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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.

-John Green

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Writing Fiction Is An

John Green

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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.

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Random Questions Are The Least Random Of All Questions.

Shame About How We’re Gonna Die Here, Though. I Mean, Seriously. An Arab And A Half-jew Enter A Store In Tennessee. It’s The Beginning Of A Joke, And The Punch Line Is “sodomy’’.

I Don't Want To Hear Another Negative Word About Cheerleaders. If It Weren't For Cheerleaders, Who Would Tell Us When And How To Be Happy During Athletic Events? If It Weren't For Cheerleaders, How Would America's Prettiest Girls Get The Exercise That's So Vital To A Healthy Life?

The Pure And Simple Truth Is Rarely Pure And Never Simple. What's A Boy To Do When Lies And Truth Are Both Sinful?

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?'

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

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

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

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.

But I Was Not In The Band, Because I Suffer From The Kind Of Tone Deafness That Is Generally Associated With Actual Deafness

Grief Does Not Change You. It Reveals You. And Herein Lies The Gift That Cannot Die. It Changes The Course Of Your Life Forever. If You Allow Yourself The Chance To Feel It For As Long As You Need To - Even If It Is For The Rest Of Your Life - You Will Be Guided By It. You Will Become Someone It Would Have Been Impossible For You To Be, And In This Way Your Loved One Lives On, In You

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.

It Was Not Enough To Be The Last Guy She Kissed. I Wanted To Be The Last One She Loved. And I Knew I Wasn’t. I Knew It, And I Hated Her For It. I Hated Her For Not Caring About Me. I Hated Her For Leaving That Night, And I Hated Myself , Too, Not Only Because I Let Her Go But Because If I Had Been Enough For Her, She Wouldn’t Have Even Wanted To Leave. She Would Have Just Lain With Me And Talked And Cried, And I Would Have Listened And Kissed At Her Tears As They Pooled In Her Eyes.

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

Without Pain, How Could We Know Joy?

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.

Something About Me Has Always Liked The Drama And Inconvience Of Bad Weather. The Worse The Better, Really.

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

This Is So Much Fun, But I’m So Sleepy. To Be Continued?

Oh, I Wouldn't Mind, Hazel Grace. It Would Be A Privilege To Have My Heart Broken By You.

I'm Just Reveling In The Glory Of Not Having To Hear The Neediness And Impotence Of My Own Voice.

‎"i Go To Seek A Great Perhaps.

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

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

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

You Could Hear The Wind In The Leaves, And On That Wind Traveled The Screams Of The Kids On The Playground In The Distance, The Little Kids Figuring Out How To Be Alive, How To Navigate A World That Was Not Built For Them By Navigating A Playground That Was. . . Who Am I To Say That These Things Might Not Be Forever? Who Is Pete Van Houten To Assert As Fact The Conjecture That Our Labor Is Temporary? All I Know Of Heaven And All I Know Of Death Is In This Park: An Elegant Universe In Ceaseless Motion, Teeming With Ruined Ruins And Screaming Children.

[this] Is Very Important To Remember When Reading Or Writing Or Talking Or Whatever: You Are Never, Ever Choosing Whether To Use Symbols. You Are Choosing Which Symbols To Use.

Because Everybody Who Has Ever Lost Their Way In Life Has Felt The Nagging Insistence Of That Question. At Some Point We All Look Up And Realize We Are Lost In A Maze, And I Dont Want Us To Forget Alaska, And I Don't Want To Forget That Even When The Material We Study Seems Boring, We're Trying To Und3erstand How People Answered That Question And The Question Each Of You Posed In Your Papers--how Different Traditions Have Come To Terms With What Chip, In His Final, Called 'people's Rotten Lots In Life.

But As For Me: I Must Ask The Wounded Man Where He Is Hurt, Because I Cannot Become The Wounded Man. The Only Wounded Man I Can Be Is Me.

Life Works Best When We Think Of People As People.

So Why Don't You Go Home For Vacations?' I Asked Her. I'm Just Scared Of Ghosts, Pudge. And Home Is Full Of Them.

Nothing's Wrong. Everything's Right. Things Couldn't Be Righter. Things Could Be Less Tired. They Could Be Less Busy. They Could Be Less Caffeinated. But They Couldn't Be Righter.

