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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.

-John Green

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Witness Also That When

John Green

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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.

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The Darkest Nights Produce The Brightest Stars.

The Sky Is Like A Monochromatic Contemporay Painting, Drawing Me In Its Illusion Of Depth, Pulling Me Up.

Youth Is Counted Sweetest By Those Who Are No Longer Young.

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

The Red Wheelbarrow" By William Carlos Williams. So Much Depends Upom A Red Wheel Barrow Glazed With Rain Water Beside The White Chickens.

I Just Want To Fly Under The Radar, Because When You Start To Make Yourself Into A Big Deal, That's When You Get Shot Down.

..there She Is, And I Am Watching Her Through Plexiglass, And She Looks Like Margo Roth Spiegelman, This Girl I Have Known Since I Was Two–this Girl Who Was An Idea That I Loved. And It Is Only Now, When She Closes Her Notebook And Places It Inside A Backpack Next To Her And Then Stands Up And Walks Toward Us, That I Realize That The Idea Is Not Only Wrong By Dangerous. What A Treacherous Thing It Is To Believe That A Person Is More Than A Person.

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

The Truth Is That In Our Lives We Are All Going To Encounter Questions That Should Be Answered, That Deserve To Be Answered, And Yet Prove Unanswerable.

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

It Is Easy To Forget How Full The World Is Of People, Full To Bursting, And Each Of Them Imaginable And Consistently Misimagined.

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

It's Nice To Have People Who Will Feel Guilty For You.

Writing Fiction Is An Inherently Political Activity Because People-even Imaginary Ones-do Not Live In Vacuums... From Twilight To Romeo And Juliet To The Little Mermaid, No Work Of The Imagination Is Truly Apolitical, Because The World And Our Hopes For It Are Always Part Of Our Stories.

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

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

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

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

She's Cute, I Thought, But You Don't Need To Like A Girl Who Treats You Like You're Ten: You've Already Got A Mom.

Margo's Beauty Was A Kind Of Sealed Vessel Of Perfection--uncracked And Uncrackable.

People Believed In An Afterlife Because They Couldn't Bear Not To.

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.

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.

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.

I'll Just Go Over To The Duke's," I Said. "her Parents Already Told Me I Could Stay There. I'll Go Over There And Open All My Presents, And Talk About How My Parents Neglect Me, And Then Maybe The Duke Will Give Me Some Of Her Presents Because She Feels So Bad About How My Mom Doesn't Love Me.

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.

Unrequited Love

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

Colin Singleton

The Real Heroes Anyway Aren't The People Doing Things; The Real Heroes Are The People Noticing Things, Paying Attention. The Guy Who Invented The Smallpox Vaccine Didn't Actually Invent Anything. He Just Noticed That People With Cowpox Didn't Get Smallpox.

Life Works Best When We Think Of People As People.

I Nodded. I Liked Augustus Waters. I Really, Really, Really Liked Him. I Liked The Way His Story Ended With Someone Else. I Liked His Voice. I Liked That He Took Existentially Fraught Free Throws. I Liked That He Was A Tenured Professor In The Department Of Slightly Crooked Smiles With A Dual Appointment In The Department Of Having A Voice That Made My Skin Feel More Like Skin. And I Liked That He Had Two Names. I’ve Always Liked People With Two Names, Because You Get To Make Up Your Mind What You Call Them: Gus Or Augustus? Me, I Was Always Just Hazel, Univalent Hazel.

... She Called It A Paper Town. Like, You Know, Everything So Fake And Flimsy.

The Weird Thing About Houses Is That They Almost Always Look Like Nothing Is Happening Inside Of Them, Even Though They Contain Most Of Our Lives. I Wondered If That Was Sort Of The Point Of Architecture.

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

Right, Except I'm Not Going To Lie To My Mom, Because What Kind Of (man) Lies To His Own Mother?

She Cannot Possibly Be Dead, People Do Not Just Die

We All Miss You So Much. It Just Never Ends. It Feels Like We Were All Wounded In Your Battle, Caroline. I Miss You. I Love You.

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.

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

We All Romanticize The People We Adore.

Thank You," I Say, Pounding His Back Probably Too Hard. "that Was The Best Damned Passenger-seat Driving I've Ever Seen In My Life." He Pats My Uninjured Cheek With His Greasy Hand. "i Did It To Save Myself, Not You," He Says. "believe Me When I Say That You Did Not Once Cross My Mind. " I Laugh. "nor You Mine," I Say.

You Completely Unscatter Me, And I Appreciate That Too Much.

To Be Human Is To Catch The Falling Person.

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.

No Woman Should Ever Lie About Another Woman. You've Violated The Sacred Covenant Between Women! How Will Stabbing One Another In The Back Help Women To Rise Above Patriarchal Oppression?

Truth Defies Simplicity.

