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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.

-John Green

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So Zeno Is Most

John Green

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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.

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I Think One Of The Most Important Differences Between Us Is That You Are Excellent At Living In A Way That Is Commensurate With Your Values, Whereas I Am Not. For Instance, I Didn’t Recycle Until I Watched An Inconvenient Truth And I’m Still Sort Of Iffy On It. And Also, I Didn’t Vote In 2000, Even Though I Could Have Voted In Florida *hits Self On Head Repeatedly* Ahh George Bush! It’s All My Fault! God! So Stupid! *sigh* Let’s Change The Subject. Also, We Have Vastly Different Happy Dances.

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

It's Hard As Hell To Hold On To Your Dignity When The Risen Sun Is Too Bright In Your Losing Eyes, And That's What I Was Thinking About As We Hunted For Bad Guys Through The Ruins Of A City That Didn't Exist.

This Is The Homosexuality Is An Abomination Club, Right?

One Of The Reasons That Metaphor And Symbolism Are Important In Books Is Because They Are Also Important To Life. Like, For Example Say You're In High School And You're A Boy And You Say To A Girl: "do You Like Anyone Right Now?" - That's Not The Question You're Asking. The Question You're Asking Is, "do You Like Me Right Now."

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.

He Is Both The Source Of My Happiness And The One I Want To Share It With. I Have To Believe That’s A Sign.

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.

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

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.

The Preciousness Of The Moment, Which Should Make It Easier To Talk, Makes It Harder.

Nothing Really Mattered That Much, Not The Good Things And Not The Bad Ones. We Were In The Business Of Mutual Amusement, And We Were Reasonably Prosperous.

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.

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.

Grateful To Be A Little Boat, Full Of Water, Still Floating.

I Choose The Labyrinth.

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.

I Liked Being A Person. I Wanted To Keep At It.

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

Books Belong To Their Readers.

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

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

Pudge, My Friend, We Are Indefuckingstructible.

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

For She Had Embodied The Great Perhaps--she Had Proved To Me That It Was Worth It To Leave Behind My Minor Life For Grander Maybes, And Now She Was Gone And With Her My Faith In Perhaps.

We're Not Going To Break Anything. Don't Think Of It As Breaking In To Seaworld. Think Of It As Visiting Seaworld In The Middle Of The Night For Free.

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.

Books Are The Ultimate Dumpees: Put Them Down And They’ll Wait For You Forever; Pay Attention To Them And They Always Love You Back.

I Hate The Idea That, When It Comes To Books And Learning, Hard Is Often Seen As The Opposite Of Fun. It's Strange To Me That We Should Be So Quick To Give Up On A Book Or A Math Problem When We Are So Willing To Grapple, For Centuries If Necessary, With A Single Level Of Angry Birds.

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

Hazel Grace,” He Said. “hi,” I Said. “how Are You?” “grand,” He Said. “i Have Been Wanting To Call You On A Nearly Minutely Basis, But I Have Been Waiting Until I Could Form A Coherent Thought In Re An Imperial Affliction.” (he Said “in Re.” He Really Did. That Boy.)

She Was Up And Down—from Fire And Brimstone To Smoke And Ashes.

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

Entropy Increases. Things Fall Apart.

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.

You Know What I Hate? The Outdoors. I Mean, Generally. I Don't Like Outside. I'm An Inside Person. I'm All About Refrigeration And Indoor Plumbing And Judge Judy.

Once You Think A Thought, It Is Extremely Difficult To Unthink It.

Night Falls Fast. Today Is The Past.

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

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.

And Okay, Fair Enough, But There Is This Unwritten Contract Between Author And Reader And I Think Not Ending Your Book Kind Of Violates That Contract.

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

You Don't Remember What Happened. What You Remember Becomes What Happened.

The Last Time I Was This Scared, I Peed Myself." "the Last Time I Was This Scared," Radar Says, "i Actually Had To Face A Dark Lord In Order To Make The World Safe For Wizards.

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.

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.

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.

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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 Think If You Keep The Box Closed Long Enough You Do Kill The Cat, Actually.

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.

It Is So Hard To Leave-until You Leave.

Oh, My God," Augustus Said. "i Can't Believe I Have A Crush On A Girl With Such Cliché Wishes." "i Was Thirteen," I Said Again, Although Of Course I Was Only Thinking "crush Crush Crush Crush Crush". I Was Flattered But Changed The Subject Immediately.

