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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.

-John Green

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You Could Hear The

John Green

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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.

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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.

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.

I Believe Humans Have Souls, And I Believe In The Conservation Of Souls.

Abligurition: An Actual, If Very Obscure, English Word, Which Means The Spending Of Too Much Money On Food.

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

Who Would You Die For? Who Would You Wake Up At Five Forty-five In The Morning For Even Though You Don't Even Know Why He Needs You?

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

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

Being A Person, I Had Come To Realize, Is A Communal Activity. Dogs Know How To Be Dogs. But People Do Not Know How To Be People Unless And Until They Learn From Other People.

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.

God Will Punish The Wicked. And Before He Does, We Will.

I'm A Grenade And At Some Point I'm Going To Blow Up And I Would Like To Minimize The Casualties, Okay?

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 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.

Imagining The Future Is A Kind Of Nostalgia. (...) You Spend Your Whole Life Stuck In The Labyrinth, Thinking About How You'll Escape It One Day, And How Awesome It Will Be, And Imagining That Future Keeps You Going, But You Never Do It. You Just Use The Future To Escape The Present.

‎"i Go To Seek A Great Perhaps.

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

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

Sharing Knowledge

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 Live For Pretentious Metaphors.

The Way I Figure It, Everyone Gets A Miracle.

Books Are The Ultimate Dumpees: Put Them Down And They’ll Wait For You Forever; Pay Attention To Them And They Always Love You Back.

You Don't Get To Choose If You Get Hurt In This World...but You Do Have Some Say In Who Hurts You. I Like My Choices.

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

You Can Say A Lot Of Bad Things About Alabama, But You Can't Say That Alabamans As A People Are Duly Afraid Of Deep Fryers.

We Just Did An Awesome Job Of Not Dying.

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

Missing Someone

Not Following Her Is The Hardest Thing I've Ever Done.

I’ve Stopped Thinking About It. I Don’t Have Time To Have A Girlfriend. I Have Like A Full-time Job Learning How To Be Blind.

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

The Easiest Way To Solve A Mystery Is To Decide That There Is No Mystery To Solve.

The Marks Humans Leave Are Too Often Scars. You Build A Hideous Minimall Or Start A Coup Or Try To Become A Rock Star And You'll Think "they'll Remember Me Now," But (a) They Don't Remember You, And (b) All You Leave Behind Are More Scars. Your Coup Becomes A Dictatorship. Your Minimall Becomes A Lesion.

Support Group Featured A Rotating Cast Of Characters In Various States Of Tumor-driven Unwellness. Why Did The Cast Rotate? A Side Effect Of Dying.

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

If I Had Cared About Her As I Should Have, As I Thought I Did, How Could I Have Let Her Go?

Where Do You Come Up With These Zingers, Clint? Do You Own Some Kind Of Joke Factory In Indonesia Where You've Got Eight-year-olds Working Ninety Hours A Week To Deliver You That Kind Of Top-quality Witticism? There Are Boy Bands With More Original Material.

He Reached Up T0 Grab One And Came Down With Several, And They Kept Coming, Washing Over Him, Floating All Around Him. Never Have Tampon Strings Seemed So Beautiful As They Rolled Up And Down With The Wind, Landing On The Ground And Then Twirling And Floating Up Again, Falling And Rising And Falling And Rising.

Maybe All The Strings Inside Him Broke.

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.

I Mean, He Was Something That Happened To Me, You Know? But Before He Was This Minor Figure In The Drama Of My Life He Was - You Know, The Central Figure In The Drama Of His Own Life.

We Have This Habit Of Romanticizing The Lives Of Writers. I Remember When I Was A Kid, I Was Like, 'i Want To Be Kurt Vonnegut.'

Throughout The Book, She Refers To Herself As "the Side Effect," Which Is Just Totally Correct. Cancer Kids Are Essentially Side Effects Of The Relentless Mutation That Made The Diversity Of Life On Earth Possible.

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

My Thoughts Are Starts I Can't Fathom Into Constellations.

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.

I Am A Giant Squid Of Anger.

How About I Call You When I Finish This?” “but You Don’t Even Have My Phone Number,” He Said. “i Strongly Suspect You Wrote It In The Book.” He Broke Out Into That Goofy Smile. “a Nd You Say We Don’t Know Each Other.

Worry Is Yet Another Side Effect Of Dying.

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

And Then We Were Kissing. My Hand Let Go Of The Oxygen Cart And I Reached Up For His Neck, And He Pulled Me Up By My Waist Onto My Tiptoes. As His Parted Lips Met Mine, I Started To Feel Breathless In A New And Fascinating Way. The Space Around Us Evaporated, And For A Weird Moment I Really Liked My Body, This Cancer-ruined Thing I'd Spent Years Dragging Around Suddenly Seemed Worth The Struggle, Worth The Chest Tubes And Picc Lines And The Ceaseless Bodily Betrayal Of The Tumors.

