John Green

“Please stop," I said. "You're upsetting the black Santas.”

“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.”

“Someone once told her there’s a formula for how long it takes to get over someone, that it’s half as long as the time you’ve been together.But I couldn’t see it again, and it occurred to me that the voracious ambition of humans is never sated by dreams coming true, because there is always the thought that everything might be done better and again.”

“Because memories fall apart, too. And then you're left with nothing, left not even with a ghost but with its shadow.”

“Use your words”

“I can only hope,” Julie said, turning back to Gus, “they grow into the kind of thoughtful, intelligent young men you’ve become.”I resisted the urge to audibly gag. “He’s not that smart,” I said to Julie.“She’s right. It’s just that most really good-looking people are stupid, so I exceed expectations.”“Right, it’s primarily his hotness,” I said.“It can be sort of blinding,” he said.“It actually did blind our friend Isaac,” I said.“Terrible tragedy, that. But can I help my own deadly beauty?”“You cannot.”“It is my burden, this beautiful face.”“Not to mention your body.”“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.“Okay, enough,” Gus’s dad said.”

“After a while, having each tooth individually destroyed probably gets repetitive, even dull. But it never stops hurting.”

“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.”

“He's become the one the songs are about, and while part of me knows he's probably worth that, another part is yelling at me to slow the fuck down.”

“I go to seek a Great Perhaps.”

“He shook his head, just looking at me."What?" I asked."Nothing," he said."Why are you looking at me like that?"Augustus half smiled. "Because you're beautiful. I enjoy looking at beautiful people, and I decided a while ago not to deny myself the simpler pleasures of existence.”

“And it occurred to me that the voracious ambition of humans is never sated by dreams coming true, because there is always the thought that everything might be done better and again.”

“When people call people nerds, mostly what they're saying is, 'you like stuff.' Which is not a good insult at all, like, 'you are too enthusiastic about the miracle of human conscience.”

“Hey, guys, do you remember that time I was double-seat-belted in the wayback and the door flew open and the beer fell out but I survived completely uninjured? How is that even possible?”

“That's what love is. Love is keeping the promise anyway.”

“Everybody should have true love, and it should last at least as long as your life does.”

“With all the planning she’d done, she must have known she was leaving, and even she couldn’t have been totally immune to the feeling. She’d had good days here. And on the last day, the bad days become so difficult to recall, because one way or another, she made a life here, just as I had. The town was paper, but the memories were not. All the things I’d done here, all the love and pity and compassion and violence and spite, kept welling up inside me. These whitewashed cinder-block walls. My white walls. Margo’s white walls. We’d been captive in them for so long, stuck in their belly like Jonah.”

“It seems to me that the great pleasure of human life is not in having an opinion, but rather in learning all the ways you are wrong, and all the nuances you failed to account for, and all the truths that turned out to be not as simple as you once believed. And it seems to me that one of the central pleasures of attending school is that you get to read with really well-informed people who can help welcome you into a complex world stuffed with rich and maddening ambiguity.”

“También me gustaría vivir más tiempo --me miró inquisitivamente. Tú sabes, por la relatividad o lo que sea. Aún me miraba confuso.Envejecemos más despacio cuando nos movemos rápidamente contra lo inmóvil. Así que justo ahora el tiempo está pasando más despacio para nosotros que para la gente en el suelo.Chicas universitarias dijo. Son muy inteligentes.”

“I think she and I were talking about how much I adored skateboarding on the computer but how it would never even occur to me to try and step on a skateboard in real life, and then she said, 'Let's play Truth or Dare' and then you fucked her." "Wait, you fucked her? In front of the Colonel?" Takumi cried. "I didn't fuck her.”

“That night, the booze felt great, as the warmth of the wine in my stomach spread through my body. I didn't like feeling stupid or out of control, but I liked the way it made everything (laughing, crying, peeing in front of your friends) easier.”

“Los héroes reales no son las personas haciendo cosas: los héroes reales son las personas NOTANDO las cosas, prestando atención”

“Las marcas que los humanos dejan también son muy a menudo cicatrices.”

“Era una especie de día hermoso, finalmente un verdadero verano en Indianápolis, cálido y húmedo, la clase de clima que se recuerda después de un largo invierno, que parece que el mundo no fue construido para los humanos, nosotros fuimos construidos para el mundo.”

“Time's a slut, she screws with everyone.”

“¿Qué más? Ella es tan hermosa. No te cansas de verla. Nunca te preocupas si es más inteligente que tú: sabes que lo es. Es graciosa sin querer serlo. La amo. Soy tan afortunado de amarla”

“whatever you're worried about, you're bigger than the worries.”