I Don't Have A Favourite Book, I Have Hundreds.

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

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

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.

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

I'm At The Eye Doctor. I'm Always At The Eye Doctor. It's Like This Is My Profession. I Am No Longer A Writer, I'm Now An Optomoligical Patient. By The Way, This Job Doesn't Pay Well.

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

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.

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

Imagining The Future Is A Kind Of Nostalgia.

Imagining The Future

He Wasn't Perfect Or Anything. He Wasn;t Your Fairytale Prince Charming Or Whatever. He Tried To Be Like That Sometimes,but I Liked Him Best When That Stuff Fell Away.

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

Without Pain, How Could We Know Joy?

And I Wondered If Hurdlers Ever Thought, You Know, 'this Would Go Faster If We Just Got Rid Of The Hurdles.

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

I Always Wondered If There Was A Purpose To The Universe, If There Was A Plan, If There Was Some Sort Of Organizing Factor, Hopefully That I Played A Role In.

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

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

There Was Time Before Organisms Experienced Consciousness, And There Will Be Time After. And If The Inevitability Of Human Oblivion Worries You, I Encourage You To Ignore It.

There Will Come A Time, When All Of Us Are Dead. All Of Us. There Will Come A Time When There Are No Human Beings Remaining To Remember That Anyone Ever Existed Or That Our Species Ever Did Anything.

I Liked That He Was A Tenured Professor In The Department Of Slightly Crooked Smiles With A Dual Appointments In The Department Of Having A Voice That Made My Skin Feel More Like Skin.

No Headboards Were Broken.

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

"patience, Grasshopper," I Counseled. "you Don't Want To Seem Overeager." "right, That's Why I Said Tomorrow," He Said. "i Want To See You Again Tonight. But I'm Willing To Wait All Night And Much Of Tomorrow." I Rolled My Eyes. "i'm Serious," He Said."you Don't Even Know Me," I Said. I Grabbed The Book From The Center Console. "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 This Book."he Broke Out Into That Goofy Smile. "and You Say We Don't Know Each Other."

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

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

…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’.

I Said Nothing—i Hadn’t Known Marya, And Anyway, “listening Quietly” Was My General Social Strategy

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.

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.

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.

I Wondered If There Would Ever Be A Day When I Didn't Think About Alaska, Wondered Whether I Should Hope For A Time When She Would Be A Distant Memory - Recalled Only On The Anniversary Of Her Death, Or Maybe A Couple Of Weeks After, Remembering Only After Having Forgotten.

I've Gotten Really Hot Since You Went Blind.

Our Fearlessness Shall Be Our Secret Weapon.

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

Coal Miners Don't Get Coal Miners' Block.

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.

My Responsibility Is To Try To Tell True Stories. To Me A True Story Is Always Hopeful, But Never Simply, Uncomplicatedly Happy.

"nothing," I Said. "i’m Just…" I Couldn’t Finish The Sentence, Didn’t Know How To. "i’m Just Very, Very Fond Of You."

Reading With An Eye Towards Metaphor Allows Us To Become The Person We’re Reading About, While Reading About Them. That’s Why There Is Symbols In Books And Why Your English Teacher Deserves Your Attention. Ultimately, It Doesn’t Matter If The Author Intended The Symbol To Be There Because The Job Of Reading Is Not To Understand The Author’s Intent. The Job Of Reading Is To Use Stories As A Way Into Seeing Other People As A We Ourselves.

He Specialized In The Murder Of Dreams, Hazel Grace.

You Say Into My Cracks And I Saw Into Yours.

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

Cherish Every Moment

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?

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.

Reading Forces You To Be Quiet In A World That No Longer Makes Place For That.

At Some Point, I Realized I Was Kaitlyning The Encounter, So I Decided To Text Kaitlyn And Ask For Some Advice.

When Surprised And Excited And Innocent Gus Emerged From Grand Gesture Metaphorically Inclined Augustus, I Literally Could Not Resist.

I Always Had This Secret Suspicion That I Was Special.

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

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

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

Imagining The Future

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

I Don't Suppose I Can Wear The Flamingo Tie," He Said As He Pulled On Black Socks. "it's A Bit Festive, Given The Occasion," I Responded. "can't Wear It To The Opera," Said The Colonel, Almost Smiling. "can't Wear It To A Funeral. Can't Use It To Hang Myself. It's A Bit Useless, As Ties Go." I Gave Him A Tie.

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

We All Want To Do Something To Mitigate The Pain Of Loss Or To Turn Grief Into Something Positive, To Find A Silver Lining In The Clouds. But I Believe There Is Real Value In Just Standing There, Being Still, Being Sad.

The Problem Is Not Suffering Itself Or Oblivion Itself But The Depraved Meaninglessness Of These Things, The Absolutely Inhuman Nihilism Of Suffering.

