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We Got Off At The Next Exit, Quietly, And, Switching Drivers, We Walked In Front Of The Car. We Met And I Held Him, My Hands Balled Into Tight Fists Around His Shoulders, And He Wrapped His Short Arms Around Me And Squeezed Tight, So That I Felt The Heaves Of His Chest As We Realized Over And Over Again That We Were Still Alive. I Realized It In Waves And We Held On To Each Other Crying And I Thought, 'god We Must Look So Lame,' But It Doesn't Matter When You Have Just Now Realized, All The Time Later, That You Are Still Alive.

-John Green

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We Got Off At

John Green

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We Got Off At The Next Exit, Quietly, And, Switching Drivers, We Walked In Front Of The Car. We Met And I Held Him, My Hands Balled Into Tight Fists Around His Shoulders, And He Wrapped His Short Arms Around Me And Squeezed Tight, So That I Felt The Heaves Of His Chest As We Realized Over And Over Again That We Were Still Alive. I Realized It In Waves And We Held On To Each Other Crying And I Thought, 'god We Must Look So Lame,' But It Doesn't Matter When You Have Just Now Realized, All The Time Later, That You Are Still Alive.

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"nothing Ever Happens Like You Imagine It Will," She Says. The Sky Is Like A Monochromatic Contemporary Painting, Drawing Me In With Its Illusion Of Depth, Pulling Me Up. "yeah, That's True," I Say. But Then After I Think About It For A Second, I Add, "but Then Again, If You Don't Imagine, Nothing Ever Happens At All."

"you Are Fairly Smart," I Said After A While. "you Are Fairly Good At Compliments," He Answered.

This Is What Happens: Somebody—girl Usually—got A Free Spirit, Doesn't Get On Too Good With Her Parents. These Kids, They're Like Tied-down Helium Balloons. They Strain Against The String And Strain Against It, And Then Something Happens, And That String Gets Cut, And They Just Float Away. And Maybe You Never See The Balloon Again . . . Or Maybe Three Or Four Years From Now, Or Three Or Four Days From Now, The Prevailing Winds Take The Balloon Back Home . . . But Listen, Kid, That String Gets Cut All The Time.

I Was A Bit Of A Victorian Lady, Fainting-wise.

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.

I'll Fight It. I'll Fight It For You. Don't You Worry About Me, Hazel Grace. I'm Okay. I'll Find A Way To Hang Around And Annoy You For A Long Time.

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.

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

But I Had To Kill You, Because The Only Other Possible Ending Was Us Doing It, Which I Wasn't Really Emotionally Ready To Write About At Ten.' 'fair Enough,' I Say. 'but In The Revision, I Want To Get Some Action.

Incidentally, Did You Know That The Whole Eight Glasses A Day Thing Is Complete Bullshit And Has No Scientific Basis? So Many Things Are Like That. Everyone Just Assumes They're True, Because People Are Basically Lazy And Incurious, Which Incidentally Is One Of Those Words That Sounds Like It Wouldn't Be A Word But Is.

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

Do You Ever Wonder Whether People Would Like You More Or Less If They Could See Inside You?

People Talk About The Courage Of Cancer Patients, And I Do Not Deny That Courage. I Had Been Poked And Stabbed And Poisoned For Years, And Still I Trod On. But Make No Mistake: In That Moment, I Would Have Been Very, Very Happy To Die.

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

The World," He Said, "is Not A Wish-granting Factory," And Then He Broke Down, Just For One Moment, His Sob Roaring Impotent Like A Clap Of Thunder Unaccompanied By Lightning, The Terrible Ferocity That Amateurs In The Field Of Suffering Might Mistake For Weakness.

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

That Was Part Of Her, And You Used To Know It. It's Like Now You Only Care About The Alaska You Made Up.

I Think Maybe I Know Why,' She Finally Said. 'why?' 'maybe All The Strings Inside Him Broke,' She Said.