You Couldn't Be More Wrong," I Said. "you Are Buying Into The Cross-stitched Sentiments Of Your Parents' Throw Pillows. You're Arguing That The Fragile, Rare Thing Is Beautiful Simply Because It Is Fragile And Rare. But That's A Lie, And You Know It." "you're A Hard Person To Comfort," Augustus Said. "easy Comfort Isn't Comforting," I Said.

When I Was In College, I Remember Fearing That The Dreary Grind Of Adulthood Would Feature Infinitely More Existential Dread Than Frat Parties Had, But The Opposite Has Been True For Me. I'm Much Less Likely To Feel That Gnawing Fear Of Aimlessness And Nihilism Than I Used To Be And That's Partly Because Education Gave Me Job Opportunities, But It's Mostly Because Education Gave Me Perspective And Context.

You're Arguing That The Fragile, Rare Thing Is Beautiful Simply Because It Is Fragile And Rare. But That's A Lie, And You Know It.

I Think Forever Is An Incorrect Concept.

Nothing Really Ever Happens Like You Imagine It Will.

Almost Everyone Is Obsessed With Leaving A Mark Upon The World. Bequeathing A Legacy. Outlasting Death. We All Want To Be Remembered. I Do, Too. That’s What Bothers Me Most, Is Being Another Unremembered Casualty In The Ancient And Inglorious War Against Disease.

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

Falling In Love

She Raised One Leg And Gave Me All Her Weight As A I Dipped Her. She Either Trusted Me Or Wanted To Fall.

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

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

Made Up Stories

He Puts The Killing Thing In His Mouth But Doesn't Give It The Power To Kill Him.

Isaac Out Of Surgery. It Went Well. He's Officially Nec. Nec Meant "no Evidence Of Cancer." A Second Text Came A Few Seconds Later. I Mean, He's Blind. So That's Unfortunate.

I Fear Oblivion. I Fear It Like The Proverbial Blind Man Who's Afraid Of The Dark.

I Could Be Worse, You Know." "how?" I Asked, Teasing. "i Mean, I Have A Work Of Calligraphy Over My Toilet That Reads, 'bathe Yourself In The Comfort Of God's Words,' Hazel. I Could Be Way Worse." "sounds Unsanitary," I Said.

I Found His Last Words Without Too Much Searching. Captured By The Bolivian Army, Guevara Said, 'shoot, Coward. You Are Only Going To Kill A Man.

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.

Because There Is No Glory In Illness. There Is No Meaning To It. There Is No Honor In Dying Of.

Eternity Bids Thee To Forget.

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.

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

Entropy Increases. Things Fall Apart.

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 Love Being In Cities With Lots Of Other People, Because I'm Reminded That There Are Billions Of People Like Me, And We Are Each Stuck Inside Of Our Minds, Feverishly Trying To Crawl Out To Make Connections With Other People.

A Drink This Good Deserves One's Best Posture.

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

I Am Concussed," I Announced, Entirely Sure Of My Self-diagnosis.

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

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

I Don't Think We Should See The World Of Books As Fundamentally Separate From The World Of The Internet. Yes, The Internet Contains A Lot Of Videos Of Squirrels Riding Skateboards, But It Can Also Be A Place That Facilitates Big Conversations About Books.

The Rules Of Capitalization Are So Unfair To Words In The Middle Of A Sentence.

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.

I Didn't Want To Look At Them, So I Looked Away, And To Look Away Was To Look At Augustus.

She Would Stay On The Road And In Hiding, A Balloon Floating Through The Sky, Eating Up Hundreds Of Miles A Day With A Help Of The Perpetual Tailwind.

You Can't Not Like "the Great Gatsby." It's Got The Best Sentences In, Like, Ever.

The Phrase Booze And Mischief Left Me Worrying I'd Stumbled Into What My Mother Referred To As "the Wrong Crowd," But For The Wrong Crowd, They Both Seemed Awfully Smart.

It Is So Hard To Leave—until You Leave. And Then It Is The Easiest Goddamned Thing In The World.

The Worse The Haircut, The Better The Man.

She Left Me Enough To Rediscover The Great Perhaps.

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

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

Grief Doesn't Change You. It Reveals You.

I Want To Minimize The Deaths I Am Responsible For.

I'm Sorry," She Says. I Wheel Around. "you Know, You're A Total Know-it-all. And It's Incredibly Rude Sometimes; I Mean, You're Not Perfect Either, And You Act Like It's My Fault But It's Not My Fault For Being Quiet Or Your Fault For Being A Know-it-all. It's Not Your Problem Or My Problem; It's Their Problem. They're The Demented Ones, Not Us, So Don't Take It Out On Me, Because The Only Thing That Holds Things Together For Me Is Having Someone Else On The Not Demented Team.

