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10-5 Space 16-5-14-19-5 Space

John Green

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10-5 Space 16-5-14-19-5 Space 17-21-5 Space 10-5 Space 20-1-9-13-5.

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Neither Novels Or Their Readers Benefit From Any Attempts To Divine Whether Any Facts Hide Inside A Story. Such Efforts Attack The Very Idea That Made-up Stories Can Matter, Which Is Sort Of The Foundational Assumption Of Our Species.

Made Up Stories

The Thing About Chameleoning Your Way Through Life Is That It Gets To Where Nothing Is Real.

And Now Life Has Become The Future. Every Moment Of Your Life Is Lived For The Future—you Go To High School So You Can Go To College So You Can Get A Good Job So You Can Get A Nice House So You Can Afford To Send Your Kids To College So They Can Get A Good Job So They Can Get A Nice House So They Can Afford To Send Their Kids To College.

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.

Q, You're Going To Go To Duke. You're Going To Be A Very Successful Lawyer-or-something And Get Married And Have Babies And Live Your Whole Little Life, And Then You're Going To Die, And In The Last Moments, When You're Chocking On Your Own Bile In The Nursing Home, You'll Say To Yourself:'well, I Wasted My Whole Goddamned Life, But At Least I Broke Into Seaworld With Margo Roth Spiegelman My Senior Year Of High School. At Least I Carpe'd That One Diem.

This Is The Homosexuality Is An Abomination Club, Right?

...whatever You're Worried About, You're Bigger Than The Worries.

I Can't Be You. You Can't Be Me. You Can Imagine Another Well—but Never Quite Perfectly, You Know?

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

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

Saying 'i Notice You're A Nerd' Is Like Saying, 'hey, I Notice That You'd Rather Be Intelligent Than Be Stupid, That You'd Rather Be Thoughtful Than Be Vapid, That You Believe That There Are Things That Matter More Than The Arrest Record Of Lindsay Lohan. Why Is That?' In Fact, It Seems To Me That Most Contemporary Insults Are Pretty Lame. Even 'lame' Is Kind Of Lame. Saying 'you're Lame' Is Like Saying 'you Walk With A Limp.' Yeah, Whatever, So Does 50 Cent, And He's Done All Right For Himself.

How Will I Ever Get Out Of This Labyrinth!" To A Margin Note Written In Her Loop-heavy Cursive: Straight & Fast.

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

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.

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.

Life Works Best When We Think Of People As People.

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

I Have Guts, Just Not When It Counts.

There's A Place In The Brain For Knowing What Cannot Be Remembered.

At Some Point, You Gotta Stop Looking Up At The Sky, Or One Of These Days You'll Look Back Down And See That You Floated Away, Too.

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

Love Is Just A Shout In The Void.

Dutch Is Not So Much A Language As An Ailment Of The Throat.

Our Role As Humans Is To Recognize The Complexity Of Others.

There Is No Them. There Are Only Facets Of Us.

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.

I Don't Really Want To Be The Costar Of Anyone's Life.

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?

According To Maslow, I Was Stuck On The Second Level Of The Pyramid, Unable To Feel Secure In My Health And Therefore Unable To Reach For Love And Respect And Art And Whatever Else, Which Is, Utter Horseshit: The Urge To Make Art Or Contemplate Philosophy Does Not Go Away When You Are Sick. Those Urges Just Become Transfigured By Illness. Maslow's Pyramid Seemed To Imply I Was Less Human Than Other People, And Most People Seemed To Agree With Him.

I Believe The Universe Wants To Be Noticed. I Think The Universe Is Inprobably Biased Toward The Consciousness, That It Rewards Intelligence In Part Because The Universe Enjoys Its Elegance Being Observed. And Who Am I, Living In The Middle Of History, To Tell The Universe That It-or My Observation Of It-is Temporary?

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

The Pleasure Of Remembering Had Been Taken From Me, Because There Was No Longer Anyone To Remember With. It Felt Like Losing Your Co-rememberer Meant Losing The Memory Itself, As If The Things We'd Done Were Less Real And Important Than They Had Been Hours Before.

