John Green

“We left. We did not say: Don't drive, You're drunk. We did not say: We aren't letting you in that car when you are upset. We did not say: We insist on going with you. We did not say: This can wait until tomorrow. Anything-everything-can wait.”

“I thought: This is not good. I though: I am not bad at kissing. Not at bad at all. I thought: I am clearly the greatest kisser in the history of the universe.”

“I thought: We are not close enough. I though: He will not hear it. I thought: He will hear it and be out so fast that we will have no chance. I thought: Twenty seconds. I was breathing hard and fast.”

“Hands on her shoulders, I noted. Fast, but not too fast or it's going to be over, fast. Keep your grunting to a minimum.”

“Now i did think, The smoke will drive the bugs away. And, to some degree,it did. I'd be lying, though, if I claimed I became a smoker to ward off insects.I became a smoker because 1. I was on an Adirondack swing by myself, and 2. I had cigarettes, and 3.I figured that if everyone else could smoke a cigarette without coughing, I could damn well, too.In short, I didn't have a very good reason. So yeah, let's just say that 4.it was the bugs. I made it through three drags before I felt nauseuos and dizzy and only semipleasantly buzzed. I got up to leave As I stood, a voice behind me.”

“Not Really," he said then lit a cigarette and handed it to me. I inhaled. Coughed. Wheezed. Gasped for breath. Coughed again. Considered vomiting. Grabbed the swinging bench, head spinning, and threw the cigarette to the ground and stomped on it, convinced my Great Perhaps did not involve cigarettes.”

“I liked reading biographies of writers, even if (as was the case with Monsieur Rabelais)I'd never read any of their actual writing. I flipped to the back and found the highlighted quote ("NEVER USE A HIGHLIGHTER IN MY BOOKS,”

“I tried to imagine him capital-S Somewhere as we prayed, but even then I could not quite convince myself that he and I would be together again. I already knew too many dead people. I knew that time would now pass for me differently then 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.”

“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 getting 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.”

“Osteosarcoma sometimes takes a limb to check you out. The, if it like you, it takes the rest.”

“I could stand up and go to her and kiss her. I could. But there is still too much to be ruined.”

“She raised one leg and gave me all her weight as I dipped her. She either trusted me or wanted to fall.”

“or because he got eighteen years when he should have gotten more.''Seventeen,' Gus corrected.'I'm assuming you've got some time, you interrupting bastard.”

“I kind of think that everyone who disagrees with me is wrong.”

“We did a few things worth remembering, and I wish for someone to remember them.”

“I said 'I'm sorry, sir, but we don't speak Swedish.''Well, of course you don't. Neither do I. Who the hell speaks Swedish?”

“There are probably some girls who don't want guys to show up at their house randomly on a Tuesday night with questions about Edwin Schrödinger. I am sure such girls exist. But they don't live at my house.”

“We had to forgive to survive the labyrinth”

“I don't know what I believe, Hazel. I thought being an adult meant knowing what you believe, but that has not been my experience.”

“And then it was the kind of dark your eyes never adjust to.”

“and in freedom, most people find sin.”

“If the inevitably of human oblivion worries you, I encourage you to ignore it. God knows that's what everyone else does.”

“Ultimately what I like about reading together is that we all make it happen together. Of course even amid shared experience we’re still alone… each reading of each book is unique. But what a comfort it is to share readings and experiences. How lucky we are when we get to be alone together.”

“For me, the hero’s journey is not the voyage from weakness to strength. The true hero’s journey is the voyage from strength to weakness.”

“Augustus Waters died eight days after his prefuneral, at Memorial, in the ICU, when the cancer, which was made of him, finally stopped his heart, which was also made of him.”

“I hate myself I hate myself I hate this I hate this I disgust myself I hate it I hate it I hate it just let me fucking die.”

“Ich lese viel, habe es schon als Teenager geliebt. Und ich liebe es, über Leser zu schreiben. Menschen, die lesen, haben eine so reiche Beziehung zur Welt. Sie betrachten das Leben nicht nur durch ihre eigenen Augen, sondern auch durch die Augen all derer, über die sie gelesen haben.”