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

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

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

It Felt Like Everything Was Rising Up In Me, Like I Was Drowning In This Weirdly Painful Joy, But I Couldn't Say It Back. I Just Looked At Him And Let Him Look At Me Until He Nodded, Lips Pursed And Turned Away, Placing The Side Of His Head Against The Window.

I Bet If You Look At The Average Teenager And The Average Adult, The Average Teenager Has Read More Books In The Last Year Than The Average Adult. Now Of Course The Adult Would Be All Like, 'i'm Busy, I Got A Job, I Got Stuff To Do.' Whatever! Read! I Mean, You're Watching Csi: Miami. Why Would You Be Watching Csi: Miami, When You Could Be Reading Csi: Miami, The Novelization?

There's No Way Of Knowing That Your Last Good Day Is Your Last Good Day. At The Time, It Is Just Another Good Day.

Colin Had Always Preferred Baths; One Of His General Policies In Life Was Never To Do Anything Standing Up That Could Just As Easily Be Done Lying Down

I’m On A Roller Coaster That Only Goes Up, My Friend.

We Were Sitting There On The Couch Together, And He Pushed Himself Up To Go But Then Fell Back Down Onto The Couch And Sneaked A Kiss Onto My Cheek. “augustus!” I Said. “friendly,” He Said. He Pushed Himself Up Again And Really Stood This Time, Then Took Two Steps Over To My Mom And Said, “always A Pleasure To See You,” And My Mom Opened Her Arms To Hug Him, Whereupon Augustus Leaned In And Kissed My Mom On The Cheek. He Turned Back To Me. “see?” He Asked.

Because So Many People Use Goodreads, It Is An Amazingly Good—and Amazingly Underutilized—resource For Understanding What People Read, Why, And How They Feel About Their Reading Experiences.

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

I'd Rather Wonder Than Get Answers I Couldn't Live With.

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?

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

You Can't Just Make Yourself Matter And Then Die, Alaska, Because Now I Am Irretrievably Different.

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.

When You're Walking Home At Night, Do You Even Get Creeped Out And Even Though It's Silly And Embarrassing You Just Want To Run Home?" It Seemed Too Secret And Personal To Admit To Virtual Stranger, But I Told Her, "yeah, Totally." For A Moment, She Was Quiet. Then She Grabbed My Hand, Whispered, "run Run Run Run Run," And Took Off, Pulling Me Behind Her.

We Just Did An Awesome Job Of Not Dying.

For The Longest Time, It Felt Kind Of Like My Chest Was Cracking Open, But Not Precisely In An Unpleasant Way.

Tobin," Mom Said Disapprovingly. She Wasn't A Particularly Funny Person. It Suited Her Professionally - I Mean, You Don't Want Your Cancer Surgeon To Walk Into The Examination Room And Be Like, "guy Walks Into A Bar. Bartender Says, 'what'll Ya Have?' And The Guy Says, 'whaddya Got?' And The Bartender Says, 'i Don't Know What I Got, But I Know What You Got: Stage Iv Melanoma.

Me: "if You Want Me To Be A Teenager, Don't Send Me To Support Group. Buy Me A Fake Id So I Can Go To Clubs, Drink Vodka, And Take Pot." Mom: "you Don't Take Pot, For Starters." Me: "see, That's The Kind Of Thing I'd Know If You Got Me A Fake Id.

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

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.

My Love, I Cannot Tell You How Thankful I Am For Our Little Infinity, ~ Hazel Lancaster.

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

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.

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

There Are Always Answers. We Just Have To Be Smart Enough.

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.

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

Sharing Knowledge

Love Is The Most Common Miracle.

A Small Olive-skinned Creature Who Had Hit Puberty But Never Hit It Very Hard, Ben Had Been My Best Friend Since Fifth Grade, When We Both Finally Owned Up To The Fact That Neither Of Us Was Likely To Attract Anyone Else As A Best Friend.

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

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

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

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.

In These Pages, And In My Memories, She Reminds Me That A Short Life Can Also Be A Good And Rich Life, That It Is Possible To Live With Depression Without Being Consumed By It, And That Meaning In Life Is Found Together, In Family And Friendship That Transcends And Survives All Manner Of Suffering. As The Poet Wrote In The Bible's Song Of Solomon, 'love Is Strong As Death.' Or Perhaps Even Stronger.