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

We’re As Likely To Hurt The Universe As We Are To Help It, And We’re Not Likely To Do Either.

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.

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

Caroline Is No Longer Sufffering From Personhood.

All Good American Literature Is Always Interested In People Who Are Ambiguously Heroic, Like Gatsby.

You Never Know. It's Just. It's Like. Poof. And You're Gone.

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.

The Thought Of You Being Removed From The Rotation Is Not Funny To Me.

Thoughts Of You

Hazel Grace Lancaster

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

Congratulations! You're A Woman. Now Die.

Congratulations

Cancer Diagnosis

History Reminds Us That Revolutions Are Not Events, So Much That They’re Processes – That For Tens Of Thousands Of Years, People Have Been Making Decisions That Irrevocably Shaped The World That We Live In Today; Just As Today, We Are Making Subtle, Irrevocable Decisions That People Of The Future Will Remember As Revolutions.

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.

…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’.

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

I Think That It's A Universal Urge To Have Our Pain Not Be Felt Alone And To Have Our Joys Not Be Felt Alone.

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

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

Falling In Love

But To Be Perfectly Frank, This Childish Idea That The Author Of A Novel Has Some Special Insight Into The Characters In The Novel ... It's Ridiculous. That Novel Was Composed Of Scratches On A Page, Dear. The Characters Inhabiting It Have No Life Outside Of Those Scratches. What Happened To Them? They All Ceased To Exist The Moment The Novel Ended.

That Didn’t Happen, Of Course. Things Never Happened The Way I Imagined Them.

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

People Will Say It's Sad That She Leaves A Lesser Scar, That Fewer Remember Her, That She Was Loved Deeply But Not Widely. But It's Not Sad, Van Houten. It's Triumphant. It's Heroic. Isn't That The Real Heroism? Like The Doctors Say: First, Do No Harm.

I Don’t Know A Perfect Person. I Only Know Flawed People Who Are Still Worth Loving.

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

We'd Failed, Maybe, But Some Mysteries Aren't Meant To Be Solved.

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

Finally, I Decided That The Proper Strategy Was To Stare Back. Boys Do Not Have A Monopoly On The Staring Business, After All. So I Looked Him Over And Soon It Was A Staring Contest. After A While The Boy Smiled, And Then Finally His Blue Eyes Glanced Away. When He Looked Back At Me, I Flicked My Eyebrows Up To Say, I Win. He Shrugged

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.

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

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

I Liked Being A Person. I Wanted To Keep At It.

So Zeno Is Most Famous For His Tortoise Paradox. Let Us Imagine That You Are In A Race With A Tortoise. The Tortoise Has A Ten-yard Head Start. In The Time It Takes You To Run That Ten Yards, The Tortoise Has Moved One Yard. And Then In The Time It Takes You To Make Up That Distance, The Tortoise Goes A Bit Farther, And So On Forever. You Are Faster Than The Tortoise But You Can Never Catch Him; You Can Only Decrease His Lead.

At Least For Tonight. In Sickness And In Health. In Good Times And In Bad. For Richer, For Poorer. 'till Dawn Do Us Part.

I Can Almost Imagine A Happiness Without Her, The Ability To Let Her Go, To Feel Our Roots Are Connected Even If I Never See That Leaf Of Grass Again.'

Leaves Of Grass

You Are So Busy Being You That You Have No Idea How Utterly Unprecedented You Are.

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

We Did A Few Things Worth Remembering, And I Wish For Someone To Remember Them.

The Right Story Needs The Right Telling.

Because You Are Beautiful. I Enjoy Looking At Beautiful People, And I Decided A While Ago Not To Deny Myself The Simpler Pleasures Of Existence

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.

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.

Reading A Good Book Helps Us To Feel Un-alone.

But Of Course There Is Always A Hamartia And Yours Is That Oh, My God, Even Though You Had Freaking Cancer You Give Money To A Company In Exchange For The Chance To Acquire Yet More Cancer.

The True Ninja Doesn't Make A Splash At All.

So Here's My Advice: Study Broadly And Without Fear. Learn A Language If You Can, Because That Will Make Your Life More Interesting. Read A Little Bit Every Day. But More Importantly, Surround Yourself With People Who You Like And Make Cool Stuff With Them. In The End, What You Do Isn't Going To Be Nearly As Interesting Or Important As Who You Do It With.

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

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

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

So It’s Your Death Suit.” “correct. Don’t You Have A Death Outfit?” “yeah,” I Said. “it’s A Dress I Bought For My Fifteenth Birthday Party. But I Don’t Wear It On Dates.” His Eyes Lit Up. “we’re On A Date?” He Asked. I Looked Down, Feeling Bashful. “don’t Push It.

Ahhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!' He Screamed. 'so That's Sara,' I Said. 'yes.' 'she Seems Nice.

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

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

I Believe In That Line From An Imperial Affliction. 'the Risen Sun Too Bright In Her Losing Eyes.' That's God, I Think, The Rising Sun, And The Light Is Too Bright And Her Eyes Are Losing But They Aren't Lost.

Dying Is The Last Thing I Would Ever Do!

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

Right, Well, He'd Been Sick For A While And His Nurse Said To Him, 'you Seem To Be Feeling Better This Morning,' And Isben Looked At Her And Said, 'on The Contrary,' And Then He Died.

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.

Grief Doesn't Change You. It Reveals You.

I Hadn’t Read A Real Series Like That Since I Was A Kid, And It Was Exciting To Live Again In An Infinite Fiction.

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

It Was Not Enough To Be The Last Guy She Kissed. I Wanted To Be The Last One She Loved.

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

I Was Thinking About This Girl You Love So Much," She Said, "and This Place I Love So Much. And How That Happens. How You Can Just Fall Into It.

I Pointed At The Little Kids Goading Each Other To Jump From Rib Cage To Shoulder And Gus Answered Just Loud Enough For Me To Hear Over The Din, 'last Time, I Imagined Myself As The Kid. This Time, The Skeleton.

I Realized During My Time As A Chaplain That I Didn't Want To Be A Minister.

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

It's Total Bullshit," He Said. "the Whole Thing. Eighty Percent Survival Rate And He's In The Twenty Percent? Bullshit. He Was Such A Bright Kid. It's Bullshit. I Hate It. But It Was Sure A Privilege To Love Him, Huh?

Does He Have Ugly Hands? Sometimes Beautiful People Have Ugly Hands." "no He Has Kind Of Amazing Hands.

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

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

I Felt The Unfairness Of It, The Inarguable Injustice Of Loving Someone Who Might Have Loved You Back But Can't Due To Deadness.

At Some Point We All Look Up And Realize We Are Lost In A Maze.

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

And I Agreed, But Still, She Owed Us An Explanation. If She Was Up There, Down There, Out There, Somewhere, Maybe She Would Laugh.

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.

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.

I Found Myself Thinking About President William Mckinley, The Third American President To Be Assassinated. He Lived For Several Days After He Was Shot, And Towards The End, His Wife Started Crying And Screaming, "i Want To Go Too! I Want To Go Too!" And With His Last Measure Of Strength, Mckinley Turned To Her And Spoke His Last Words: "we Are All Going.

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

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

Nostalgia Is Inevitably A Yearning For A Past That Never Existed And When I'm Writing, There Are No Bees To Sting Me Out Of My Sentimentality. For Me At Least, Fiction Is The Only Way I Can Even Begin To Twist My Lying Memories Into Something True.

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.

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

Thank You For Explaining That My Eye Cancer Isn't Going To Make Me Deaf. I Feel So Fortunate That An Intellectual Giant Like Yourself Would Deign To Operate On Me.

I Hate The Rich Snots Here With A Fervent Passion I Usually Reserve Only For Dental Work And My Father.

Did I Help You To A Fate You Didn't Want?

Easy Comfort Isn't Comforting

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

I Think If You Went Back To The Eighteenth Century And You Asked A Fifteen Year Old Boy, 'would You Like To Marry A Woman Who Has Had Plastic Bags Needlessly Inserted Into Her Breasts?', That Fifteen Year Old Boy Would Probably Be Like, 'what's Plastic?'.

We Gotta Do Something About This Frigging Swing Set,' He Said. 'i'm Telling You, It's Ninety Percent Of The Problem.

Like The Way The Sun Is Right Now, With The Long Shadows, And That Kind Of Bright, Soft Light You Get When The Sun Isn't Quite Setting? That's The Light That Makes Everything Better, Everything Prettier, And Today, Everything Just Seemed To Be In That Light.

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

I Make A Gesture That Is Intended To Convey, "hey, No Hurry, Talk As Long As You'd Like," And Probably Actually Conveys, "hey, Look At Me! I Have Spastic Hands.

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

Some Tourists Think Amsterdam Is A City Of Sin, But In Truth It Is A City Of Freedom. And In Freedom, Most People Find Sin.

What You Must Understand About Me Is That I’m A Deeply Unhappy Person.

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

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

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

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.

The Preciousness Of The Moment, Which Should Make It Easier To Talk, Makes It Harder.

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

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

I Think That Most Of Us [writers] Would Rather Have An Audience Than Countless Riches. If We Wanted To Be Rich, We'd Be Doing Smething Else.