I Don't Even Know How Ugly And Pretty Get Decided.

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?

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

That's What I Realized: If I Did Get Her Back Somehow, She Wouldn't Fill The Hole That Losing Her Created.

I'm Sitting Her Thinking, -god, I Swear I Will Take A Vow Of Silence And Move To A Monastery And Worship You For All My Days If You Just This Once Provide Me With An Invisibility Cloak, Come On, Come On, Please Please Invisibility Cloak Now Now Now-. It's Very Possible That Jane Is Thinking The Same Thing, I Have No Idea, Because She's Not Talking Either, And I Can't Look At Her On Account Of How I'm Blinded By Embarrassment.

Invisibility Cloak

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.

Do The Thing You're Good At. Not Many People Are Lucky Enough To Be So Good At Something.

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 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.

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.

Books Are Like Tweets, Except Longer.

Because It's Kind Of Great, Being An Idea That Everybody Likes. But I Could Never Be The Idea To Myself, Not All The Way. And Agloe Is A Place Where A Paper Creation Became Real. A Dot On The Map Became A Real Place, More Real Than The People Who Created The Dot Could Never Have Imagined. I Thought Maybe The Paper Cutout Of A Girl Could Start Becoming Real Here Also. And It Seemed Like A Way To Tell That Paper Girl Who Cared About Popularity And Clothes And Everything Else: 'you Are Going To The Paper Towns. And You Are Never Coming Back.

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.

Teenagers Have More Intense Reading Experiences Because They've Had Fewer Of Them. It's Like The First Time You Fall In Love. You Have A Connection To That First Person You Fell In Love With Because It Was So Intense And Unprecedented.

Falling In Love

In Those Fifty, The Old Man Made Me Take Religion Seriously. I'd Never Been Religious, But He Told Us That Religion Is Important Whether Or Not We Believed In One, The Same Way That Historical Events Are Important Whether Or Not You Personally Lived Through Them.

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.

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?

To Be Fair To Monica," I Said, "what You Did To Her Wasn't Very Nice Either." "what'd I Do To Her?" He Asked, Defensive. "you Know, Going Blind And Everything." "but That's Not My Fault," Isaac Said. "i'm Not Saying It Was Your Fault. I'm Saying It Wasn't Nice.

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

Feeling - Probably For The First Time In My Life - The Fear And Excitement Of Living In A Place Where You Never Know What's Going To Happen Or When.

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

Given The Final Futility Of Our Struggle, Is The Fleeting Jolt Of Meaning That Art Gives Us Valuable? Or Is The Only Value In Passing The Time As Comfortable As Possible? What Should A Story Seek To Emulate, Augustus? A Ringing Alarm? A Call To Arms? A Morphine Drip? Of Course, Like All Interrogation Of The Universe, This Line Of Inquiry Inevitably Reduces Us To Asking What It Means To Be Human And Whether—to Borrow A Phrase From The Angst-encumbered Sixteeen-year-olds You No Doubt Revile—there Is A Point To It All.

No, I Don’t Think You’re Gonna Be Single Forever, And Also I Don’t Understand Your Obsession With Romantic Love. There Are Other Ways To Have Fulfilling Relationships That Can Sustain You And Make Your Life Great And Fun Other Than Having A Sexualized Relationship. It’s Not The Only Kind Of Fulfilling Human Interaction. So, Even If You Are Single Forever, That Doesn’t Mean That You’ve Had Some Kind Of Failed Life.

What Happens In The Band Room Stays In The Band Room.

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

I'm Interested In Internet Cultures. I'm Interested In What The Teenagers Who Drive The Internet Culture Are Passionate About. I Follow Their Lead - They Go To Tumblr, I Go To Tumblr.

She Left Me Enough To Rediscover The Great Perhaps.

And, Since They Are Theater People, They Are All Talking. All Of Them. Simultaneously. They Do Not Need To Be Heard; They Only Need To Be Speaking.

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

I Love You' Really Is The Gateway Drug Of Breaking Up.

Good Friends Are Hard To Find And Impossible To Forget.

Impossible To Forget

The Existence Of Broccoli Does Not In Any Way Affect The Taste Of Chocolate

I Shaved This Morning For Precisely That Reason. I Was Like, 'well, You Never Know When Someone Is Going To Clamp Down On Your Calf And Try To Suck Out The Snake Poison.

In The End, What You Do Isn't Going To Be Nearly As Interesting Or Important As Who You Do It With.

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

I'm Not Asexual. I'm Arelationshipal.

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

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.

I Jog Through The Halls And Then Go Upstairs To Jane’s Locker And Carefully Slip The Note I Wrote Last Night Through The Vent: To: The Locker Houdini From: Will Grayson Re: An Expert In The Field Of Good Boyfriends? Dear Jane, Just So You Know: E. E. Cummings Cheated On Both Of His Wives. With Prostitutes. Yours, Will Grayson

I Hated Sports. I Hated Sports, And I Hated People Who Played Them, And I Hated People Who Watched Them, And I Hated People Who Didn't Hate People Who Watched Or Played Them.