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

He Knew He Couldn't Tell Stories, That He Always Included Extraneous Details & Tangents That Interested Only Him.

As Lives Go, I'll Take The Quietly Desperate Over The Radically Bipolar.

But Once That String Gets Cut, Kid, You Can't Uncut It. Do You Get What I'm Saying?

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

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?

You Can’t Divorce Margo The Person From Margo The Body. You Can’t See One Without Seeing The Other. You Looked At Margo’s Eyes And You Saw Both Their Blueness And Their Margo-ness. In The End, You Could Not Say That Margo Roth Spiegelman Was Fat, Or That She Was Skinny, Any More Than You Can Say That The Eiffel Tower Is Or Is Not Lonely. Margo’s Beauty Was A Kind Of Sealed Vessel Of Perfection – Uncracked And Uncrackable.

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

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

Things That Matter

Tiny Cooper Is Splayed Out Across The Thin Carpet, Using His Backpack As A Pillow. He’s Wearing Skinny Jeans, Which Look Very Much Like Denim Sausage Casings.

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?

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

Books So Special And Rare And Yours That Advertising Your Affection Feels Like A Betrayal.

The Romans Knew It: Quod Me Alit Me Extinguit, They Said: That Which Nourishes Me, Extinguishes Me.

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.

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.

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.

It Hurts Because It Mattered.

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.

I Wanted More Time So We Could Fall In Love.

Falling In Love

Hi, I’m At The Speedway At Eighty-sixth And Ditch, And I Need An Ambulance. The Great Love Of My Life Has A Malfunctioning G-tube.

Love Of My Life

You Matter As Much As The Things That Matter To You. And I Got So Backwards Trying To Matter To Him. All This Time, There Were Real Things To Care About: Real, Good People Who Care About Me, And This Place. It's So Easy To Get Stuck. You Just Get Caught In Being Something, Being Special Or Cool Or Whatever, To The Point Where You Don't Even Know Why You Need It; You Just Think You Do.

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.

We Are Greater Than The Sum Of Our Parts.

In Our Hyper-secular World, Worship Is Still Inevitable. But It Is Vital To Remember That Our Gods Don't Choose Us, We Choose Them.

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.

That Tastes Like Hope Feels.

They Were Angry, I Thought. Horrified. These Teenagers, With Their Hormones, Making Out Beneath A Video Broadcasting The Shattered Voice Of A Former Father.

I Didn't Know Whether To Trust Alaska, And I'd Certainly Had Enough Of Her Unpredictability - Cold One Day, Sweet The Next; Irresistibly Flirty One Moment, Resistibly Obnoxious The Next. I Preferred The Colonel: At Least When He Was Cranky, He Had A Reason.

How Strange And How Lovely It Is To Be Anything At All.

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

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.

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

Looking For Alaska Book

I Want More Numbers Than I’m Likely To Get, And God, I Want More Numbers For Augustus Waters Than He Got. But, Gus, My Love, I Cannot Tell You How Thankful I Am For Our Little Infinity. I Wouldn’t Trade It For The World. You Gave Me A Forever Within The Numbered Days, And I’m Grateful.

Light, The Visible Reminder Of Invisible Light.

The Future Will Erase Everything--there's No Level Of Fame Or Genius That Allows You To Transcend Oblivion. The Infinite Future Makes That Kind Of Mattering Impossible.

I Hope You Didn't Bring The Asian Kid Along Thinking He's A Computer Genius. Because I'm Not," Takumi Said.

Depression Is Not A Side Effect Of Cancer. Depression Is A Side Effect Of Dying.

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.

Osteosarcoma Sometimes Takes A Limb To Check You Out. The, If It Like You, It Takes The Rest.

That's Why People Grow Weary Of Listening To Dumpees Obsess Over Their Troubles: Getting Dumped Is Predictable, Repetitive, And Boring. They Want To Stay Friends; They Feel Smothered; It's Always Them And It's Never You; And Afterward, You're Devastated And Their Relieved; It's Over For Them And Just Starting For You.

