Jay Asher

“Yes, there are major gaps in my story. Some parts I just couldn't figure out how to tell. Or couldn't bring myself to say out loud. Events I haven't come to grips with... that I'll never come to grips with. And if I never have to say them out loud, then I never have to think them all the way trough.”

“Those are some strong currents you're swimming against.”

“And what about you-the rest of you-did you notice the scars you left behind? No. Probably not.”

“I want to collapse. I want to fall on the sidewalk right them and drag myself to the ivy.”

“In the darkest days, the Lord puts the best people into your life.” – Augustus’ Mom”

“There will come a time,” I said, “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. There will be no one left to remember Aristotle or Cleopatra, let alone you. Everything that we did and built and wrote and thought and discovered will be forgotten and all of this”—I gestured encompassingly—“will have been for naught. Maybe that time is coming soon and maybe it is millions of years away, but even if we survive the collapse of our sun, we will not survive forever. 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. God knows that’s what everyone else does.” – Hazel Grace Lancaster”

“I pretended not to notice him. Not because I had anything against him, but because my heart and my trust were in the process of collapsing. And that collapse created a vacuum in my chest. Like every nerve in my body was withering in, pulling away from my fingers and toes. Pulling back and disappearing.”

“Expose yourself," they said. "Let us see your deepest and your darkest."My deepest and my darkest? What are you, my gynecologist?”

“When you mess with one part of a person's life, you're messing with their entire life.”

“I needed a break... from myself.”

“I decided to find out how people at school might react if one of the students never came back.”

“I didn't feel physically sick. But mentally. My mind was twisting in so many ways. (...) We once saw a documentary on migraines. One of the men interviewed used to fall on his knees and bang his head against the floor, over and over during attacks. This diverted the pain from deep inside his brain, where he couldn't reach it, to a pain outside that he had control over.”

“The name sounds almost too perfect. And as I said, you look perfect, too. The only thing left... is to be perfect.”

“I simply wanted a kiss. I was a freshman girl who had never been kissed. Never. But I liked the boy, he liked me, and I was going to kiss him. That's the story, the whole story, right there.”

“We both laugh. And it feels good. A release. Like laughing at a funeral. Maybe inappropriate, but definitely needed.”

“Her words, they're not warm anymore. She might want me to hear them that way, but they're burning me up instead. In my mind. In my heart”

“Because our lies matched. It was a sign.”

“Betrayal. It's one of the worst feelings.”

“The wonderful thing about a yearbook photo is that everyone shares the moment with you ... Forever”

“ȘI ERA AȘA DE NOUĂ ÎN ȘCOALĂ, ÎNCÂT ZVONURILE AU UMBRIT ORICE ALTCEVA ȘTIAM EU DESPRE EA”

“[…] M-AM ÎNDRĂGOSTIT DE BĂIATUL PE CARE L-A LĂSAT ÎN URMA EI.”

“Trust me, not every girl would give up his sweatshirt just because a girl asks.”

“People grow apart, and sometimes, there nothing anyone can do about it.”

“I didn't humiliate him by pointing it out because that's not how you treat friends. You don't judge them. You don't humiliate them. I bet he's been judging me all along.”

“They were like two magnets who couldn't decide whether to attract or repel.”

“Rejection always hurts, but having it come from my best friend was the worst.”

“And here he is again, yet things feel like they'll never be as easy between us as they once were.”

“One little ripple started today could create a typhoon fifteen years from now.”

“Will I ever get control of my life? Will I always be shoved back and pushed around by those I trust?”

“You don't need to watch out for me, Clay."But I did, Hannah. And I wanted to. I could have helped you. But when I tried, you pushed me away.I can almost hear Hannah's voice speaking my next thought for me. "Then why didn't you try harder?”

“Because no, I didn’t push her away. I didn’t add to her pain or do anything tohurt her. Instead, I left her alone in that room. The only person who might’ve been able to reach out and save her from herself. To pull her back from wherever she was heading.I did what she asked and I left. When I should have stayed.”

“I wanted to tell you everything. And that hurt because some things were too scary. Some things even I didn’t understand. How could I tell someone—someone I was really talking to for the first time—everything I was thinking?I couldn’t. It was too soon.”

“Because what if I got to know you and you turned out to be just like they said? What if you weren’t the person I hoped you were?That, more than anything, would have hurt the most.”

“30 minutes is a long time to wait for a Valentine's date.”

“The longer you wait, and this is true, the slower the hands will move.”

“Even though I had a history with that house, it didn't matter. You can't go back to how things were. How you thought they were. All you really have...is now.”

“When you hold people up for ridicule, you have to take responsibility when other people act on it.”

“But sometimes there’s nothing left to do but move on.”

“If I had a chance with him, I missed it. No, I didn't miss it. I threw it away.”

“I was so anxious about what kind of kiss it would be-because my friends back home described so many types-and it turned out to be the beautiful kind. You didn't shove your tongue down my throat. You didn't grab my butt. We just held our lips together...and kissed.”

“But they were wrong. There was a reason.”

“This time, for the first time, I saw the possibilities in giving up. I even found hope in it.”

“And at some point, the struggle becomes too much-too tiring-and you consider letting go. Allowing tragedy... or whatever... to happen.”

“Everything about it was false. Right then, in that office, with the realization that no one knew the truth about my life, my thoughts about the world were shaken.”

“That is all that happened. Why did you hear something else?”

“Maybe it's not as important to you as it was for me, but that's not for you to decide.”

“And it feels strange, almost sad, to walk through ther empty halls. Each step I take sounds so lonely.”

“Maybe if I forgot things once in a while, we'd all be a little bit happier.”

“It's important to be aware of how we treat others. Even though someone appears to shrug off a sideways comment or to not be affected by a rumor, it's impossible to know everything else going on in that person's life, how we might be adding to his/her pain. People do have an impact on the lives of others; that's undeniable.”

“Do you remember the last thing you said to me? The last thing you did to me? And what was the last thing I said to you? Because trust me when I said it I knew it was the last thing I’d ever say.”