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

Some Tourists Think Amsterdam Is A City Of Sin, But In Truth It Is A City Of Freedom. And In Freedom, Most People Find Sin.

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

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

Truth Defies Simplicity.

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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 The Book.” He Broke Out Into That Goofy Smile. “a Nd You Say We Don’t Know Each Other.

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

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.

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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?

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

All Salvation Is Temporary," Augustus Shot Back. "i Bought Them A Minute. Maybe That's The Minute That Buys Them An Hour, Which Is The Hour That Buys Them A Year. No One's Gonna Buy Them Forever, Hazel Grace, But My Life Bought Them A Minute. And That's Not Nothing.

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Grief Doesn't Change You. It Reveals You.

Support Group Featured A Rotating Cast Of Characters In Various States Of Tumor-driven Unwellness. Why Did The Cast Rotate? A Side Effect Of Dying.

I Just Want The Pleasure Of Noticing These Things At A Safe Distance.

Funerals...are For The Living.

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 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.

Eternity Bids Thee To Forget.

Not Following Her Is The Hardest Thing I've Ever Done.

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

Light, The Visible Reminder Of Invisible Light.

Like All Sick Children,' He Answered Dispassionately, 'you Say You Don't Want Pity, But Your Very Existence Depends Upon It.

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.

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.

But In Aia, Anna Decides That Being A Person With Cancer Who Starts A Cancer Charity Is A Bit Narcissistic, So She Starts A Charity Called The Anna Foundation For People With Cancer Who Want To Cure Cholera.

She Had The Kind Of Fingers You Want To Interlace With Your Own.

Gratitude Is The Proper Response For The Absolute Astonishment Of Getting To Be Alive, And Aware, And An Essential Part Of This Crazy, Sprawling Story.

Peter Van Houten Was The Only Person I’d Ever Come Across Who Seemed To (a) Understand What It’s Like To Be Dying, And (b) Not Have Died.

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

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

You Couldn't Be More Wrong," I Said. "you Are Buying Into The Cross-stitched Sentiments Of Your Parents' Throw Pillows. 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." "you're A Hard Person To Comfort," Augustus Said. "easy Comfort Isn't Comforting," I Said.

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.)

I Don't Really Care How People Read. I Care If People Read.

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.

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.

Everything That Comes Together Falls Apart.

I Didn't Want To See Them Lower Him Into The Ground In The Spot He'd Picked Out With His Dad, And I Didn't Want To See His Parents Sink To Their Knees In The Dew-wet Grass And Moan In Pain.

Wow,” I Said. “are You Making This Up?” “hazel Grace, Could I, With My Meager Intellectual Capacities, Make Up A Letter From Peter Van Houten Featuring Phrases Like ‘our Triumphantly Digitized Contemporaneity’?” “you Could Not,” I Allowed. “can I, Can I Have The Email Address?” “of Course,” Augustus Said, Like It Was Not The Best Gift Ever.

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

So How’s It Going?” “okay. Glad To Be Home, I Guess. Gus Told Me You Were In The Icu?” “yeah,” I Said. “sucks,” He Said. “i’m A Lot Better Now,” I Said. “i’m Going To Amsterdam Tomorrow With Gus.” “i Know. I’m Pretty Well Up-to-date On Your Life, Because Gus Never. Talks. About. Anything. Else.

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.

There's Your Labyrinth Of Suffering. We Are All Going. Find Your Way Out Of That Maze.

But Monotony Doesn't Make For Painlessness.

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.

You Can Say A Lot Of Bad Things About Alabama, But You Can't Say That Alabamans As A People Are Duly Afraid Of Deep Fryers.

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

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

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.

Hank, When People Call People Nerds Mostly What They're Saying Is,'you Like Stuff'.

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

Different Authors Write Different Ways, Have Different Relationships With Their Audiences, And Those Are All Legitimate.

You See How Fake It All Is. It's Not Even Hard Enough To Be Made Out Of Plastic. It's A Paper Town.

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.

The Idea Is That For Ten Minutes, We Forget That We Have Feelings. And We Forget About Protecting Ourselves Or Other People And We Just Say The Truth. For Ten Minutes. And Then We Can Go Back To Being Lame.