“Soy una granada," le dije de nuevo. "Sólo quiero mantenerme alejada de la gente y leer libros, pensar y estar con ustedes porque no hay nada que yo pueda hacer sobre dañarlos; están demasiado involucrados, así que por favor, déjenme hacer eso, ¿está bien? No estoy deprimida. No necesito salir más. Y no puedo ser una adolescente normal, porque soy un granada”

“Look, you’re right. Maybe I don’t like you the way someone should like you. I don’t like you in the call-you-and-read-you-a-poem-every-night-before-you-go-to-bed way. I’m crazy, okay? Sometimes I think, like, God, she’s superhot and smart and kind of pretentious but the pretentiousness just makes me kind of want her, and then other times I think it’s an amazingly bad idea, that dating you would be like a series of unnecessary root canals interspersed with occasional makeout sessions.”

“To tell you the truth, I prefer just your average, run-of-the-mill, everyday jackass with his glass-eyed, slack-jawed obliviousness to the guys who try to hijack my cool by reading poetry and listening to halfway-good music. I worked hard for my cool. I got my ass kicked in middle school for my cool. I came by this shit honestly.”

“Isaac was still clinging to the lectern. He started to cry. He pressed his forehead down to the podium and I watched his shoulders shake, and then finally, he said, 'Goddamn it, Augustus, editing your own eulogy.''Don't swear in the Literal Heart of Jesus,' Gus said.'Goddamn it," Isaac said again.”

“People are such idiots. As if there's something wrong with being in love.”

“I thought of telling her that I was seeing a boy, too, or at least that I'd watched a movie with one, just because I knew it would surprise and amaze her that anyone as disheveled and awkward and stunted as me could even briefly win the affections of a boy.”

“As the staggered lines rushed past him, the space between what we predict and what will happen. And in that space, Colin thought, there was room enough to reinvent himself.”

“I tried to tell myself that it could be worse, that the world was not a wish-granting factory, that I was living with cancer not dying of it, that I mustn't let it kill me before it kills me,...”

“Do the thing you're good at. Not many people are lucky enough to be so good at something.”

“Цял ден й повтарях "завинаги" "завинаги, завинаги, завинаги", а тя не спираше да бръщолеви разни неща, но без да го каже нито веднъж. Сякаш вече ме нямаше. Това "завинаги" беше като клетва! Как можеш просто ей така да нарушиш дадена клетва?Понякога хората не си дават сметка точно в какво се заклеват.Така е, разбира се. Но въпреки това държиш на думата си. Точно това е любовта. Любовта е да държиш на дадената дума въпреки всичко. Не вярваш ли в истинската любов? Не отговорих. Не знаех какъв е отговорът на този въпрос. Но си помислих, че ако истинска любов съществуваше, това би трябвало да е дефиницията за нея.Аз обаче вярвам в истинската любов. Обичам я. А тя ми обеща. Обеща ми е да завинаги.”

“Always' was a promise! How can you just break the promise?" "Sometimes people don't always understand the promises they're making when they make them," I said.Isaac shot me a look. "Right, of course. But you keep the promise anyway. That's what love is. Love is keeping the promise anyway. Don't you believe in true love?"I didn't answer. I didn't have an answer.But I thought that if true love did exist, that was a pretty good definition of it.”

“Thomas Edison's last words were "It's beautiful over there." I don't know where "there" is but I believe it's somewhere, and I hope it's beautiful.”

“He remained convinced that romantic behaviour was basically monotonous and predictable and that therefore one could write a fairly straightforward formula that would predict the collision course of any two people.”

“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.”

“Apparently, the world is not a wish-granting factory.”

“And so. And so I choose to go on serving it. I choose to go north, even though like every other direction, it is rationally without hope.”

“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.”

“You just use the future to escape the present.”

“Worry is yet another side effect of dying.”

“I dont suppose i can wear my flamingo tie""it's a bit festive,given the occastion""Cant wear it to the opera","Cant wear it to a funeral. Cant use it to hang myself. it's a bit useless, as ties go.”

“People are supposed to care. It's good that people mean something to you, that you miss people when they're gone.”

“Do you know what your problem is? You can't live with the idea that someone might leave.”

“Augustus Waters fue el Alcalde de la Ciudad Secreta de Cancerlandia, y no es reemplazable comenzó Isaac. Otras personas serán capaces de contar historias divertidas sobre Gus, porque era un tipo divertido, pero déjenme contarles una seria: Un día después de que me extirparan mi ojo, Gus se presentó en el hospital. Yo estaba ciego y con el corazón roto y no quería hacer nada y Gus irrumpió en mi habitación y gritó: “¡Tengo una noticia maravillosa!” Y yo dije algo como: “Realmente no quiero escuchar una noticia maravillosa en este momento”, y Gus dijo: “Esta es una noticia maravillosa que quieres escuchar”, y yo le pregunté: “Bien, ¿cuál es?” y él dijo: “¡Vas a vivir una buena y larga vida llena de momentos grandiosos y terribles que ni siquiera puedes imaginar todavía!”