, Sort Of.

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.

Do You Know Why I Left America, Lidewij? So That I Would Never Again Have To Encounter Americans." "but You Are An American." "incurably So, It Seems.

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.

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.

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

She Said 'i Love You' As If It Were A Secret, And An Immense One.

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.

The Dead Are Visible Only In The Terrible Lidless Eye Of Memory. The Living, Thank Heaven, Retain The Ability To Surprise And To Disappoint. - Van Houten

I Don't Know Why Boys Expect Us To Like Boy Movies. We Don't Expect Them To Like Girl Movies.

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

Becoming A Father Made Me Much More Interested In The Parent Character In My Novels. I've Never Found Parents That Interesting.

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.

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

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The Nature Of Impending Fatherhood Is That You Are Doing Something That You're Unqualified To Do, And Then You Become Qualified While Doing It.

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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.

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

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Books Are Like Tweets, Except Longer.

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

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

Falling In Love

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.

What I Love About The Sculpture Is That It Makes The Bones That We Are Always Walking And Playing On Manifest, Like In A World That So Often Denies The Reality Of Death And The Reality That We Are Surrounded By And Outnumbered By The Dead. Here, Is A Very Playful Way Of Acknowledging That And Acknowledging That And That Always, Whenever We Play, Whenever We Live, We Are Living In Both Literal And Metaphorical Ways On The Memory And Bones Of The Dead.

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

Maybe She'd Been Scared Of Being Paralyzed By Fear Again.

I Call My Mom From The Car. I Tell Her That Neutral Milk Hotel Is Playing At The Hideout And She Says, "who? What? You're Hiding Out?" And Then I Hum A Few Bars Of One Of Their Songs And Mom Says, "oh, I Know That Song. It's On The Mix You Made Me," And I Say, "right," And She Says, "well You Have To Be Back By Eleven," And I Say, "mom This Is A Historical Event. History Doesn't Have A Curfew," And She Says, "back By Eleven," And I Say, "fine. Jesus," And Then She Has To Go Cut Cancer Out Of Someone.

I Thought Being An Adult Meant Knowing What You Believe, But That Has Not Been My Experience.

..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.

The Right Story Needs The Right Telling.

Maybe 'okay' Will Be Our 'always

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.

It Hurts Because It Mattered.

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.

Augustus Waters Was The Great Star-crossed Love Of My Life. Ours Was An Epic Love Story, And I Won’t Be Able To Get More Than A Sentence Into It Without Disappearing Into A Puddle Of Tears. Gus Knew. Gus Knows. I Will Not Tell You Our Love Story, Because—like All Real Love Stories—it Will Die With Us, As It Should.

Maybe All The Strings Inside Him Broke.

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.

But We Can't Know Better Until Knowing Better Is Useless.

The Town Was Paper, But The Memories Were Not.

I Pointed At The Little Kids Goading Each Other To Jump From Rib Cage To Shoulder And Gus Answered Just Loud Enough For Me To Hear Over The Din, 'last Time, I Imagined Myself As The Kid. This Time, The Skeleton.

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!

More Than Anything, I Felt The Unfairness Of It, The Inarguable Injustice Of Loving Someone Who Might Have Loved You Back But Can't Due To Deadness, And Then I Leaned Forward, My Forehead Against The Back Of Takumi's Headrest, And I Cried, Whimpering, And I Didn't Even Feel Sadness So Much As Pain.

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

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

I Choose The Labyrinth.

You Get All These Friends Just When You Don’t Need Friends Anymore.

But You Know What They Say About Gutshot: The Population Never Goes Up And Never Goes Down, Because Every Time A Woman Gets Pregnant, A Man Leaves Town.

I Think When You're 16, If You Have Good Parents, They Generally Just Fade In The Background. I Had Great Parents, And Because They Were Great, I Thought Very Little About Them In High School.

Do You Guys Remember That Time When We Were All Definitely Going To Die And Then Ben Grabbed The Steering Wheel And Dodged A Ginormous Freaking Cow And Spun The Car Like The Teacups At Disney World And We Didn't Die?

He Missed Her Like Crazycakes.

I Thought You Hung The Moon.

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

I Hadn’t Been In Proper School In Three Years. My Parents Were My Two Best Friends. My Third Best Friend Was An Author Who Did Not Know I Existed.

I Smiled. She Smiled. I Believed The Smile.

It's Bad For Your Brain Not To Unplug.

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

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.

This One's For Alaska Young!

The Not Knowing Would Not Keep Me From Caring.

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

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.

Getting You A Date To Prom Is So Hard That The Hypothetical Idea Itself Is Used To Cut Diamonds.

We’re As Likely To Hurt The Universe As We Are To Help It, And We’re Not Likely To Do Either.

Traveling, I Am Finding, Teaches You A Lot Of Things About Yourself. For Instance, I Never Thought Myself To Be The Kind Of Person Who Pees Into A Mostly Empty Bottle Of Bluefin Energy Drink While Driving Through South Carolina At Seventy-seven Miles Per Hour - But In Face I Am That Kind Of Person.

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

She's Just Playing A Trick On Us. This Is Just An Alaska Young Prank Extraordinaire. It's Alaska Being Alaska, Funny And Playful And Not Knowing When Or How To Put On The Brakes.

Language Buries, But Does Not Resurrect.

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

I Have An Augustus Waters Fetish.

