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You'll Live Forever In Our Hearts, Big Man. That Particularly Galled Me, Because It Implied The Immortality Of Those Left Behind: You Will Live Forever In My Memory, Because I Will Live Forever! I Am Your God Now, Dead Boy! I Own You!

-John Green

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You'll Live Forever In

John Green

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You'll Live Forever In Our Hearts, Big Man. That Particularly Galled Me, Because It Implied The Immortality Of Those Left Behind: You Will Live Forever In My Memory, Because I Will Live Forever! I Am Your God Now, Dead Boy! I Own You!

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

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.

Tiny, The Next Time That You Try To Set Me Up With A Girl With A Secret Boyfriend Can You At Least Inform Me That She Has A Secret Boyfriend? Also, If You Don't Call Me Back Within Five Minutes, I'm Going To Assume You Found A Way Back To Evanston. Furthermore, You Are An Asshat. That Is All.

If You Don't Say The Honest Thing, It Never Becomes True.

I Opened The Door. He Looked Down At My Shirt And Smiled. "funny," He Said. "don't Call My Boobs Funny," I Answered.

I Think Inspiration Is Always Around; It's Just A Question Of Whether Or Not You're Noticing It.

Everybody Should Have True Love, And It Should Last At Least As Long As Your Life Does.

Wow,” I Said. “are You Making This Up?” “hazel Grace, Could I, With My Meager Intellectual Capacities, Make Up A Letter From Peter Van Houten Featuring Phrases Like ‘our Triumphantly Digitized Contemporaneity’?” “you Could Not,” I Allowed. “can I, Can I Have The Email Address?” “of Course,” Augustus Said, Like It Was Not The Best Gift Ever.

Babies Are Made Through An Act That You Will Eventually Find Intriguing But For Right Now Will Just Sort Of Horrify You, And Also Sometimes People Do Stuff That Involves Baby-making Parts That Does Not Actually Involve Making Babies, Like For Instance Kiss Each Other In Places That Are Not On The Face.

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.

I'm On A Roller Coaster That Only Goes Up," He Said. "and It Is My Privilege And My Responsibility To Ride All The Way Up With You," I Said.

And The Moral Of The Story Is That You Don't Remember What Happened. What You Remember Becomes What Happened. And The Second Moral Of The Story, If A Story Can Have Multiple Morals, Is That Dumpers Are Not Inherently Worse Than Dumpees - Breaking Up Isn't Something That Gets Done To You; It's Something That Happens With You.

Moral Of The Story

You May Choose Your Song, But Know This: Tiny. Cooper. Hates. Over. The. Rainbow.

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

He Missed His Imagined Future.

Also, It Was A Bit Hopeless," He Said. "a Bit Defeatist." "if By Defeatist You Mean Honest, Then I Agree." "i Don't Think Defeatism Is Honest, " Dad Answered. "i Refuse To Accept That.

I Leave, And The Leaving Is So Exhilarating I Know I Can Never Go Back. But Then What? Do I Just Keep Leaving Places, And Leaving Them, And Leaving Them, Tramping A Perpetual Journey?

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

In General-like Not Just In Fiction But In Life-it Doesn't Work Out Well When Someone Imagines Someone Else As A Manic Pixie Dream Girl Or An Edward Cullen Or Anything Other Than A Full, Complex Human Being. That Said, While I've Tried To Reflect That In My Books, I Don't Think I've Always Succeeded, Because I Am Always Running Up Against My Own Insufficiencies And Biases Etc.

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

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.

As Alaska Zipped Through Something Obvious About Linear Equations, Stoner/baller Hank Walsten Said, "wait, Wait. I Don't Get It." "that's Because You Have Eight Functioning Brain Cells." "studies Show That Marijuana Is Better For Your Health Than Those Cigarettes," Hank Said. Alaska Swallowed A Mouthful Of Fries, Took A Drag On Her Cigarette, And Blew A Smoke At Hank. "i May Die Young," She Said. "but At Least I'll Die Smart. Now, Back To Tangents.

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.

Entropy Increases. Things Fall Apart.

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

We Were Kissing. I Thought: This Is Good. I Thought: I Am Not Bad At This Kissing. Not Bad At All. I Thought: I Am Clearly The Greatest Kisser In The History Of The Universe. Suddenly She Laughed And Pulled Away From Me. She Wiggled A Hand Out Of Her Sleeping Bag And Wiped Her Face. "you Slobbered On My Nose," She Said, And Laughed

What Is The Point Of Being Alive If You Don't At Least Try To Do Something Remarkable?