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.

Light, The Visible Reminder Of Invisible Light.

She Has Great Breasts," The Colonel Said Without Looking Up From The Whale. "do Not Objectify Women's Bodies!" Alaska Shouted. Now He Looked Up. "sorry. Perky Breasts." "that's Not Any Better!

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.

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

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

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

And I Will Forget Her, Yes. That Which Came Together Will Fall Apart Slowly, But She Will Forgive My Forgetting, Just As I Forgive Her For Forgetting Me And The Colonel And Nothing But Herself And Her Mom In Those Last Moments As She Spent As A Person.

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.

I Was So Frustrated With Him. "i Just Want To Be Enough For You, But I Never Can Be. This Can Never Be Enough For You. But This Is All You Get. You Get Me, And Your Family, And This World. This Is Your Life. I'm Sorry If It Sucks. But You're Not Going To Be The First Man On Mars, And You're Not Going To Be An Nba Star, And You're Not Going To Hunt Nazis.

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

Physical Intimacy Isn’t And Can Never Be An Effective Substitute For Emotional Intimacy.

Breaking Down That Wall Is The Kind Of Story That Might Have A Happy Middle - Oh, Look, We Broke Down This Wall, I'm Going To Look At You Like A Girl And You're Going To Look At Me Like A Boy, And We're Going To Play A Fun Game Called Can I Put My Hand There What About There What About There.

The Right Story Needs The Right Telling.

High School Made Me Realize That The People Who Say They Will Never Change, Are Always The Ones Who Change The Most.

Margo Says, "i Know What She's Talking About. The Something Deeper And More Secret. It's Like Cracks Inside Of You. Like There Are These Fault Lines Where Things Don't Meet Up Right.

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

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.

Augustus Waters," I Said, Looking Up At Him, Thinking That You Cannot Kiss Anyone In The Anne Frank House, And Then Thinking That Anne Frank, After All, Kissed Someone In The Anne Frank House, And That She Would Probably Like Nothing More Than For Her Home To Have Become A Place Where The Young And Irreparably Broken Sink Into Love.

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.

It Was Kind Of A Beautiful Day, Finally Real Summer In Indianapolis, Warm And Humid - The Kind Of Weather That Reminds You After A Long Winter That While The World Wasn't Built For Humans, We Were Built For The World.

She Walks Lightly, Old Man. She Walks Lightly Upon The Earth.

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

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

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.

I Have To Tell You Man, That My Stalker Meter Is Kind Of Registering In The Red Zone Right Now.

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

So I Was Ugly. I Was Never Fat, Really, And I Never Wore Headgear Or Had Zits Or Anything. But I Was Ugly. I Don't Even Know How Ugly And Pretty Get Decided - Maybe There's Like A Secret Cabal Of Boys Who Meet In The Locker Room And Decide Who's Ugly And Who's Hot, Because As Far As I Can Remember, There Was No Such Thing As A Hot Fourth-grader. - Lindsey Lee Wells

While I Did Not Fancy Myself A Particularly Good Person, I Never Thought My First Real Sexual Action Would Be Prostitutional.

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

Radar Revs The Engine As To Say Hustle, And We Are Running Through The Parking Lot, Ben's Robe Flowing In The Wind So That He Looks Vaguely Like A Dark Wizard, Except That His Pale Skinny Legs Are Visible, And His Arms Hug Plastic Bags. I Can See The Back Of Lacey's Legs Beneath Her Dress, Her Calves Tight In Midstride. I Don't Know How I Look, But I Know How I Feel: Young. Goofy. Infinite.

She Didn’t Understand Why It Was Happening,” He Said. “i Had To Tell Her She Would Die. Her Social Worker Said I Had To Tell Her. I Had To Tell Her She Would Die, So I Told Her She Was Going To Heaven. She Asked If I Would Be There, And I Said That I Would Not, Not Yet. But Eventually, She Said, And I Promised That Yes, Of Course, Very Soon. And I Told Her That In The Meantime We Had Great Family Up There That Would Take Care Of Her. And She Asked Me When I Would Be There, And I Told Her Soon. Twenty-two Years Ago.