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

Tiny Cooper Is Not The World's Gayest Person, And He Is Not The World's Largest Person, But I Believe He May Be The World's Largest Person Who Is Really, Really Gay, And Also The World's Gayest Person Who Is Really, Really Large.

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.

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

The Idea Is That For Ten Minutes, We Forget That We Have Feelings. And We Forget About Protecting Ourselves Or Other People And We Just Say The Truth. For Ten Minutes. And Then We Can Go Back To Being Lame.

A Taste So Profound And Complex That It Can't Even Be Compared To Other Tastes, Only To Emotions. Cheesy Waffles, I Was Thinking, Tastes Like Love Without The Fear Of Love's Dissolution.

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.

At Least It Was Instant. At Least There Wasn't Any Pain." I Knew He Was Only Trying To Help, But He Didn't Get It. There Was Pain. A Dul Endless Pain In My Gut That Wouldn't Go Away Even When I Knelt On The Stingingly Frozen Tile Of The Bathroom, Dry-heaving.

If You Were To Go, And Hopefully Someday You Will, You Would See A Lot Of Paintings Of Dead People. You'd See Jesus On The Cross, And You'd See A Dude Get Stabbed In The Neck, And You'd See People Dying At Sea And In Battle And A Parade Of Martyrs. But Not. One. Single. Cancer. Kid. Nobody Biting It From The Plague Or Smallpox Or Yellow Fever Or Whatever, Because There Is No Glory In Illness. There Is No Meaning To It. There Is No Honor In Dying Of.

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

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

This Is What I Love About Novels - Both Reading Them And Writing Them. They Jump Into The Abyss To Be With You Where You Are.

'cause I'm Just - I Want To Go To Amsterdam, And I Want Him To Tell Me What Happens After The Book Is Over, And I Just Don't Want My Particular Life, And Also The Sky Is Depressing Me, And There Is This Old Swing Set Out Here That My Dad Made For Me When I Was A Kid.' 'i Must See This Old Swing Set Of Tears Immediately,' He Said. 'i'll Be Over In Twenty Minutes.'

Doing Stuff Never Feels As Good As You Hope It Will Feel.

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

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.

When Did We See Each Other Face-to-face? Not Until You Saw Into My Cracks And I Saw Into Yours. Before That, We Were Just Looking At Ideas Of Each Other, Like Looking At Your Window Shade But Never Seeing Inside. But Once The Vessel Cracks, The Light Can Get In. The Light Can Get Out.

As Much As Life Can Suck, It Always Beats The Alternative.

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

What's The Point In Being Alive If You Don't At Least Try To Do Something Remarkable? How Very Odd, To Believe God Gave You Life, And Yet Not Think That Life Asks More Of You Than Watching Tv.

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

What's That?" "the Laundry Basket?" "no, Next To It." "i Don't See Anything Next To It." "it's My Last Shred Of Dignity. It's Very Small.

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

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.

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

Anything That Happens All At Once Is Just As Likely To Unhappen All At Once, You Know?

The Five Of Us Walking Confidently In A Row, I'd Never Felt Cooler. The Great Perhaps Was Upon Us, And We Were Invincible. The Plan May Have Had Faults, But We Did Not.

Because You're My Friend, Wingnut.

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

One Day, You’re 17 And You’re Planning For Someday. And Then Quietly, Without You Ever Really Noticing, Someday Is Today. And Then Someday Is Yesterday. And This Is Your Life.

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

You Can't Just Make Me Different, And The Leave. Because I Was Fine Before.

A Desert Blessing, An Ocean Curse.

Isn't It Also That On Some Fundamental Level We Find It Difficult To Understand That Other People Are Human Beings In The Same Way That We Are? We Idealize Them As Gods Or Dismiss Them As Animals.

Interesting Capitalization,' I Said. 'yeah. I'm A Big Believer In Random Capitalization. The Rules Of Capitalization Are So Unfair To Words In The Middle.

I Had A Moral Opposition To Eating Before Dawn On The Grounds That I Was Not A Nineteenth-century Russian Peasant Fortifying Myself For A Day In The Fields.

What's The Meaning Of Life? Other People.

Meaning Of Life

Dear Teens At Starbucks Wearing 'abstain From Sex 2 Attain Ur Goals' T-shirts: Doesn't It Depend On What My Goals Are?

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.

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

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.

There Is No Try. There Is Only Do.

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.

Did I Help You Toward A Fate You Didn't Want, Alaska, Or Did I Just Assist In Your Willful Self-destruction?

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

And He Found Himself Thinking That Maybe Stories Don't Just Make Us Matter To Each Other - Maybe They're Also The Only Way To The Infinite Mattering He'd Been After For So Long.

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