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

Colin Singleton

Let Me Just Acknowlege That The Function Of Grammar Is To Make Language As Efficent And Clear And Transparent As Possible. But If We’re All Constantly Correcting Each Other’s Grammar And Being Really Snotty About It, Then People Stop Talking Because They Start To Be Petrified That They’re Going To Make Some Sort Of Terrible Grammatical Error And That’s Precisely The Opposite Of What Grammar Is Supposed To Do, Which Is To Facilitate Clear Communication.

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

Barnacles On The Container Ship Of Consciousness.

In The Contemporary World Where Things Fall Apart, And The Centre Cannot Hold, You Have To Imagine A Community Where There Is No Centre. Hank, At The End Of This Year I Started Thinking That A Lot Of Life Is About Doing Things That Don’t Suck With People Who Don’t Suck.

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

There Are Infinite Numbers Between 0 And 1.

We Imagine People As Animals Or Gods. -but She Was Just A Person, A Girl.

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

Oh, God, Alaska, I Love You. I Love You,' And The Colonel Whispered, 'i'm So Sorry, Pudge. I Know You Did,' And I Said, 'no. Not Past Tense.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

Standing In Line Is A Form Of Oppression

Standing In Line

Life Works Best When We Think Of People As People.

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

The Catholic Hierarchy Has Become More Conservative. What We Don't Know Is Whether [catholic Voters] Will Become Increasingly Conservative, Or .. Stay Swing Voters.

I Always Had This Secret Suspicion That I Was Special.

People Always Get Used To Beauty, Though.” “i Haven’t Gotten Used To You Just Yet,” He Answered, Smiling. I Felt Myself Blushing. “thank You For Coming To Amsterdam,” He Said. “thank You For Letting Me Hijack Your Wish,” I Said. “thank You For Wearing That Dress Which Is Like Whoa

I've Gotten Really Hot Since You Went Blind.

No Matter How Hard You Kick, No Matter How High You Get, You Can't Go All The Way Around.

No Headboards Were Broken.

I Knew That Time Would Now Pass For Me Differently Than It Would For Him - That I, Like Everyone In That Room, Would Go On Accumulating Loves And Losses While He Would Not. And For Me, That Was The Final And Truly Unbearable Tragedy: Like All The Innumerable Dead, He'd Once And For All Been Demoted From Haunted To Haunter.

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

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

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.

The Way I Figure It, Everyone Gets A Miracle.

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

But It Is The Nature Of Stars To Cross, And Never Was Shakespeare More Wrong Than When He Has Cassius Note, ‘the Fault, Dear Brutus, Is Not In Our Stars / But In Ourselves.

Do Not Worry Too Much About Your Lawn. You Will Soon Find If You Haven't Already That Almost Every Adult American Devotes Tremendous Time And Money To The Maintenance Of An Invasive Plant Species Called Turf Grass That We Can't Eat. I Encourage You To Choose Better Obsessions.

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

And I Wanted To Tell Her That The Pleasure For Me Wasn't Planning Or Doing Or Leaving; The Pleasure Was In Seeing Our Strings Cross And Separate And Then Come Back Together.

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

We're Professional Worriers. You're Constantly Imagining Things That Could Go Wrong And Then Writing About Them.

Imagining Things

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

I'm Sorry. I Know You Loved Her. It Was Hard Not To.

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 Never Liked Writing Concluding Paragraphs To Papers - Where You Repeat What You've Already Said With Phrases Like 'in Summation', And 'to Conclude'.

There Is No Best And No Worst, ...those Judgments Have No Real Meaning Because There Is Only What Is

This Is The Homosexuality Is An Abomination Club, Right?

I Spent Your Wish On That Doucheface,” I Said Into His Chest. “hazel Grace. No. I Will Grant You That You Did Spend My One And Only Wish, But You Did Not Spend It On Him. You Spent It On Us.

My One And Only

The Universe Is Biased Toward Consciousness Because The Universe Wants To Be Noticed. It's A Way Into Existential Hope That Doesn't Have Too Much Cliché Wrapped Around It.

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

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.

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.

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

I Wish I Knew How To Quit You, Tumblr.

Something About Telling That Story Made My Gut Grow Back Together." What?" Oh, Nothing. Just Thinking Out Loud." That's Who You Really Like. The People You Can Think Out Loud In Front Of." The People Who've Been In Your Secret Hiding Places." The People You Bite Your Thumb In Front Of." Hi." Hi." ..." ..." Wow. My First Lindsey." My Second Colin." That Was Fun. Let's Try It Again." Sold." ..." ..." ...".

I Spy With My Little Eye A Great Story.

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.

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

Home Is Where The Heart Is, Good Friends Are Hard To Find And Impossible To Forget. True Love Is Born From Hard Times.