Someday No One Will Remember That She Ever Existed, I Wrote In My Notebook, And Then, Or That I Did. Because Memories Fall Apart, Too. And Then You're Left With Nothing, Left Not Even With A Ghost But With Its Shadow. In The Beginning, She Had Haunted Me, Haunted My Dreams, But Even Now, Just Weeks Later, She Was Slipping Away, Falling Apart In My Memory And Everyone Else's, Dying Again.

They Love Their Hair Because They're Not Smart Enough To Love Something More Interesting.

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.

The Only Person I Really Wanted To Talk To About Augustus Water's Death With Was Augustus Waters.

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.

The Consequences Of Being Un-cool Feel So Big That A Lot Of Times You End Of Not Finding Ways To Have Open And Honest Conversations.

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

And It Was Just The Three Of Us - Three Bodies And Two People - The Three Who Knew What Had Happened And Too Many Layers Between All Of Us Too Much Keeping Us From One Another.

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 Tore Open The Closet Door And Began Feverishly Sorting Through The Shirts Piled On The Floor In The Vain Hope That Inside That Pile There Might Be Some Wondrously Perfect Shirt Down There, A Nice And Tough But I'm Also A Surprisingly Good Listener With A True And Abiding Passion For Cheers And Those Who Lead Them.

Long Week. Long Month. Long Life.

Life Has Become The Future.

I Felt Tired For The First Time, And I Thought Of Us Lying Down On Some Grassy Patch Of Seaworld Together, Me On My Back And She On Her Side With Her Arm Draped Against Me, Her Head On My Shoulder, Facing Me. Not Doing Anything--just Lying There Together Beneath The Sky, The Night Here So Well Lit That It Drowns Out The Stars. And Maybe I Could Feel Her Breathe Against My Neck, And Maybe We Could Just Stay There Until Morning And Then The People Would Walk Past Us As They Came Into The Park, And They Would See Us And Think That We Were Tourists, Too, And We Could Just Disappear Into Them.

Pg. 231-232: They'd Given Me A Minivan. They Could Have Picked Any Car And They Picked A Minivan. A Minivan. O God Of The Vehicular Justice, Why Dost Thou Mock Me? Minivan, You Albatross Around My Neck! You Mark Of Cain! You Wretched Beast High Ceilings And Few Horsepower!

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

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.

There's Not Even Real *popularity* At My School." "that," Coli Said Emphatically, "is A Sentence That Has Only Ever Been Spoken By Popular People.

Videogame Players Essentially Choose Whether To Win The Game Or To Die Heroically. There's A Certain Glory In Both.

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.

Books—they Weren't Ladders Out Of The Abyss, But They Were Companions.

..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.

For A Moment, She Was Quiet. Then She Grabbed My Hand, Whispered, “run Run Run Run Run,” And Took Off, Pulling Me Behind Her.

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

She Left Me Enough To Rediscover The Great Perhaps.

‎these Little Contradictions Are In All Of Us. They're In Me At Least. And So I Forgot That I Had Been Awake For 30 Hours And Kept Walking, Grateful To Be A Little Boat Full Of Water, Still Floating.

I Even Tried To Tell Myself To Live My Best Life Today.

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

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

If By That You Mean That I Dislike Celebrity Magazines, Prefer Food To Anorexia, Refuse To Watch Tv Shows About Models, And Hate The Color Pink, Then Yes. I Am Proud To Be Not Really A Girl.

I Figured Something Out," He Said Aloud. "the Future Is Unpredictable." Hassan Said, "sometimes The Kafir Likes To Say Massively Obvious Things In A Really Profound Voice.

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

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

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.

