John Green

“I couldn't hear a thing in the world but you. And it was so cold then, and so silent, and I loved you so much. Now it's hot and dead quiet again, and I love you still.”

“To stay callm, I wondered to myself, Does he have regular handcuffs, or does he have special SeaWorld handcuffs? Like, are they shaped like two curved dolphins coming together?”

“Ninjas don't splash other ninjas," "The true ninja doesn't make a splash at all." I said.”

“Oh, we"re just scattering some dead fish about town, breaking some windows, photographing naked guys, hanging out in sky-scraper lobbies at three-fifteen in the morning, that kind of thing. "Not much", I answered.”

“Your friendship with her-it sleeps with the fishes.”

“College: getting in or not getting in. Trouble: getting in or not getting in. School: getting A's or getting D's. Career: having or not having. House: big or small, owning or renting. Money: having or not having. It's all boring.”

“Such is life. We grow up. Planets like Tiny get new moons. Moons like me get new planets.”

“its a metephor, see: you put the killing thing right between your teeth but you dont give it the power to do its killing.”

“I am not much for philosophy, but that old Descartes, he got me thinking. And therefore being. Anyone? Anyone? Cogito ergo sum jokes? No? Okay.”

“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”

“Anyway, I learned an important lesson from all of this: While gun ownership ismorally reprehensible in the civilized world, firepower is more or lessde rigeur in a zombie apocalypse.”

“the spring air just on the cold side of perfect, the late-afternoon light heavenly in its hurtfulness. a”

“I liked Augustus Waters. I really, really, really liked him. I liked the way his story ended with someone else. I liked his voice. I liked that he took existentially fraught free throws. I liked that he was a tenured professor in the Department of Slightly Crooked Smiles with a dual appointment in the Department of Having a Voice That Made My Skin Feel More Like Skin. And I liked that he had two names. I've always liked people with two names, because you get to make up your mind what you call them: Gus or Augustus?”

“But that's a lie, and you know it.”

“You're not a little kid anymore. You need to make friends, get out of the house, and live your life.”

“What's your name ?Hazel .No , your full name .Um , Hazel Grace Lancaster .”

“The preciousness of the moment, which should make it easier to talk, makes it harder.”

“It's so hard to leave-until you leave. And then it is the easiest goddamned thing in the world...Leaving feels too good, once you leave.”

“I love you present tense. It's okay, Gus. It's okay. It is. It's okay, you hear me? Okay, okay.”

“I called it a nine because I was saving my ten. And here it was, the great and terrible ten, slamming me again and again as I lay still and alone in my bed staring at the ceiling, the waves tossing me against the rocks then pulling me back out to sea so they could launch me again into the jagged face of the cliff, leaving me floating face up on the water, undrowned.”

“You know how I know you're a fighter? You called a ten a nine.”

“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.”

“I'll write you an epilogue, I will, I will. Better than any shit that drunk could write. His brain is Swiss cheese. He doesn't even remember writing the book. I can write ten times the story that guy can. There will be blood and guts and sacrifice. An Imperial Affliction meets The Price of Dawn. You'll love it.”

“The important thing is not whatever nonsense the voices are saying, but what the voices are feeling.”

“Why do these people crave fame? Why do any of us? Well, I’d argue it’s not about money. If it were our tabloids would be devoted to the lives and times of bankers. I think we all want to leave a legacy. We want to be remembered. We want to be Great.... In short, Alexander [the Great] was Great because others decided he was Great, because they chose to admire and emulate him. ... We made Alexander Great, just as today we make people great when we admire them and try to emulate them. History has traditionally been in the business of finding and celebrating great men, and only occasionally great women, but this obsession with Greatness is troubling to me. It wrongly implies, first, history is made primarily by men and secondly, that history is made primarily by celebrated people, which of course makes us all want to be celebrities. Thankfully we’ve left behind the idea that the best way to become an icon is to butcher people and conquer a lot of land, but the ideals that we’ve embraced instead aren’t necessarily worth celebrating either. All of which is to say we decide what to worship and what to care about and what to pay attention to. We decide whether to care about [so-called ‘celebrities’]. Alexander couldn’t make history in a vacuum, and neither can anyone else.”

“I don’t know who she is anymore, or who she was, but I need to find her”

“No one is dead as long as someone is still alive”

“He may be a malevolent sorcerer, but Tiny Cooper is his own goddamned man, and if he wants to be a gigantic skipper, then that's his right as a huge American.”

“The joy you bring us is so much greater than the sadness we feel about your illness.”

“I even tried to tell myself to live my best life today.”

“I had always liked that: I liked routine. I liked being bored. I didn’t want to, but I did.”

“I could remember it. 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.”

“Dad smiled. He put a big arm around me and pulled me to him, kissing the side of my head. “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.”

“You are amazing. You can't know sweetie,because you've never had a baby becime a brilliant young reader with a side interest in horrible television shows,but the joy you bring us is so much greater than the sadness we feel about your illness.”

“I like being liked. Is that crazy?”

“Writing does not resurrect,it buries.”

“Why do I want to take care of Mr. President, particularly whenhe’s desperate like this? Sure, he has been useful—he has saved mefrom many a newzie—but there aren’t many newzies left. And it’s notlike Mr. President has infected me with a virus that predisposes me towant to care for him.I think it’s because Mr. President is a symbol, and symbolsmatter. Caroline liked to say that I was a sentimentalist. But sentimentis really just an appreciation for the reality and signi"cance ofsymbols—which is why I’m still here, and she’s not.”

“He did not believe in having a sock drawer or a T-shirtdrawer. He believed that all drawers were created equaland filled each with whatever fit. My mother would havedied.”

“Because you may be smart, but I’ve been smart longer”

“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.”

“Memorial was so functional. It was a storage facility. A prematorium.”

“He smirked. "You're an incorrect concept.""I know. That's why I'm being taken out of the rotation.”

“I worked hard to meet his eyes, even though they were the kind of pretty that’s hard to look at..”

“Hank, when people call people nerds mostly what they're saying is,'You like stuff'.”

“And he was feeling not-unique in the very best possible way.”

“And he found himself thinking that maybe stories don't just make us matter to each other—maybe they're also the only way to the infinite mattering he'd been after for so long.”

“Colin: I figured something out. The future is unpredictable.Hassan: Sometimes the kafir likes to say massively obvious things in a really profound voice.”

“The problem is that I am secretly in love with Hassan. I can't help myself. I hold your bony shoulder blades in my hands and think of his fleshy back (Lindsey).”

“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.”

“I'm so pissed off about it, because - I mean, I wasted so much of my life with him and then he cheats on me and I'm not even particularly, like, depressed about it?”