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

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.

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

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.

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

That Feeling Of Finishedness Does Not Come All At Once, And It Is Not Easily Won, But I Think Once You Get There It Is Hard To Go Back.

The Dead Are Visible Only In The Terrible Lidless Eye Of Memory.

Because No One Thought She Was A Person, She Had No One To Really Talk To.

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

Everything's Uglier Close Up," She Said. "not You," I Answered.

He Wanted To Draw Out The Moment Before The Moment- Because As Good As Kissing Feels, Nothing Feels As Good As The Anticipation Of It.

Books Belong To Their Readers.

...kaitlyn Never Wore Open-toed Shoes On Account Of How She Hated Her Feet Because She Felt Her Second Toes Were Too Long, As If The Second Toe Was A Window Into The Soul Or Something.

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.

Teenagers Think They Are Invincible

Thank You For Wearing That Dress Which Is Like Whoa.

Most Loves Don't Last. But Some Do.

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

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.

We Just Sat There Quiet For A Long Time, Which Was Fine, And I Was Thinking About Way Back In The Very Beginning In The Literal Heart Of Jesus.

Hazel Grace,” He Said. “hi,” I Said. “how Are You?” “grand,” He Said. “i Have Been Wanting To Call You On A Nearly Minutely Basis, But I Have Been Waiting Until I Could Form A Coherent Thought In Re An Imperial Affliction.” (he Said “in Re.” He Really Did. That Boy.)

At Some Point, You Gotta Stop Looking Up At The Sky, Or One Of These Days You'll Look Back Down And See That You Floated Away, Too.

Jp Shouted, "tell Them What You Just Did To Each Other!" "um," I Said. "we Kissed," The Duke Said. "that's Kinda Gay," Keun Said. "i Am A Girl." "yeah, I Know, But So Is Tobin," Keun Said.

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.

Were She Better Or You Sicker, Then The Stars Would Not Be So Terribly Crossed, But It Is The Nature Of The Stars To Cross.

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

'do You Know,' He Asked In A Delicious Accent, 'what Dom Pérignon Said After Inventing Champagne?' 'no?' I Said. 'he Called Out To His Fellow Monks, 'come Quickly: I Am Tasting The Stars!'

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

Every Year, Many, Many Stupid People Graduate From College. And If They Can Do It, So Can You.

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

The Future Will Erase Everything--there's No Level Of Fame Or Genius That Allows You To Transcend Oblivion. The Infinite Future Makes That Kind Of Mattering Impossible.

Seriously, Don't Even Get Me Started On My Hot Bod. You Don't Want To See Me Naked, Dave. Seeing Me Naked Actually Took Hazel Grace's Breath Away,' He Said, Nodding Toward The Oxygen Tank.

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

She’s The Kind Of Person Who Either Dies Tragically At Twenty-seven, Like Jimi Hendrix And Janis Joplin, Or Else Grows Up To Win, Like, The First-ever Nobel Prize For Awesome.

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

Sometimes It's Okay To Cheat On Things - But Don't Ever Cheat On People. Because Once You Start, It's Very Hard To Stop. You Find Out How Easy It Is To Do.

He Liked The Mere Act Of Reading, The Magic Of Turning Scratches On A Page Into Words Inside His Head.

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

I Like The Strings. I Always Have. Because That's How It Feels. But The Strings Make Pain Seem More Fatal Than It Is, I Think. We're Not As Frail As The Strings Would Make Us Believe. And I Like The Grass, Too. The Grass Got Me To You, Helped Me To Imagine You As An Actual Person. But We're Not Different Sprouts From The Same Plant. I Can't Be You. You Can't Be Me. You Can Imagine Another Well – But Never Quite Perfectly, You Know?

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

But I Believe In True Love, You Know? I Don't Believe That Everybody Gets To Keep Their Eyes Or Not Get Sick Or Whatever, But Everybody Should Have True Love, And It Should Last At Least As Long As Your Life Does.

Love Is Tied To Truth.

Peeing Is Like A Good Book In That It Is Very, Very Hard To Stop Once You Start.

I Hate The Idea That, When It Comes To Books And Learning, Hard Is Often Seen As The Opposite Of Fun. It's Strange To Me That We Should Be So Quick To Give Up On A Book Or A Math Problem When We Are So Willing To Grapple, For Centuries If Necessary, With A Single Level Of Angry Birds.

You're Funny, And You're Smart, And You May Show Up Late, But You Always Show Up Eventually.

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.