Alaska Decided To Go Help Dolores With Dinner. She Said That It Was Sexist To Leave The Cooking To The Women, But Better To Have Good Sexist Food Than Crappy Boy-prepared Food.

Eternity Bids Thee To Forget.

...but There's Always Suffering, Pudge. Homework Or Malaria Or Having A Boyfriend Who Lives Far Away When There's A Good-looking Boy Lying Next To You. Suffering Is Universal. It's The One Thing Buddhists, Christians, And Muslims Are All Worried About.

...i Will Continue To Underscore That I Don't Think Authorial Intent Is All That Important To A Reading Experience, And I Certainly Don't Think The Job Of Reading Is To Divine Authorial Intent.

Before Any Of It Could Make Sense, It Had To Be Heard.

Television Is A Passivity.

Congratulations! You're A Woman. Now Die.

Congratulations

Cancer Diagnosis

One Of The Pitfalls About Writing About Illness Is That It Is Very Easy To Imagine People With Cancer As Either These Wise-beyond-their-years Creatures Or These Sad-eyed Tragic People. And The Truth Is, People Living With Cancer Are Very Much Like People Who Are Not Living With Cancer. They're Every Bit As Funny And Complex And Diverse As Anyone Else.

The Light Filtered Throught The Leaves And Pine Needles Above As If Through Lace, The Ground Spotted In Shadow.

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

The Colonel Led All The Cheers. Cornbread!" He Screamed. Chicken!" The Crowd Responded. Rice!" Peas!" And Then, All Together: "we Got Higher Sats." Hip Hip Hip Hooray!" The Colonel Cried. You'll Be Workin' For Us Someday!

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

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

Sexuality Is Important, But It's Certainly Not The Most Interesting Or Important Thing Happening To You Right Now. We Live In A World That Tells Us That There Are Only Two Important Things. One Is The Acquisition Of Goods And The Other Is Either The Acquisition Or Avoidance Of Sex, But It Turns Out That The Question Of Who's A Virgin And Who's A Virgout Is Not The Most Interesting Question.

I Wanted More Time So We Could Fall In Love.

Falling In Love

In General, Watching Children's Television Is A Dark And Surreal Descent Into Madness Where The Characters On The Screen Talk Directly To You.

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.

Leaving Feels Too Good, Once You Leave.

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.

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

Adult Librarians Are Like Lazy Bakers: Their Patrons Want A Jelly Doughnut, So They Give Them A Jelly Doughnut. Children’s Librarians Are Ambitious Bakers: 'you Like The Jelly Doughnut? I’ll Get You A Jelly Doughnut. But You Should Try My Cruller, Too. My Cruller Is Gonna Blow Your Mind, Kid.

Late In The Winter Of My Seventeenth Year, My Mother Decided I Was Depressed, Presumably Because I Rarely Left The House, Spent Quite A Lot Of Time In Bed, Read The Same Book Over And Over, Ate Infrequently, And Devoted Quite A Bit Of My Abundant Free Time To Thinking About Death.

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 Was Surprised. I'd Always Associated Belief In Heaven With, Frankly, A Kind Of Intellectual Disengagement. But Gus Wasn't Dumb.

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.

One Of Those Moments He Knew He'd Remember And Look Back On, One Of Those Moments That He'd Try To Capture In The Stories He Told. Nothing Was Happening, Really, But The Moment Was Thick With Mattering.

I Think It's Crazy, Crazy That Book Tours Lose So Much Money. They Shouldn't. Book Tours Should Be Part Of What Keeps Independent Bookstores Vibrant And Profitable.

The Nature Of The Love Between A Parent And Child Really Is Literally Stronger Than Death. As Long As Either Person In That Relationship Is Alive, That Relationship Is Still Alive.

I Want To Minimize The Deaths I Am Responsible For.