This Was What I Liked Most About My Friends: Just Sitting Around & Telling Stories.

History Doesn't Have A Curfew.

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.

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

When It Works, Anticipation Is Far More Fulfilling Than Surprise, Because We Are Reminded That A Sunrise Is Precisely As Magnificent As It Is Inevitable.

I Want To Minimize The Deaths I Am Responsible For.

But You Want To See Shapes; You Want To See Stories, So You Pick Them Out Of The Sky.

Radar Threw His Books Into His Locker And Shut It. Then The Din Of Conversation Around Us Quieted Just A Bit As He Turned His Eyes Toward The Heavens And Shouted, "it Is Not My Fault That My Parents Own The World's Largest Collection Of Black Santas.

"why Are Breakfast Food Breakfast Foods?" I Asked Them. "like, Why Don't We Have Curry For Breakfast?" "hazel, Eat." "but Why?" I Asked. "i Mean Seriously: How Did Scrambled Eggs Get Stuck With Breakfast Exclusivity? You Can Put Bacon On A Sandwich Without Anyone Freaking Out. But The Moment Your Sandwich Has An Egg, Boom, It's A Breakfast Sandwich."

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

You Could Drive Past It Without Noticing And From What I Understand, You Ought To.

I Wondered Whether I Could Find A Great Perhaps Here At All Or Whether I Had Made A Grand Miscalculation.

Miscalculations

Finally, I Decided That The Proper Strategy Was To Stare Back. Boys Do Not Have A Monopoly On The Staring Business.

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.

Random Questions Are The Least Random Of All Questions.

Like, In General I Think People Have Very Complicated Reasons For Wanting Things, And We Often Have No Idea Whether We’re Actually Motivated By Altruism Or A Desire To Hook Up Or A Search For Answers Or What. I Always Get Annoyed When In Books Or Movies Characters Want Clear Things For Clear Reasons, Because My Experience Of Humanness Is That I Always Want Messy Things For Messy Reasons.

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

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

Keeping Promises

Caroline Is No Longer Sufffering From Personhood.

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.

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

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.

I'm In Love With You, And I'm Not In The Business Of Denying Myself The Simple Pleasure Of Saying True Things.

Happy Valentines Day

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

We Are Greater Than The Sum Of Our Parts.

The World Is Broken, And All Our Attempts To Fix It Will Inevitably Fail, And Some Day All Life Will Be Extinguished From The Planet And There Will Be No One To Remember That Any Of Us Ever Did Anything. But This Fact, Strangely, Does Not Delegitimize Hope, Because Every Now And Again We Find Evidence That Hope Is Helpful. This Evidence, In My Opinion, Should Be Celebrated-even As We Lament And Fight The Devastation.

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.

Right. I'd Forgotten About Her.' He Shook His Head. 'that Keeps Happening.

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

In The End, What Makes A Book Valuable Is Not The Paper It's Printed On, But The Thousands Of Hours Of Work By Dozens Of People Who Are Dedicated To Creating The Best Possible Reading Experience For You.

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

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

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

Everything's Uglier Close Up," She Said. "not You," I Answered.

You Will Not Kill My Girlfriend Today, International Terrorists Of Ambiguous Nationality!

I Think That It's A Universal Urge To Have Our Pain Not Be Felt Alone And To Have Our Joys Not Be Felt Alone.

Bro, It's Dark. You Can't Go To A Strange Building With A Mysterious Address In The Dark. Haven't You Ever Seen A Horror Movie?

I Kept Thinking There Were Two Kinds Of Adults: There Were...miserable Creatures Who Scoured The Earth In Search Of Something To Hurt. And Then There Were People Like My Parents, Who Walked Around Zombically, Doing Whatever They Had To Do To Keep Walking Around.

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

I Realize That They Giggle And I Actually Laugh, That They Show Their Cleavage And I Have None To Show, But Just So You Know, I Am Also A Girl. I'm One Of The Three Wise Men. And It's Gay To Think That James Bond Is Hot.

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

So We Gave Up. I'd Finally Had Enough Of Chasing After A Ghost Who Did Not Want To Be Seen. We'd Failed, Maybe, But Some Mysteries Aren't Meant To Be Solved.