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

Sorry," I Said To The Duke. "eh, It's Not Your Fault. It's Carla's Fault. You Were Turning The Wheel. Carla Just Wasn't Listening. I Knew I Shouldn't Have Loved Her. She's Like All The Others, Tobin; As Soon As I Confess My Love, She Abandons Me." I Laughed. "i Never Abandoned You," I Said Patting On Her Back. "yeah, Well, (a.) I Never Confessed My Love To You, And (b.) I'm Not Even Female To You.

Tell Me My Copy Is Missing The Last Twenty Pages Or Something. Hazel Grace, Tell Me I Have Not Reached The End Of This Book. Oh My God Do They Get Married Or Not Oh My God What Is This?!

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.

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?

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

Without Pain, How Could We Know Joy?' This Is An Old Argument In The Field Of Thinking About Suffering And Its Stupidity And Lack Of Sophistication Could Be Plumbed For Centuries But Suffice It To Say That The Existence Of Broccoli Does Not, In Any Way, Affect The Taste Of Chocolate.

You Shall Love Your Neighbour With Your Crooked Heart, It Says So Much About Love And Brokenness -- It's Perfect.

Augustus: “you Probably Need Some Rest.” Me: “i’m Okay.” Augustus: “okay.” (pause.) “what Are You Thinking About?” Me: “you.” Augustus: “what About Me?” Me: “‘i Do Not Know Which To Prefer, / The Beauty Of Inflections / Or The Beauty Of Innuendos, / The Blackbird Whistling / Or Just After.’” Augustus: “god, You Are Sexy.” Me: “we Could Go To Your Room.” Augustus: “i’ve Heard Worse Ideas.

I Spy With My Little Eye A Great Story.

Congratulations! You're A Woman. Now Die.

Congratulations

Cancer Diagnosis

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

I Laughed And Pointed Out That "hash Browns Mean Nothing Without You" Was A Pretty Good Name For A Band. "or A Song," The Duke Said, And Then She Started Singing All Glam Rock, A Glove Up To Her Face Holding An Imaginary Mic As She Rocked Out An A Cappella Power Ballad. "oh, I Deep Fried For You / But Now I Weep 'n' Cry For You / Oh, Babe, This Meal Was Made For Two / And These Hash Browns Mean Nothing, Oh These Hash Browns Mean Nothing, Yeah These Hash Browns Mean Nothin' Without You.

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

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.

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

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

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.

Headline?" He Asked. "'swing Set Needs Home,'" I Said. "'desperately Lonely Swing Set Needs Loving Home,'" He Said. "'lonely, Vaguely Pedophilic Swing Set Seeks The Butts Of Children,'" I Said.

I Do Love You And What Else Matters But That

Love Is Keeping The Promise Anyway.

Keeping Promises

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

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.

There Are Times When You Just Have To Let It All Out. All The Anger, All The Pain.

The Side Effects Of Dying In Your Pants Isn't Really Funny… Alright, It's A Little Funny.

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 Have Never Really Thought Of Him As A Person, Either.... A Guy Whose Strings Were Broken, Who Didn’t Feel The Root Of His Leaves Of Grass Connected To The Field, A Guy Who Was Cracked. Like Me.

Destiny Is Not Something That Happens All At Once-it's Something That Happens Only In Retrospect.

You Can Say A Lot Of Bad Things About Tiny Cooper. I Know, Because I Have Said Them. But For A Guy Who Knows Absolutely Nothing About How To Conduct His Own Relationships, Tiny Cooper Is Kind Of Brilliant When It Comes To Dealing With Other People's Heartbreak. Tiny Is Like Some Gigantic Sponge Soaking Up The Pain Of Lost Love Everywhere He Goes.

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

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.

He Let His Mind Wander. It Went To A Predictable Place, And He Missed Her

Standing In Line Is A Form Of Oppression

Standing In Line

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.

Francois Rabelais. He Was A Poet. And His Last Words Were "i Go To Seek A Great Perhaps." That's Why I'm Going. So I Don't Have To Wait Until I Die To Start Seeking A Great Perhaps.

Because No One Thought She Was A Person, She Had No One To Really Talk To.