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

I Pulled The Oxygen Tubes From My Nostrils And Raised The Tube Up Over My Head, Handing It To Dad. I Wanted It To Be Just Me And Just Him.

You Could Hold Me And I Could Hold You. And It Would Be So Peaceful. Completely Peaceful. Like The Feeling Of Sleep, But Awake In It Together.

There Is No Try. There Is Only Do.

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.

It's Just That I Learned A While Ago That The Best Way To Get People To Like You Is Not To Like Them Too Much.

Every Paper Girl Needs At Least One String.

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

It's Not Fair," I Said. "it's Just So Goddamned Unfair." "the World," He Said, "is Not A Wishgranting Factory.

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

He Responded A Few Minutes Later. Okay. I Wrote Back. Okay. He Responded: Oh, My God, Stop Flirting With Me!

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 Worked Hard To Meet His Eyes, Even Though They Were The Kind Of Pretty That's Hard To Look At.

At Some Point, You Just Pull Off The Band-aid, And It Hurts, But Then It's Over And You're Relieved.

So Dawn Goes Down Today... Nothing Gold Can Stay. -- Robert Frost

I Smiled. She Smiled. I Believed The Smile.

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

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

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

I Came Here Looking For A Great Perhaps, For Real Friends And A More-than-minor Life.

Labyrinth Looking For Alaska

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

I Know He's Been Looking Forward To This--and I Know That I've Been Looking Forward To This. But Now I Have To Stop Looking Forward And Start Looking At Where I Am. It's Hard.

Looking Forward

Suffering Can Bend & Break Us. But It Can Also Break Us Open To Become The Persons God Intended Us To Be. It Depends On What We Do With The Pain. If We Offer It Back To God, He Will Use It To Do Great Things In Us & Through Us, Because Suffering Is Fertile... It An Grow New Life.

I Could Stand Up And Go To Her And Kiss Her. I Could. But There Is Still Too Much To Be Ruined.

We're Invisible. I've Never Been Here With Someone Else. It's Different Being Invisible With Someone.

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

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

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

I Can't Remember, Because I Never Knew.

Look, Let Me Just Say It: He Was Hot. A Nonhot Boy Stares At You Relentlessly And It Is, At Best, Awkward And, At Worst, A Form Of Assault. But A Hot Boy . . . Well.

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

People Always Get Used To Beauty Though.

We Only Have So Long To Play In The Dirt And Ask Questions Of Rivers.

You Know How We Make A Scotch And Water In This Home?" "no, Sir," Gus Said. "we Pour Scotch Into A Glass And Then Call To Mind Thoughts Of Water, And Then We Mix The Actual Scotch With The Abstracted Idea Of Water.

I Spy With My Little Eye A Great Story.

No Headboards Were Broken.

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

Half-drunk On Well-creamed Gas Station Coffee And The Exhilarating Loneliness Of A Freeway In Nighttime.

Nothing Was Happening, Really, But The Moment Was Thick With Mattering

I Always Liked Routine. I Suppose I Never Found Boredom Very Boring. I Doubted I Could Explain It To Someone Like Margo But Drawing Circles Through Life Struck Me As A Kind Of Reasonable Insanity.

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

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 Are A Side Effect," Van Houten Continued, "of An Evolutionary Process That Cares Little For Individual Lives. You Are A Failed Experiment In Mutation.

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

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.

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

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!

We Cannot Be Born, And We Cannot Die. Like All Energy, We Can Only Change Shapes And Sizes And Manifestations.

I Change My Keyboard Between Every Book. I Usually Shop Around. I'm Very Passionate About The Physical Feel Of Pressing The Keys. It's Got To Have The Right Springiness. I Tend To Find The Built-in Keys Very Unsatisfying, The Keys Are Low-profile And Don't Really Do Anything - I Want It To Feel Like I'm Typing.

I Always Had This Secret Suspicion That I Was Special.

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!

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

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 Do My Precalc Homework, And Then When I'm Done I Actually Sit With The Textbook For Like Three Hours And Try To Understand What I Just Did. That's The Kind Of Weekend It Is--the Kind Where You Have So Much Time You Go Past The Answers And Start Looking Into The Ideas.