In The First Century Ce, Roman Authorities Punished St. Apollonia By Crushing Her Teeth One By One With Pliers. Colin Often Thought About This In Relationship To The Monotony Of Dumping: We Have Thirty-two Teeth. After A While, Having Each Tooth Individually Destroyed Probably Gets Repetitive, Even Dull. But It Never Stops Hurting.

I Write About Broken People Who Need Other People In Order To Go On. But Those Are The Only Kind Of People I Know To Exist. We Are All Broken.

But Monotony Doesn't Make For Painlessness.

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

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 Don't See A Future Where We're All Taught By Robots. The Real Life, Physical Experience Of Being In A Classroom And Having Conversations With Knowledgeable People Is Immeasurably Valuable And Irreplaceable.

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.

One Of The Reasons That Metaphor And Symbolism Are Important In Books Is Because They Are Also Important To Life. Like, For Example Say You're In High School And You're A Boy And You Say To A Girl: "do You Like Anyone Right Now?" - That's Not The Question You're Asking. The Question You're Asking Is, "do You Like Me Right Now."

As Far As All Of Our Identities Are Dependent On How Other People Imagine Us We Are All Making Ourselves And Each Other Up All The Time

I Wanted More Time So We Could Fall In Love.

Falling In Love

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

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

The Food Was So Good That With Each Passing Course, Our Conversation Devolved Further Into Fragmented Celebrations Of Its Deliciousness: 'i Want This Dragon Carrot Risotto To Become A Person So I Can Take It To Las Vegas And Marry It.

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.

Even With Everything Broken And Decided Inside Her She Couldn't Quite Allow Herself To Disappear For Good.

‎"i Go To Seek A Great Perhaps.

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

Immigrant Parents

He Took A Bite, Swallowed. "god. If Asparagus Tasted Like That All The Time, I'd Be Vegetarian, Too." Some People In A Lacquered Wooden Boat Approached Us On The Canal Below. One Of Them, A Woman With Curly Blond Hair, Maybe Thirty, Drank From A Beer Then Raised Her Glass Towards Us And Shouted Something. "we Don't Speak Dutch," Gus Shouted Back. One Of The Others Shouted A Translation: "the Beautiful Couple Is Beautiful.

What Happened?" "during The Kiss?" "no, With You And Caroline." "oh," He Said. And Then After A Second, "caroline Is No Longer Suffering From Personhood.

I Feel Like My Life Is So Scattered Right Now. Like It's All The Small Pieces Of Paper And Someone's Turned On The Fan. But, Talking To You Makes Me Feel Like The Fan's Been Turned Off For A Little Bit. Like Things Could Actually Make Sense. You Completely Unscatter Me, And I Appreciate That So Much.

High School Is Neither A Democracy Nor A Dictatorship - Nor, Contrary To Popular Belief, An Anarchic State. High School Is A Divine-right Monarchy. And When The Queen Goes On Vacation, Things Change.

The Nature Of The Labyrinth, I Scribbled Into My Spiral Notebook, And The Way Out Of It. This Teacher Rocked. I Hated Discussion Classes. I Hated Talking, And I Hated Listening To Everyone Else Stumble On Their Words And Try To Phrase Things In The Vaguest Possible Way So They Wouldn't Sound Dumb, And I Hated How It Was All Just A Game Of Trying To Figure Out What The Teacher Wanted To Hear And Then Saying It. I'm In Class, So Teach Me.

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.

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.

Dying Is The Last Thing I Would Ever Do!

I Think About How Much Depends Upon A Best Friend. Then You Wake Up In The Morning You Swing Your Legs Out Of Bed And You Put Your Feet On The Ground And You Stand Up. You Don't Scoot To The Edge Of The Bed And Look Down To Make Sure The Floor Is There. The Floor Is Always There. Until It's Not.

The Colonel's Hand Was So Little, And I Grabbed It Tight, His Cold Seeping Into Me And My Warmth Into Him. 'i Memorized The Populations,' He Said.

Only Now That I Loved A Grenade Did I Understand The Foolishness Of Trying To Save Others From My Own Impending Fragmentation: I Couldn’t Unlove Augustus Waters. And I Didn’t Want To.

Just Spend A Few More Months Playing Video Games. That Hand-eye Coordination Will Come In Handy When You Get To Third Base.

The Abbreviated Exam Week Meant That Wednesday Was The Last Day Of School For Us. And All Day Long, It Was Hard Not To Walk Around, Thinking About The Lastness Of It All.

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

He Is Both The Source Of My Happiness And The One I Want To Share It With. I Have To Believe That’s A Sign.

I'm A Bad Boyfriend. She's A Bad Girlfriend. We Deserve Each Other.

Looking For Alaska Book

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?