If You Act Out Of A Paranoid Fear Of Something Happening, You Will Always Make That Thing Happen.

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.

Thank You For Wearing That Dress Which Is Like Whoa.

You Had Been A Paper Boy To Me All These Years - Two Dimensions As A Character On The Page And Two Different, But Still Flat, Dimensions As A Person. But That Night You Turned Out To Be Real.

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.

I Mean, It’s Stupid To Miss Someone You Didn’t Even Get Along With. But I Don’t Know, It Was Nice, You Know, Having Someone You Could Always Fight With.

Missing Someone

I Hope We Get Pulled Over, He Says. I'd Like To See How The Cop Responds To A Black Man Wearing A Confederate T-shirt Over A Black Dress.

People Always Get Used To Beauty Though.

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.

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.

Lonley, Vaguely Pedophilic Swing Set Seeks The Butts Of Children.

Why Are Breakfast Foods Breakfast Foods?

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

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.

You Listen To People So That You Can Imagine Them, And You Hear All The Terrible And Wonderful Things People Do To Themselves And To One Another, But In The End The Listening Exposes You Even More Than It Exposes The People You're Trying To Listen To.

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.

Just A Word Of Advice. Whenever You're Furious With Your Parents Or You Think They're Terrible, Just Remember, You Vomited On Them And They Kept You.

The Snow May Be Falling In The Winter Of My Discontent, But At Least I've Got Sarcastic Company.

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.

Ashes To Ashes. Garage Sale To Garage Sale,” I Said.

The Tales Of Our Exploits Will Survive As Long As The Human Voice Itself,' He Said. 'and Even After That, When The Robots Recall The Human Absurdities Of Sacrifice And Compassion, They Will Remember Us.

Ben Starling, You Better Not Have Bought Your Token Black Friend A Racist Shirt

If Drunk Were Cookies, I'd Be Famous Amos

There's Some People In This World Who You Can Just Love And Love And Love No Matter What.

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.

We All Matter - Maybe Less Then A Lot But Always More Than None.

Does My Eye Look Okay To You?

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?

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." ..." ..." ...".

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

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

I've Gotten Really Hot Since You Went Blind.

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

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

We Are Now As I Wished We Could Be Then.

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.

Easy Comfort Isn't Comforting

If He Is Anything Other Than A Total Gentleman, I’m Going To Gouge His Eyes Out.” “so You’re Into It.” “withholding Judgment! When Can I See You?” “certainly Not Until You Finish An Imperial Affliction.” I Enjoyed Being Coy. “then I’d Better Hang Up And Start Reading.” “you’d Better,” I Said, And The Line Clicked Dead Without Another Word. Flirting Was New To Me, But I Liked It.

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

We Fell. We Got Up. We Ran.

You Used," He Said, And Then Took A Sharp Breath, "to Call Me Augustus.

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

Keeping Promises

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

Every Paper Girl Needs At Least One String.

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

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.

But There Are A Thousand Ways To Look At It: Maybe The Strings Break, Or Maybe Our Ship S Sink, Or Maybe We're Grass--our Roots So Interdependent That No One Is Dead As Long As Someone Is Still Alive. We Don't Suffer From A Shortage Of Metaphors, Is What I Mean. But You Have To Be Careful Which Metaphor You Choose, Because It Matters.

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

Uh-uh, Dude. I Tried It Your Way With The Dating And The Girls And The Kissing And The Drama, And Man, I Didn't Like It. Plus, My Best Friend Is A Walking Cautionary Tale Of What Happens To You When Romantic Relationships Don't Involve Marriage. Like You Always Say, Kafir, Everything Ends In Breakup, Divorce, Or Death. I Want To Narrow My Misery Options To Divorce Or Death - That's All.

Is It Still Cool To Go To The Mall?' She Asked. 'i Take Quite A Lot Of Pride In Not Knowing What's Cool,' I Answered.

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.

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

Colin Singleton

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

I Don't See Any Point In Nihilism... Just As I Suppose The Nihilist Sees No Point In Everything Else.

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

Barnacles On The Container Ship Of Consciousness.

