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

-John Green

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When It Comes To

John Green

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

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

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

Miscalculations

And As Paralyzing And Upsetting As All The Never Agains Were, The Final Leaving Felt Perfect. Pure. The Most Distilled Possible Form Of Liberation. Everything That Mattered Except One Lousy Picture Was In The Trash, But It Felt So Great. I Started Jogging, Wanting To Put Even More Distance Between Myself And School. It Is So Hard To Leave—until You Leave. And Then It Is The Easiest Goddamned Thing In The World.

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.

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

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.

Everybody Was So Kind. Strong, Too. In The Darkest Days, The Lord Puts The Best People Into Your Life." "quick, Give Me A Throw Pillow And Some Thread Because That Needs To Be An Encouragement.

If I Had A Nervous Breakdown Every Time Something Awful Happened In The World, I'd Be Crazier Than A Shithouse Rat.

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

As I Recall, You Promised To Call When You Finished The Book, Not Text.

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

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

I'm Not Saying It Was Your Fault. I'm Saying It Wasn't Nice.

I'm Not Saying That Everything Is Survivable. Just That Everything Except The Last Thing Is.

It's Almost As If The Way You Imagine My Dead Self Says More About You Than It Says About Either The Person I Was Or The Whatever I Am Now.

Every Paper Girl Needs At Least One String.

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."

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

I Have Guts, Just Not When It Counts.

I'm A Good Person But A Shitty Writer. You're A Shitty Person But A Good Writer. We'd Make A Good Team.

Frankly, I Kind Of Want You To Be Haunted By The Unansweredness Of The Question, Because I Think Being Haunted By Such Things Is A Valuable Part Of Being A Person.

Pain Is Like Fabric: The Stronger It Is, The More It’s Worth.

I Expertly Angled My Raison Bran To Accomodate The G-forces.

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.

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

So Often We Try To Make Other People Feel Better By Minimizing Their Pain, By Telling Them That It Will Get Better (which It Will) Or That There Are Worse Things In The World (which There Are). But That's Not What I Actually Needed. What I Actually Needed Was For Someone To Tell Me That It Hurt Because It Mattered. I Have Found This Very Useful To Think About Over The Years, And I Find That It Is A Lot Easier And More Bearable To Be Sad When You Aren't Constantly Berating Yourself For Being Sad.

At Least I Carpe'd That One Diem.

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

But The Fascinating And Unbelievable-but-true Thing About Dr. Jefferson Jeffersonis That He Was Not A Doctor Of Any Kind. He Was Just An Orange Juice Salesman Named Jefferson Jefferson. When He Became Rich And Powerful, He Went To Court, Made "jefferson" His Middle Name, And Then Changed His First Name To "dr." Capital D. Lowercase R. Period.

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.

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

3 Whole Catfish, Wrapped Separately Veet (it’s For Shaving Your Legs Only You Don’t Need A Razor. It’s With All The Girly Cosmetic Stuff) Vaseline Six Pack, Mountain Dew One Dozen Tulips One Bottle Of Water Tissues One Can Of Blue Spray Paint

...all I Have To Do Is Stay In Between The Lines And Make Sure That No One Is Too Close To Me And I Am Not Too Close To Anyone And Keep Leaving. Maybe It Felt Like This For Her, Too, But I Could Never Feel Like This Alone.

What Else? She Is So Beautiful. You Don’t Get Tired Of Looking At Her. You Never Worry If She Is Smarter Than You: You Know She Is. She Is Funny Without Ever Being Mean. I Love Her. I Am So Lucky To Love Her, Van Houten. You Don’t Get To Choose If You Get Hurt In This World, Old Man, But You Do Have Some Say In Who Hurts You. I Like My Choices. I Hope She Likes Hers.

I Have A Great Affection For People Who Are Intellectually Engaged With The World, And Who Don't Treat Everything Superficially. And I Think, When People Talk About Nerdiness, What They're Really Talking About Is Smart People Who Who Are Trying To Think Hard About The World. And I Don't Think That's An Insult, I Think That's A Great Thing.

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.

The Things I Would Do To That Boy. I Mean, Not Now That I Know You're Interested In Him. But, Oh, Sweet Holy Lord, I Would Ride That One-legged Pony All The Way Around The Corral." "kaitlyn," I Said. "sorry. Do You Think You'd Have To Be On Top?" "kaitlyn," I Said.

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.

It Just Goes To Show, If You Try To Ruin Someone's Life, It Only Gets Better. You Just Don't Get To Be A Part Of It.

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

I Love You Present Tense.

Don't Worry. Worry Is Useless. I Worried Anyway

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I Finally Found Something That Can Stop The Fox. The Fox Cannot Summit Strawberry Hill.” - Takumi

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Random Questions Are The Least Random Of All Questions.

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This Is The Homosexuality Is An Abomination Club, Right?