One Of The Great Rules Of Economics According To John Green If You Are Rich, You Have To Be An Idiot Not To Stay Rich. And If You Are Poor, You Have To Be Really Smart To Get Rich.

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

I Think Maybe The Reason I Have Spent Most Of My Life Being Afraid Is That I Have Been Trying To Prepare Myself To Train My Body For Real Fear When It Comes. But I Am Not Prepared.

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.

The Only Thing Worse Than Having A Party That No One Attends Is Having A Party Attended Only By Two Vastly, Deeply Uninteresting People.

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-

I'm A Big Believer In Pairing Classics With Contemporary Literature, So Students Have The Opportunity To See That Literature Is Not A Cold, Dead Thing That Happened Once But Instead A Vibrant Mode Of Storytelling That's Been With Us A Long Time - And Will Be With Us, I Hope, For A Long Time To Come.

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

The True Ninja Doesn't Make A Splash At All.

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.

Keys Show Up When You Reconcile Yourself To The Bus.

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.

Whenever You Read A Cancer Booklet Or Website Or Whatever, They Always List Depression Among The Side Effects Of Cancer. But, In Fact, Depression Is Not A Side Effect Of Cancer. Depression Is A Side Effect Of Dying.

All At Once, I Couldn’t Figure Out Why I Was Methodically Tossing A Spherical Object Through A Toroidal Object. It Seemed Like The Stupidest Thing I Could Possibly Be Doing.

The Marks Humans Leave Are Too Often Scars. You Build A Hideous Minimall Or Start A Coup Or Try To Become A Rock Star And You'll Think "they'll Remember Me Now," But (a) They Don't Remember You, And (b) All You Leave Behind Are More Scars. Your Coup Becomes A Dictatorship. Your Minimall Becomes A Lesion.

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.

Where Do You Come Up With These Zingers, Clint? Do You Own Some Kind Of Joke Factory In Indonesia Where You've Got Eight-year-olds Working Ninety Hours A Week To Deliver You That Kind Of Top-quality Witticism? There Are Boy Bands With More Original Material.

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

I Was Thinking About The Universe Wanting To Be Noticed, And How I Had To Notice It As Best I Could. I Felt That I Owed A Debt To The Universe That Only My Attention Could Repay, And Also That I Owed A Debt To Everybody Who Didn’t Get To Be A Person Anymore And Everyone Who Hadn’t Gotten To Be A Person Yet.

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

If Only We Could See The Endless String Of Consequences That Result From Our Smallest Actions. But We Can't Know Better Until Knowing Better Is Useless.

What's The Point In Being Alive If You Don't At Least Try To Do Something Remarkable? How Very Odd, To Believe God Gave You Life, And Yet Not Think That Life Asks More Of You Than Watching Tv.

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

Scared Isn't A Good Excuse. Scared Is The Excuse Everyone Has Always Used.

C'mon Pudge. I'm Teasing. You Have To Be Tough. I Didn't Know How Bad It Was-- And I'm Sorry, And They'll Regret It-- But You Have To Be Tough.

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

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

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

Observation: It Would Be Awesome To Fly In A Superfast Airplane That Could Chase The Sunrise Around The World For A While.

This Was Not A Place You Go To Live. It Was A Place You Go To Die."- Paper Towns

It Was Nice - In The Dark And The Quiet... And Her Eyes Looking Back, Like There Was Something In Me Worth Seeing.

That Is, To Me At Least, One Of The Most Helpful And Useful Things Books Do For Us: They Are Generous Enough To Allow Us To Choose What Matters To Us.

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

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

I Mean, If Hardee's Is Urban, I'm Not Sure I Want To See Rural.

In The End, I Had To Call Myself A Faggot, Which Really Annoyed Me, Because 1. I Don't Think That Word Should Ever Be Used By Anyone, Let Alone Me, And 2. As It Happens, I Am Not Gay, And Furthermore, 3. Chuck Parson Made It Out Like Calling Yourself A Faggot Was The Ultimate Humiliation, Even Though There's Nothing At All Embarrassing About Being Gay.

Caroline Is No Longer Sufffering From Personhood.

It Must Be Some Book," She Said As She Knelt Down Next To The Bed..."did That Boy Give It To You?" She Asked Out Of Nowhere. "by 'it' Do You Mean Herpes?" "you Are Too Much," Mom Said, "the Book, Hazel. I Mean The Book.

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

Labyrinth Looking For Alaska

I Love Being In Cities With Lots Of Other People, Because I'm Reminded That There Are Billions Of People Like Me, And We Are Each Stuck Inside Of Our Minds, Feverishly Trying To Crawl Out To Make Connections With Other People.

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

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.

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

Imagining The Future Is A Kind Of Nostalgia.

Imagining The Future

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

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

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

Is That What Relationships Become? A Reduced Version Of The Hurt, Nothing Else Let In. It Was More Than That. I Know It Was More Than That.

Congratulations! You're A Woman. Now Die.

Congratulations

Cancer Diagnosis

Our Fearlessness Shall Be Our Secret Weapon.

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.

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've Read A Lot Of Bad Books. I Used To Review Books For A Living, And When You're A Reviewer You Read Tons Of Terrible Books.

Some People Have Lives; Some People Have Music.

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

This Squirrel Is Inadequately Afraid Of Humans! Squirrel, I Am A Threat To You! We Are Enemies! Please Get Off My Bench! Oh, God! Oh, God! Don't Touch Me—oh, God!

What The Hell Is Instant? Nothing Is Instant.

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