Leaving Feels Good And Pure Only When You Leave Something Important, Something That Mattered To You. Pulling Life Out By The Roots. But You Can't Do That Until Your Life Has Grown Roots.

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.

I Just Want You To Be Happy. If That’s With Me Or With Someone Else Or With Nobody. I Just Want You To Be Happy.

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.

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

As A Reader, I Don't Feel A Story Has An Obligation To Make Me Happy. I Want Stories To Show Me A Bigger World Than The One I Know.

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

There Is No Shortage Of Fault To Be Found Amid Our Stars

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

Falling In Love

There's No Reason Whatsoever To Drink Eight Glasses Of Water A Day Unless You, For Whatever Reason, Particularly Like The Taste Of Water

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

So I Let Her Go, Too. And I'm Sorry.

When We Think Of Death, We Often Imagine It As Happening In Degrees: We Think Of A Sick Person Becoming Less And Less Alive Until Finally They Are Gone.

The Colonel Explained To Me That 1. This Was Alaska's Room, And That 2. She Had A Single Room Because The Girl Who Was Supposed To Be Her Roommate Got Kicked Out At The End Of Last Year, And That 3. Alaska Had Cigarettes, Although The Colonel Neglected To Ask Whether 4. I Smoked, Which 5. I Didn't.

You Die In The Middle Of Your Life.

Fault In Our Stars

You're Not A Little Kid Anymore. You Need To Make Friends, Get Out Of The House, And Live Your Life.

I Don't Think You're Dying," I Said. "i Think You've Just Got A Touch Of Cancer. He Smiled. Gallows Humor.

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

Jesus, I'm Not Going To Be One Of Those People Who Sits Around Talking About What They're Going To Do. I'm Just Going To Do It.

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

We Kiss. Her Hands Are Freezing On My Face, And She Tastes Like Coffee And The Smell Of The Onion Is Still Stuck In My Nose, And My Lips Are All Dry From The Endless Winter. And It's Awesome.

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.

Funerals...are For The Living.

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

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

What's The Meaning Of Life? Other People.

Meaning Of Life

That Smile Could End Wars And Cure Cancer.

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.

Read A Lot. Read Broadly... Tell Stories To Your Friends, And Pay Attention To When They Get Bored... Write A Lot.

The Urge To Make Art Or Contemplate Philosophy Does Not Go Away When You Are Sick. Those Urges Just Become Transfigured By Illness.

You Can’t Know, Sweetie, Because You’ve Never Had A Baby Become A Brilliant Young Reader With A Side Interest In Horrible Television Shows, But The Joy You Bring Us Is So Much Greater Than The Sadness We Feel About Your Illness.

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.

But Before We Can Radically Reshape The World, We Need To Shop.

People Are Supposed To Care. It's Good That People Mean Something To You, That You Miss People When They're Gone.

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

I Feel Like Crying, So I Must Be Crying, But It's Impossible To Tell Because I'm Underwater.

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

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

The Job Of Reading Is To Use Stories As A Way Into Seeing Other People As We See Ourselves

It's More Impressive," I Said Out Loud. "from A Distance, I Mean. You Can't See The Wear On Things, You Know? You Can't See The Rust Or The Weeds Or The Paint Cracking. You See The Place As Someone Once Imagined It.

And Then Something Invisible Snapped Insider Her, And That Which Had Come Together Commenced To Fall Apart.

It Hurt, And That Is Not A Euphemism. It Hurt Like A Beating.

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.

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

People Are Different When You Can Smell Them And Look Up Close, You Know?

Idiotically, It Occurred To Me That My Pink Underwear Didn’t Match My Purple Bra, As If Boys Even Notice Such Things.

We Fell. We Got Up. We Ran.

This Fear Bears No Analogy To Any Fear I Knew Before. This Is The Basest Of All Possible Emotions, The Feeling That Was With Us Before We Existed, Before This Building Existed, Before The Earth Existed. This Is The Fear That Made Fish Crawl Out Onto Dry Land And Evolve Lungs, The Fear That Teaches Us To Run, The Fear That Makes Us Bury Our Dead.

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.

Books Belong To Their Readers.

Love Is Tied To Truth.

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.

Wait, Wait. I Don't Get It.' 'that Is Because You Only Have Eight Functioning Brain Cells.

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

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.

Like Everyone, I'm Saddened And Horrified By This. All I'll Say Is That I'm Personally Trying To Pay More Attention To The Victims Than To Their Murderer. I Certainly Will Not Be Mentioning The Murderer. I Don't Think He Warrants Our Attention-particularly Since He So Clearly Wanted It.

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

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