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

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

Have You Really Read All Those Books In Your Room?” Alaska Laughing- “oh God No. I’ve Maybe Read A Third Of ‘em. But I’m Going To Read Them All. I Call It My Life’s Library. Every Summer Since I Was Little, I’ve Gone To Garage Sales And Bought All The Books That Looked Interesting. So I Always Have Something To Read.

I'm So Proud Of You That It Makes Me Proud Of Me. I Hope You Know That.

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I Told Him They Built A Statue Of Schultz, And Then He Said That A Monument Is Cold Comfort To A Dead Man, And Then I Said That The Statue Was Built Not For Schultz, But For Us--to Remind Us How To Be Human.

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.

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But It Is A Pipe." "no, It's Not," I Said. It's A Drawing Of A Pipe. Get It? All Representations Of A Thing Are Inherently Abstract. It's Very Clever.

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?

Thank You For Wearing That Dress Which Is Like Whoa.

There Are Infinite Numbers Between 0 And 1.

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

She Loved Mysteries So Much That She Became One.

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

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

That’s Part Of What I Like About The Book In Some Ways. It Portrays Death Truthfully. You Die In The Middle Of Your Life, In The Middle Of A Sentence

Death And Dying

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

. . . Endlessness Is A Really Strange Idea In A Universe That Is Defined By Its Endings.

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

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

The Right Story Needs The Right Telling.

Witness Also That When We Talk About Literature, We Do So In The Present Tense. When We Speak Of The Dead, We Are Not So Kind.

You've Got A Lifetime To Mull Over The Buddhist Understanding Of Interconnectedness." He Spoke Every Sentence As If He'd Written It Down, Memorized It, And Was Now Reciting It. "but While You Were Looking Out The Window, You Missed The Chance To Explore The Equally Interesting Buddhist Belief In Being Present For Every Facet Of Your Daily Life, Of Being Truly Present. Be Present In This Class. And Then, When It's Over, Be Present Out There," He Said, Nodding Toward The Lake And Beyond.' ~dr. Hyde, Pg 50

It Always Happened Like This: He Would Look And Look For The Keys To Satan’s Hearse And Then Finally He’d Just Give Up And Say, “fine. I’ll Take The Fugging Bus,” And On His Way Out The Door, He’d See The Keys. Keys Show Up When You Reconcile Yourself To The Bus; Katherines Appear When You Start To Disbelieve The World Contains Another Katherine; And, Sure Enough, The Eureka Moment Arrived Just As He Began To Accept It Would Never Come.

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.

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It's Hard To Get Movie Studios To Pay A Lot Of Money For Movies That Don't Have Robots Or Explosions.

They Couldn't Bear The Idea Of Death Being A Big Black Nothing.

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I Enjoy Writing About People Falling In Love, Probably Because I Think The First Time You Fall In Love Is The First Time That You Have To Figure Out How You're Going To Orient Your Life. What Are You Going To Value? What's Going To Be Most Important To You? And I Think That's Really Interesting To Write About.

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Nothing To Be Gained By Worrying Between Now And Then.

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All Representations Of A Thing Are Inherently Abstract.

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Amsterdam Is Like The Rings Of A Tree: It Gets Older As You Get Closer To The Center.

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The Internet Is Necessarily Public. It Can Be Filtered-public Or Censored-public, But It Necessarily Has To Be Open And Available.

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The Miracle And Hope Of Human Consciousness Is That We Can Still Conceive Of Boundlessness.

Me: You Know What Sucks About Love? O.w.g.: What? Me: That It's So Tied To The Truth. I Know It Sucks, But In A Way, It's Good....love And Truth Being Tied Together, I Mean. They Make Each Other Possible, You Know?

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I Didn't Even Know What The Feeling Was, Really, Just That There Was A Lot Of It.

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Just Remember That Sometimes, The Way You Think About A Person Isn't The Way They Actually Are... People Are Different When You Can Smell Them And See Them Up Close.

His Every Syllable Flirted. Honestly, He Kind Of Turned Me On. I Didn't Even Know That Guys Could Turn Me On-not, Like, In Real Life

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Love Of My Life

I’ve Always Sort Of Preferred People Who Are Not Entirely Likable.

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

But There's So Much To Do: Cigarettes To Smoke, Sex To Have, Swings To Swing On.

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

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.

Whether You're Studying Electrical Engineering Or Poetry, College Is Not About Maximizing Income, It's About Becoming A Better And More Informed Observer Of The Universe. And For Me, At Least, That What's Leads To A More Fulfilling Life.

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Nothing Really Ever Happens Like You Imagine It Will.

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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

How Do You Just Stop Being Terrified Of Getting Left Behind And Ending Up By Yourself Forever And Not Meaning Anything To The World?

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You Should See It. V For Vendetta I Mean. "i'll Look It Up." No. With Me. At My House. Now

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.

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This One's For Alaska Young!