It Was Not An Eventful Day. I Should Have Done Extraordinary Things. I Should Have Sucked The Marrow Out Of Life. But On That Day, I Slept Eighteen Hours Out Of A Possible Twenty-four.

Was It Animal Pee Or Human Pee? Someone Asked. How Would I Know? What, Am I An Expert In The Study Of Pee?

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

Harry Potter Isn’t Real? Oh No! Wait, Wait, What Do You Mean By Real? Is This Video Blog Real? Am I Real If You Can See Me And Hear Me, But Only Through The Internet? Are You Real If I Can Read Your Comment But I Don’t Know Who You Are Or What Your Name Is Or Where You’re From Or What You Look Like Or How Old You Are? I Know All Of Those Things About Harry Potter. Maybe Harry Potter’s Real And You’re Not.

You Like Someone Who Can't Like You Back Because Unrequited Love Can Be Survived In A Way That Once-requited Love Cannot.

Unrequited Love

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

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

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

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.

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.

I Stood Under The Awning For A Moment, But Finally I Decided That Being In A Bad Mood With Your Friends Beats Being In A Bad Mood Without Them.

Pudge, My Friend, We Are Indefuckingstructible.

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.

One Swing Set, Well Worn But Structurally Sound, Seeks New Home. Make Memories With Your Kid Or Kids So That Someday He Or She Or They Will Look Into The Backyard And Feel The Ache Of Sentimentality As Desperately As I Did This Afternoon. It's All Fragile And Fleeting, Dear Reader, But With This Swing Set, Your Child(ren) Will Be Introduced To The Ups And Downs Of Human Life Gently And Safely, And May Also Learn The Most Important Lesson Of All: No Matter How Hard You Kick, No Matter How High You Get, You Can't Go All The Way Around.

You Die In The Middle Of Your Life.

Fault In Our Stars

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

By Saying You Don’t Care If The World Falls Apart, In Some Small Way You’re Saying You Want It To Stay Together, On Your Own Terms.

Here's To All The Places We Went. And All The Places We'll Go. And Here's To Me, Whispering Again And Again And Again And Again: Iloveyou

Again And Again

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

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.

There Were So Many Of Us Who Would Have To Live With Things Done And Things Left Undone That Day. Things That Did Not Go Right, Things That Seemed Okay At The Time Because We Could Not See The Future. If Only We Could See The Endless String Of Consequences That Result From Our Smallest Actions. But We Can't Know Better Until Knowing Better Is Useless.

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

I Hadn’t Been In Proper School In Three Years. My Parents Were My Two Best Friends. My Third Best Friend Was An Author Who Did Not Know I Existed.

There Was Quite A Lot Of Competitiveness About It, With Everybody Wanting To Beat Not Only Cancer Itself, But Also The Other People In The Room. Like, I Realize That This Is Irrational, But When They Tell You That You Have, Say, A 20 Percent Chance Of Living Five Years, The Math Kicks In And You Figure That’s One In Five . . . So You Look Around And Think, As Any Healthy Person Would: I Gotta Outlast Four Of These Bastards.

He Missed Her Like Crazycakes.

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

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.

He Took A Long Drink, Then Grimaced. “i Do Not Have A Drinking Problem,” He Announced, His Voice Needlessly Loud. “i Have A Churchillian Relationship With Alcohol: I Can Crack Jokes And Govern England And Do Anything I Want To Do. Except Not Drink.

Colin Emphatically Pushed The Book Cover Shut When He Finished Reading. "did You Like It?" His Dad Asked. "yup," Colin Said. He Liked All Books, Because He Liked The Mere Act Of Reading, The Magic Of Turning Scratches On A Page Into Words Inside His Head.

Whatever, Bro. We Both Had A Long Day. Too Much Drama. I'll Ttys." I Wanted To Ridicule Him For Using Chatspeak Irl, But I Found Myself Lacking The Energy.

Everywhere Man Blames Nature And Fate, Yet His Fate Is Mostly But The Echo Of His Character, And Passions, His Mistakes, And Weaknesses."--democritus An Abundance Of Katherines---john Green

We Landed, In Fact, Parallel To A Canal, Like There Were Two Runways: One For Us And One For Waterfowl.

I Wouldn't Have Cared If My Girlfriend Was A Jaguar-driving Cyclops With A Beard - I'd Have Been Grateful Just To Have Someone To Make Out With.

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

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Omar N. Bradley

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