It's Just That Most Really Good-looking People Are Stupid, So I Exceed Expectations.' 'right, It's Primarily His Hotness,' I Said. 'it Can Be Sort Of Blinding,' He Said. 'it Actually Did Blind Our Friend Isaac,' I Said. 'terrible Tragedy, That. But Can I Help My Own Deadly Beauty?' 'you Cannot.' 'it Is My Burden, This Beautiful Face.' 'not To Mention Your Body.' '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.

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.

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

I Hated Cranberry Sauce, But For Some Reason My Mom Persisted In Her Lifelong Belief That It Was My Very Favorite Food, Even Though Every Single Thanksgiving I Politely Declined To Include It On My Plate.

She Has Enough Black Eyeliner On To Outline A Corpse, And Her Skin's So Pale She Looks Like She's Just Broken Dawn.

That Smile Could End Wars And Cure Cancer.

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

Because No One Can Catch The Motherfucking Fox.

Looking For Alaska Book

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

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

What Matters To You Defines Your Mattering.

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

It Doesn’t Matter How Long We’ve Used Something; All That Matters Is How Awesome The Thing Replacing It Is. Mp3s And Automobiles Happen To Be Really, Really Awesome, Whereas Ebooks—at Least So Far—are Fairly Limited In Their Awesomeness.

I Was Not Religious, But I Liked Rituals. I Liked The Idea Of Connecting An Action With Remembering.

You Are Valuable And Rare And Worthy Of Love.

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.

Writing Is Something You Do Alone. It's A Profession For Introverts Who Wanna Tell You A Story But Don't Wanna Make Eye Contact While Telling It

I Love Making Youtube Videos. I Love Tumblr, I Love Twitter. I Love Talking With People I Find Interesting About Stuff I Find Interesting, And The Internet Is A Great Way To Do That.

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?

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

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

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.

As Far As I Can Tell, There Are Two Basic (kissing) Rules: 1. Don't Bite Anything Without Permission. 2. The Human Tongue Is Like Wasabi: It's Very Powerful, And Should Be Used Sparingly.

That's What We Should Do, Hazel Grace: We Should Team Up And Be This Disabled Vigilante Duo Roaring Through The World, Righting Wrongs, Defending The Weak, Protecting The Endangered.

She Said, "it's Not Life Or Death, The Labyrinth." "um, Okay. So What Is It?" "suffering," She Said. "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?... Nothing's Wrong. But There's Always Suffering, Pudge. Homework Or Malaria Or Having A Boyfriend Who Lives Far Away When There's A Good-looking Boy Lying Next To You. Suffering Is Universal. It's The One Thing Buddhists, Christians, And Muslims Are All Worried About."

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

By The Power Of The Superglue Beer Sword, I Designate You My Driver!

I've Never Known Before What It Feels Like To Want Someone - Not To Want To Hook Up With Them Or Whatever, But To Want Them, To Want Them. And Now I Do. So Maybe I Do Believe In Epiphanies.

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.

To Be Human Is To Catch The Falling Person.

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

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.

There Comes A Time When We Realize That Our Parents Cannot Save Themselves Or Save Us, That Everyone Who Wades Through Time Eventually Gets Dragged Out To Sea By The Undertow- That, In Short, We Are All Going.

I've Gotten Really Hot Since You Went Blind.

When I Think About [characters], I Like To Think Of Them In Their Relationships To Each Other. In The Same Way, I Think That's How Humans Are Ultimately Defined. We Are Our Relationships To One Another. And A Lot Of What's Interesting About Us Happens In The Context Of Other People.

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.

You're Not Going To Impose The Patriarchal Paradigm On Me.

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

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

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.

I Choose The Labyrinth.

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.

Chuck Parson Did Not Participate In Organized Sports, Because To Do So Would Distract From His Larger Goal Of His Life: To One Day Be Convicted Of Murder

Nothing Has Ever Looked Like That Ever In All Of Human History.