Every Year, Many, Many Stupid People Graduate From College. And If They Can Do It, So Can You.

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.

Don't Swear In The Literal Heart Of Jesus.

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

I Think People Who Are Religious Are More Likely To Want One Around, But It's A Very Secular Position.

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.

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.

Our Children Are Weird. Nicely Phrased.

I'm Not Asexual. I'm Arelationshipal.

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

He Called Out To His Fellow Monks,'come Quickly I Am Tasting Stars.

My Parents Always Liked It When I Cursed In Front Of Them. I Could See The Pleasure Of It In Their Faces. It Signified That I Trusted Them, That I Was Myself In Front Of Them.

I'm In Love With You," He Said Quietly. "augustus," I Said. "i Am," He Said. He Was Staring At Me, And I Could See The Corners Of His Eyes Crinkling. "i'm In Love With You, And I'm Not In The Business Of Denying Myself The Simple Pleasure Of Saying True Things. I'm In Love With You, And I Know That Love Is Just A Shout Into The Void, And That Oblivion Is Inevitable, And That We're All Doomed And That There Will Come A Day When All Our Labor Has Been Returned To Dust, And I Know The Sun Will Swallow The Only Earth We'll Ever Have, And I Am In Love With You.

All Along — Not Only Since She Left, But For A Decade Before — I Had Been Imagining Her Without Listening, Without Knowing That She Made As A Poor A Window As I Did. And So I Could Not Imagine Her As A Person Who Could Feel Fear, Who Could Feel Isolated In A Roomful Of People, Who Could Be Shy About Her Record Collection Because It Was Too Personal To Share. Someone Who Might Have Read Travel Books To Escape Having To Live In The Town That So Many People Escape To. Someone Who — Because No One Thought She Was A Person — Had No One To Really Talk To.

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

I Wish I Knew How To Quit You, Tumblr.

And Then We Were Kissing. My Hand Let Go Of The Oxygen Cart And I Reached Up For His Neck, And He Pulled Me Up By My Waist Onto My Tiptoes. As His Parted Lips Met Mine, I Started To Feel Breathless In A New And Fascinating Way. The Space Around Us Evaporated, And For A Weird Moment I Really Liked My Body, This Cancer-ruined Thing I'd Spent Years Dragging Around Suddenly Seemed Worth The Struggle, Worth The Chest Tubes And Picc Lines And The Ceaseless Bodily Betrayal Of The Tumors.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

She Left Me Enough To Rediscover The Great Perhaps.

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 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.

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.

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.

This Was The First Time In My Life That So Many Things Would Never Happen Again.

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

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.

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

If We'd Put Them In A Vase In The Living Room, They Would Have Been Everyone's Flowers. I Wanted Them To Be My Flowers.

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?

There Are Infinite Numbers Between 0 And 1.

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.

You Die In The Middle Of Your Life.

Fault In Our Stars

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.

He Really Was Beautiful. I Know Boys Aren’t Supposed To Be, But He Was.

And Then The Line Was Quite But Not Dead. I Almost Felt Like He Was There In My Room With Me, But In A Way It Was Better, Like I Was Not In My Room And He Was Not In His, But Instead We Were Together In Some Invisible And Tenuous Third Space That Could Only Be Visited On The Phone.

Oh, Wikipedia, With Your Tension Between Those Who Would Share Knowledge And Those Who Would Destroy It.

Sharing Knowledge

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.

I Feel Like, Like, How You Matter Is Defined By The Things That Matter To You. You Matter As Much As The Things That Matter To You.

Things That Matter

If You Don’t Know About Tumblr Then You Are Not Supposed To Know About Tumblr. It’s Like Fight Club.

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

I Believe In That Line From An Imperial Affliction. 'the Risen Sun Too Bright In Her Losing Eyes.' That's God, I Think, The Rising Sun, And The Light Is Too Bright And Her Eyes Are Losing But They Aren't Lost.

But Ultimately I Do Not Believe That She Was Only Matter. The Rest Of Her Must Be Recycled, Too. I Believe Now That We Are Greater Than The Sum Of Our Parts. If You Take Alaska's Genetic Code And You Add Her Life Experiences And The Relationships She Had With People, And Then You Take The Size And Shape Of Her Body, You Do Not Get Her. There Is Something Else Entirely. 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

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

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