We Live In This Irreparably Broken World, And I Don't Wish To Deny Reality, But The Amazing Thing To Me Is Not That We Refuse To Relinquish Hope As A Species. The Amazing Thing Is That We're Right To Hold On To Hope. The World May Be Broken, But Hope Is Not Crazy. ... Obviously Not All Stories End Happily. We Don't Always Have Good Fortune, But Hope Gives Us, As A Species And As Individuals, What We Otherwise Wouldn't Have: A Chance.

See, Popularity Is Complicated. You Have To Spend A Lot Of Time Thinking About Liking; You Have To Really Like Being Liked, And Also Sort Like Being Disliked.

Dating You Would Be Like A Series Of Unnecessary Root Canals Interspersed With Occasional Makeout Sessions.

Every Time I Try To Set Something In Chicago, I Get Intimidated By 'augie March.' It's Easy To Set Something In Indianapolis - We Don't Have 'augie March' Here. But I Love Writing About Chicago, And I Love Being There And Imagining Lives In Chicago. I Hope To Set Something There In The Future, But It's Intimidating.

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

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.

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.

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

History Doesn't Have A Curfew.

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.

When You Leave A Place, It's Best To Leave.

Ya Gotta Live Somewhere, But Also You Get To Live Somewhere.

Stop Thinking About The Landing, Because It's All About Falling.

But There Are A Thousand Ways To Look At It: Maybe The Strings Break, Or Maybe Our Ship S Sink, Or Maybe We're Grass--our Roots So Interdependent That No One Is Dead As Long As Someone Is Still Alive. We Don't Suffer From A Shortage Of Metaphors, Is What I Mean. But You Have To Be Careful Which Metaphor You Choose, Because It Matters.

How Are The Eyes?' 'oh, Excellent,' He Said. 'i Mean, They're Not In My Head Is The Only Problem.' 'awesome, Yeah,' Gus Said. 'not To One-up You Or Anything, But My Body Is Made Out Of Cancer.' 'so I Heard,' Issac Said, Trying Not To Let It Get To Him. He Fumbled Toward Gus's Hand And Found Only His Thigh. 'i'm Taken,' Gus Said.

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.

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

You're Not Boring. You've Got To Stop Saying That, Or People Will Start Believing You.

Augustus," I Said. "really. You Don't Have To Do This." "sure I Do," He Said. "i Found My Wish." "god, You're The Best," I Told Him. "i Bet You Say That To All The Boys Who Finance Your International Travel," He Answered.

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 Kept Thinking There Were Two Kinds Of Adults: There Were...miserable Creatures Who Scoured The Earth In Search Of Something To Hurt. And Then There Were People Like My Parents, Who Walked Around Zombically, Doing Whatever They Had To Do To Keep Walking Around.

Anyway, That Was The Last Good Day I Had With Gus Until The Last Good Day.

Something Invisible Snapped Inside Her.

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

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

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

Funerals...are For The Living.

Before I Got Here, I Thought For A Long Time That The Way Out Of The Labyrinth Was To Pretend That It Did Not Exist, To Build A Small, Self-sufficient World In The Back Corner Of The Endless Maze And To Pretend That I Was Not Lost, But Home.

The Minister Said, “let Us Pray,” But As Everyone Else Bowed Their Head, I Could Only Stare Slack-jawed At The Sight Of Peter Van Houten. After A Moment, He Whispered, “we Gotta Fake Pray,” And Bowed His Head.

We Must Strike Down The Insidious Lie That A Book Is The Creation Of An Individual Soul Labouring In Isolation. We Must Strike It Down Because It Threatens The Overall Quality And Breadth Of American Literature.

Boys Are Much More Likely To Objectify Girls Bodies, While Boys Are Seen By Girls As Whole People.

This Star Won't Go Out. And It Won't. We Won't Let It.

She Loved Mysteries So Much That She Became One.

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

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.

Augustus: “you Probably Need Some Rest.” Me: “i’m Okay.” Augustus: “okay.” (pause.) “what Are You Thinking About?” Me: “you.” Augustus: “what About Me?” Me: “‘i Do Not Know Which To Prefer, / The Beauty Of Inflections / Or The Beauty Of Innuendos, / The Blackbird Whistling / Or Just After.’” Augustus: “god, You Are Sexy.” Me: “we Could Go To Your Room.” Augustus: “i’ve Heard Worse Ideas.

People, I Thought, Wanted Security. They Couldn't Bear The Idea Of Death Being A Big Black Nothing, Couldn't Bear The Thought Of Their Loved Ones Not Existing, And Couldn't Even Imagine Themselves Not Existing. I Finally Decided That People Believed In An Afterlife Because They Couldn't Bear Not To.

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