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If I Ever End Up Being The Kind Of Person Who Has One Kid And Seven Bedrooms. Do Me A Favor And Shoot Me.

So She Became Impulsive, Scared By Her Inaction Into Perpetual Action. When The Eagle Confronted Her With The Expulsion, Maybe She Blurted Out Marya's Name Because It Was The First That Came To Mind, Because In That Moment She Didn't Want To Get Expelled And She Couldn't Think Past That Moment. She Was Scared, Sure. But More Importantly, Maybe She'd Been Scared Of Being Paralyzed By Fear Again. ~miles/pudge On Alaska, Pg 120-121

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

There Are At Least Two Distinct Meanings Of 'hot': There Is The, Like, Normal Human Definition Which Is That 'this Individual Seems Suitable For Mating'. And Then There's The Weird, Culturally Constructed Definition Of 'hot' Which Means, 'that Individual Is Malnourished And Has Probably Had Plastic Bags Inserted Into Her Breasts'. Like, I Think If You Went Back To The 18th Century And Asked A 15-year-old Boy, 'would You Like To Marry A Woman Who Has Had Plastic Bags Needlessly Inserted Into Her Breasts?' That 15-year-old Boy Would Probably Be Like ... 'what's Plastic?'

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.

You Do Not Immortalize The Lost By Writing About Them. Language Buries, But Does Not Resurrect.

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.

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

It's Fine," I Repeated. And Whatever. It Was Fine. It Had To Be.

By The Way, I've Decided To Start Referring To Myself Exclusively As 'daddy.' Everytime Daddy Would Otherwise Say 'i' Or 'me,' Daddy Is Now Going To Say 'daddy.

If I Could Just Stay Alive For A Week, I’d Know The Unwritten Secrets Of Anna’s Mom And The Dutch Tulip Guy.

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

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!

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

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

I Think Teenagers Bring A Lot Of Intellectual Sophistication. They're Wrestling With Big Questions. It's Just That, A Lot Of Times They Do That Separately From Adults.

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.

Easy Comfort Isn't Comforting

She Taught Me Everything I Knew About Crawfish And Kissing And Pink Wine And Poetry. She Made Me Different.

The Town Was Paper, But The Memories Were Not.

After All This Time, It Seems To Me Like Straight And Fast Is The Only Way Out- But I Choose The Labyrinth. The Labyrinth Blows, But I Choose It.

These Are All Direct Quotes, Except Every Time They Use A Curse Word, I'm Going To Use The Name Of A Famous American Poet: 'you Walt Whitman-ing, Edna St. Vincent Millay! Go Emily Dickinson Your Mom!' 'thanks For The Advice, You Pathetic Piece Of E.e. Cummings, But I Think I'm Gonna Pass.' 'you Robert Frost-ing Nikki Giovanni! Get A Life, Nerd. You're A Virgin.' 'hey Bro, You Need To Go Outside And Get Some Fresh Air Into You. Or A Girlfriend.' I Need To Get A Girlfriend Into Me? I Think That Shows A Fundamental Lack Of Comprehension About How Babies Are Made.

Compromise Is When You Do What I Tell You And I Do What I Want. ~tiny Cooper

Colin Singleton’s Distance From His Glasses Made Him Realize The Problem: Myopia. He Was Nearsighted. The Future Lay Before Him, Inevitable But Invisible.

It's Like People Believe All You Need To Do Is Like The Same Bands In Order To Be Soulmates. Or Book. Oh My God...you Like The Outsiders Too...it's Like We're The Same Person! No, We're Not. It's Like We Have The Same English Teacher. There's A Difference.

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

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

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

A Margo For Each Of Us--and Each More Mirror Than Window.

Whenever I'm Asked What Advice I Have For Young Writers, I Always Say That The First Thing Is To Read, And To Read A Lot. The Second Thing Is To Write. And The Third Thing, Which I Think Is Absolutely Vital, Is To Tell Stories And Listen Closely To The Stories You're Being Told.

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

…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’.

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.

It Seems To Me That The Great Pleasure Of Human Life Is Not In Having An Opinion, But Rather In Learning All The Ways You Are Wrong, And All The Nuances You Failed To Account For, And All The Truths That Turned Out To Be Not As Simple As You Once Believed. And It Seems To Me That One Of The Central Pleasures Of Attending School Is That You Get To Read With Really Well-informed People Who Can Help Welcome You Into A Complex World Stuffed With Rich And Maddening Ambiguity.

Without Pain, How Could We Know Joy?

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

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?

You Can Love Someone So Much...but You Can Never Love People As Much As You Can Miss Them.

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

Nothing Is As Boring As Other People's Dreams.

When People Call People Nerds, Mostly What They're Saying Is, 'you Like Stuff.' Which Is Not A Good Insult At All, Like, 'you Are Too Enthusiastic About The Miracle Of Human Conscience.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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?

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