“If only we could see the endless string on consequences that result from or smallest actions. But we can't know better until knowing better is useless.”

“Augustus Waters was the great star-crossed love of my life. Ours was an epic love story, and I won’t be able to get more than a sentence into it without disappearing into a puddle of tears. Gus knew. Gus knows. I will not tell you our love story, because—like all real love stories—it will die with us, as it should.”

“the definition of humanness is the opportunity to marvel at the majesty of creation”

“Contemporaneity,” to quote AIA, “specializes in the kind of battles wherein no one loses anything of any value, except arguably their lives.”

“Any attempts to feign normal social interactions were just depressing because it was so glaringly obvious that everyone I spoke to for the rest of my life would feel awkward and self-conscious around me, except maybe kids like Jackie who just didn’t know any better.”

“Everybody was so kind. Strong, too. In the darkest days, the Lord puts the best people into your life.”“Quick, give me a throw pillow and some thread because that needs to be an Encouragement,”

“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”

“Nothing was happening, really, but the moment was thick with mattering”

“Books—they weren't ladders out of the abyss, but they were companions.”

“I love you like crazycakes.”

“Qualities of a Good Nurse: Go," I said."1. Doesn't pun on your disability," Isaac said."2. Gets blood on the first try," I said."Seriously, that is huge. I mean is this my freaking arm or a dartboard? 3. No condescending voice.""How are you doing, sweetie?" I asked, cloying. "I'm going to stick you with a needle now. There might be a little ouchie.""Is my wittle fuffywump sickywicky?" he answered. "Most of them are good, actually. I just want to get the hell out of this place.”

“That’s what I was thinking about before you came. I was thinking about your mattering business. 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 do. And I got so backwards, trying to make myself 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.”“You don’t even know why you need to be world-famous; you just think you do.”

“But you want to see shapes; you want to see stories, so you pick them out of the sky.”

“I know that books seem like the ultimate thing that’s made by one person, but that’s not true… Every reading of a book is a collaboration between the reader and the writer who are making the story up together.”

“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.”

“The way young people speak about one another's bodies says a great deal about our society. In today's world, boys are much more likely to objectify girl's bodies than the other way around. Boys will say amongst themselves that so-and-so has a nice rack, while girls will more likely say that a boy is cute, a term that describes both physical and emotional characteristics. This has the effect of turning girls into mere objects, while boys are seen by girls as whole people-"And then Lara stood up, and in her delicate, innocent accent, cut Dr. William Morse off. "You're so hot! I weesh you'd shut up and take off your clothes."The students laughed, but all of the teachers turned around and looked at her, stunned silent. She sat down."What's you name, dear?""Lara,"she said."Now, Lara." Maxx said, looking down at his paper to remember the line, "what we have here is a very interesting case study- a female objectifying me, a male. It's so unusual that I can only assume you're making an attempt at humor."Lara stood up again and shouted, "I'm not keeding! Take off your clothes."He nervously looked down at the paper, and then looked up at all of us, smiling."Well, it is certainly important to subvert the patriarchal paradigm , and I suppose this is a way. All right, then.”

“What are you assholes looking at?" "Nothing," said Radar. "We're certainly not looking at your eyebrows.”

“All those paper people living in their paper houses, burning the future to stay warm.”

“there she is, and I am watching her through Plexiglas, and she looks like Margo Roth Spiegelman, this girl I have known since I was two–this girl who was an idea that I loved.And it is only now, when she closes her notebook and places it inside a backpack next to her and then stands up and walks toward us, that I realize that the idea is not only wrong by dangerous. What a treacherous thing it is to believe that a person is more than a person.”

“You realise that trying to keep your distance from me will not lessen my affection for you,” he said.”

“Thanks for not trying to see me when I looked like hell.”“To be fair, you still look pretty bad.”

“Okay.”

“How strange and how lovely it is to be anything at all.”