John Green

“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.”

“The sky is like a monochromatic contemporay painting, drawing me in its illusion of depth, pulling me up.”

“It was not enough to be the last guy she kissed. I wanted to be the last one she loved. And I knew I wasn’t. I knew it, and I hated her for it. I hated her for not caring about me. I hated her for leaving that night, and I hated myself , too, not only because I let her go but because if I had been enough for her, she wouldn’t have even wanted to leave. She would have just lain with me and talked and cried, and I would have listened and kissed at her tears as they pooled in her eyes.”

“We had to forgive to survive in the labyrinth. There were so many of us who would have to live with things done and things left undone that day. Things that did not go right, things that seemed okay at that time because we could not see the future. 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.”

“The Side Effects of Dying in Your Pants isn't really funny… Alright, it's a little funny.”

“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.”

“We all use the future to escape the present.”

“I'm a bad boyfriend. She's a bad girlfriend. We deserve each other.”

“I do not say goodbye. I believe that's one of the bullshitiest words ever invented. It's not like you're given the choice to say bad-bye, or awful-bye, or couldn't-care-less-about-you-bye. Everytime you leave, it's supposed to be a good one.”

“You can't just make yourself matter and then die, Alaska, because now I am irretrievably different..”

“All along — not only since she left, but for a decade before — I had been imagining her without listening, without knowing that she made as a poor a window as I did. And so I could not imagine her as a person who could feel fear, who could feel isolated in a roomful of people, who could be shy about her record collection because it was too personal to share. Someone who might have read travel books to escape having to live in the town that so many people escape to. Someone who — because no one thought she was a person — had no one to really talk to.”

“That smile could end wars and cure cancer.”

“I just want the pleasure of noticing these things at a safe distance...”

“I'm really not up for answering any questions that start with how, when, where, why or what.”

“Unrequited love can be survived in a way that once-requited love cannot.”

“On how to make boys like you:the third way is to be come something called "hot"Now Katie I would argue that there are at least twodistinct definitionsof hot. There is the like normalhuman definition which is that individual seemssuitable for mating. And then theirs the weird culturallyconstructed definition of hot which is that individual ismalnourished and has probably had plastic bags insertedinto her breasts. Now boys might find that hot now but I don't think there's anything inherently hot about it like if you went back to the 18th century and ask 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?”

“I am going to take this bucket of water and pour it on the flames of hell, and then I am going to use this torch to burn down the gates of paradise so that people will not love God for want of heaven or fear of hell, but because He is God.”

“I thought you hung the moon.”

“As much as life can suck, it always beats the alternative.”

“There were so many of us who would have to live with things done and things left undone that day. Things that did not go right, things that seemed okay at the time because we could not see the future. 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.”

“This was what I liked most about my friends: just sitting around & telling stories.”

“Nothing ever happens like you imagine it will… but then again, if you don’t imagine, nothing ever happens at all. Imagining isn’t perfect. You can’t get all the way inside someone else… But imagining being someone else, or the world being something else, is the only way in. It is the machine that kills the fascists”

“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.”

“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.”

“One of those moments he knew he'd remember and look back on, one of those moments that he'd try to capture in the stories he told. Nothing was happening, really, but the moment was thick with mattering.”

“I don't think you can ever fill the empty space with the thing you lost.”

“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.”

“I'm starting to realize that people lack good mirrors. It's so hard for anyone to show us how we look, & so hard for us to show anyone how we feel.”

“I figured something out," he said aloud. "The future is unpredictable."Hassan said, "Sometimes the kafir likes to say massively obvious things in a really profound voice.”

“You were with Margo Roth Spiegelman last night? At THREE A.M.? I nodded. Alone? I nodded. Oh my God, if you hooked up with her, you have to tell me every single thing that happened. You have to write me a term paper on the look and feel of Margo Roth Spiegelman's breasts. Thrity pages, minimum! I want you to do a photo-realistic pencil drawing. A sculpture would also be acceptable. I was wondering if it would be possible for you to write a sestina about Margo Roth Spiegelman's breasts? Your six words are: pink, round, firmness, succulent, supple, and pillowy. Personally, I think at least one of the words should be buhbuhbuhbuh.”

“Was it animal pee or human pee? Someone asked.How would I know? What, am I an expert in the study of pee?”

“As long as we don't die, this is gonna be one hell of a story.”

“Ben starts. "I Spy with my little eye something I really like.""Oh I know," Radar says. "It's the taste of balls.""No.""Is it the taste of penises?" I guess."No, dumbass.""Hmm," says Radar. "Is it the smell of balls?""The texture of balls?”

“Do you guys remember that one time, in the minivan, twenty minutes ago, that we somehow didn't die?”

“It is worth it to leave behing my minor life for grander maybes-Miles "Pudge”

“We are engaged here in the most important pusuit in history. The search for meaning. What is What is the nature of being a person? What is the best way to go about being a person?How did we come to be, and wha will become of us when we are no longer? In short: What are the rules this game, and how might we best play it?”

“It always seemed ridiculous to me that people would want to be around someone because they're pretty. It's like picking your breakfast cereals based on color instead of taste.”

“When you stopped wishing things wouldn't fall apart, you'd stop suffering when they did.”

“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.”

“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.”

“As a child I was an inveterate liar. As opposed to now, I am a Novelist.”

“Thank you," I say, pounding his back probably too hard. "That was the best damned passenger-seat driving I've ever seen in my life." He pats my uninjured cheek with his greasy hand. "I did it to save myself, not you," he says. "Believe me when I say that you did not once cross my mind. " I laugh. "Nor you mine," I say.”

“She is close enough to me that I can see her, because even now there is the outward sign of visible light, even at night in this parking lot on the outskirts of Algoe. After we kiss, our foreheads touch as we stare at each other. Yes, I can see her almost perfectly in this cracked darkness.”

“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.”

“At some point we all look up and realize we are lost in a maze.”

“And I will forget her, yes. That which came together will fall apart slowly, but she will forgive my forgetting, just as I forgive her for forgetting me and the Colonel and nothing but herself and her mom in those last moments as she spent as a person.”

“When she fucked up, all those years ago, just a little girl terrified into paralysis, she collapsed into the enigma of herself. And that could have happened to me, but I saw where it led for her. So I still believe in the Great Perhaps, and I can believe in it in spite of having lost her.”

“Before I got here, I thought that the way out of the labyrinth was to pretend that it didn't 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. But that only led to a lonely life accompanied by the last words of the already dead, so I came here looking for a Great Perhaps, for real friends and a more-than-minor life.”

“But when it came right down to it, the skin of my wrist looked so white and defensless that I couldn't do it. It was as if what I wanted to kill wasn't in that skin or the thin blue pulse that jumped under my thumb, but somewhere else, deeper, more secret, and a whole lot harder to get."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.”

“For she had embodied the Great Perhaps--she had proved to me that it was worth it to leave behind my minor life for grander maybes, and now she was gone and with her my faith in perhaps.”