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

A Drink This Good Deserves One's Best Posture.

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.

He May Be A Malevolent Sorcerer, But Tiny Cooper Is His Own Goddamned Man, And If He Wants To Be A Gigantic Skipper, Then That's His Right As A Huge American.

Pudge, My Friend, We Are Indefuckingstructible.

People Are Such Idiots. As If There's Something Wrong With Being In Love.

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.

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.

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

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

We Play The Broken String Of Our Instruments One Last Time

When You Acknowledge That There Is Nothing Repulsive Or Unforgivable Or Shameful About Yourself, It Becomes Easier To Be That Authentic Person And Feel Like You're Living A Less Performed Life.

I Smiled. She Smiled. I Believed The Smile.

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

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

Cherish Every Moment

In The Ensuing Silence, I Have Time To Contemplate The Word Cute— How Dismissive It Is, How It’s The Equivalent Of Calling Someone Little, How It Makes A Person Into A Baby, How The Word Is A Neon Sign Burning Through The Dark Reading, “feel Bad About Yourself.

The Human Tongue Is Like Wasabi: It's Very Powerful, And Should Be Used Sparingly.

That's Why I Like You. Do You Realize How Rare It Is To Come Across A Hot Girl Who Creates A Adjectival Version Of The Word Pedophile? You Are So Busy Being You That You Have No Idea How Utterly Unprecedented You Are.

Nerdighters Make Me Believe In America Again.

The Z’s Will Kill Us All, And Then The Z’s Will Die Out And In Sixty Years There Will Be No One To Remember Our Silly War, Caroline’s Wasted Ammunition, My Year Of Zombic Survivalism, Rene Descartes’s Musings, Or Michelangelo’s Sculptures. And That Is Really Only The Sadness Here As I Drink A Thousand-dollar Bottle Of Wine Down Here In The Cellar: We Did A Few Things Worth Remembering, And I Wish For Someone To Remember Them.

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

Immigrant Parents

Could The Two People Who Are Making Out Please Be Quiet?" The Colonel Asked Loudly From His Sleeping Bag. "those Of Us Who Are Not Making Out Are Drunk And Tired.

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.

Because You're Only Thinking They-might-not-like-me-they-might-not-like-me, And Guess What? When You Act Like That, No One Likes You.

He Told Me This While Ripping Through His Duffel Bag, Throwing Clothes Into Drawers With Reckless Abandon. Chip Did Not Believe In Having A Sock Drawer Or A T-shirt Drawer. He Believed That All Drawers Were Created Equal And Filled Each With Whatever Fit. My Mother Would Have Died.

Nothing Is As Boring As Other People's Dreams.

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

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.

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

Thomas Edison's Last Words Were 'it's Very Beautiful Over There'. I Don't Know Where There Is, But I Believe It's Somewhere, And I Hope It's Beautiful.

It's A Metaphor, See: You Put The Killing Thing Right Between Your Teeth, But You Don't Give It The Power To Do Its Killing.

Truth Resists Simplicity.

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

She Did Not Need To Fold Into Herself And Self-destruct. Those Awful Things Are Survivable, Because We Are As Indestructible As We Believe Ourselves To Be. When Adults Say, "teenagers Think The Hate Invincible," With That Sly, Stupid Smile On Their Faces, They Don't Know How Right They Are. We Need Never Be Hopeless, Because We Can Never Be Irreparably Broken.

I Want To See You Again Tonight. But I'm Willing To Wait All Night And Much Of Tomorrow.

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

Falling In Love

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

... 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.

Teenagers Think They Are Invincible

What I Really Want - And What I Never Get - Is To Be Appreciated. Do You Know What It’s Like To Work So Hard To Make Sure Everyone’s Happy, And To Have Not A Single Person Recognize It

Dear Jane, Just So You Know: E. E. Cummings Cheated On Both Of His Wives. With Prostitutes. Yours, Will Grayson

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.

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