Maybe We're Grass—our Roots So Interdependent That No One Is Dead As Long As Someone Is Still Alive.

The Not Knowing Would Not Keep Me From Caring.

Gus Knew. Gus Knows. I Will Not Tell You Our Love Story, Because—like All Real Love Stories—it Will Die With Us, As It Should. I'd Hoped That He'd Be Eulogizing Me.

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

I Don't Decide Where I Live. My Wife Decides. She's A Curator Of Contemporary Art, And She Works At An Art Museum, So We Go Wherever She Has A Job. All Basements Look The Same, So I Can Write From Whatever Basement I Happen To Be Living In.

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

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.

She Had This Dark Cancer Water Dripping Out Of Her Chest. Eyes Closed. Intubated. But Her Hand Was Still Her Hand, Still Warm And The Nails Painted This Almost Black Dark Blue And I Just Held Her Hand And Tried To Imagine The World Without Us And For About One Second I Was A Good Enough Person To Hope She Died So She Would Never Know That I Was Going, Too. But Then I Wanted More Time So We Could Fall In Love. I Got My Wish, I Suppose. I Left My Scar.

Falling In Love

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

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.

All Representations Of A Thing Are Inherently Abstract.

There Is Always The Risk: Something Is Good And Good And Good And Good, And Then All At Once It Gets Awkward. All At Once, She Sees You Looking At Her, And Then She Doesn't Want To Joke Around With You Anymore, Because She Doesn't Want To Seem Flirty, Because She Doesn't Want You To Think She Likes You. It's Such A Disaster, Whenever, In The Course Of Human Relationships, Someone Begins To Chisel Away At The Wall Of Separation Between Friendship And Kissing.

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.

You Can't Dingleberry That! That's A Flagrant Misuse Of The Dingleberry!

I Wanted So Badly To Lie Down Next To Her On The Couch, To Wrap My Arms Around Her And Sleep... Just Sleep Together, In The Most Innocent Sense Of The Phrase. But I Lacked The Courage And She Had A Boyfriend And I Was Gawky And She Was Gorgeous And I Was Boring And She Was Endlessly Fascinating. So I Walked Back To My Room And Collapsed On The Bottom Bunk, Thinking That If People Were Rain, I Was Drizzle And She Was A Hurricane.

Imagining The Future Is A Kind Of Nostalgia.

Imagining The Future

You Either Have A Great Social Life And Shitty Taste In Music, Or A Fantastic Taste In Music With Barely Any Social Life.

The Ideas Of Directing Attention Outward, Trying To Imagine Other People Complexly, Trying Not To See Myself As The Center Of The Universe - These Concepts Have Become Important To Me, And I Hope They're At Work In My Life On A Minute-by-minute Basis.

Because You're My Friend, Wingnut.

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.

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

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.

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

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

Like Many People, I Feel Like Celebrating. Remember This Feeling. It Is Human, And Can Help Us Understand When Others Express Bloodlust.

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

The Degree To Which I Am Blessed Staggers Me... The Degree To Which I Take That For Granted Shames Me. -streetwalking With Jesus

I Kept Waiting For That Loneliness And Nervousness To Make Me Want To Go Back. But It Never Did.

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

Imagining The Future

That's Absolutely True, About The Eight Glasses A Day. There's No Reason Whatsoever To Drink Eight Glasses Of Water A Day Unless You, For Whatever Reason, Particularly Like The Taste Of Water. Most Experts Agree That Unless There's Something Horribly Wrong With You, You Should Just Drink Water Whenever You're - Get This - Thirsty.

You Can Trust That Caring, As A Rule, Ends Poorly,” Which Is True. Caring Doesn’t Sometimes Lead To Misery. It Always Does.

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 Dislike The Phrase ‘internet Friends,’ Because It Implies That People You Know Online Aren’t Really Your Friends, That Somehow The Friendship Is Less Real Or Meaningful To You Because It Happens Through Skype Or Text Messages. The Measure Of A Friendship Is Not Its Physicality But Its Significance.

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.

Suffering Is Universal. It’s The One Thing Buddhists, Christians, And Muslims Are All Worried About.

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