John Green

“I knew that I would know more dead people. The bodies pile up. Could there be a space in my memory for each of them, or would I forget a little of Alaska every day for the rest of my life?”

“I wondered if there would ever be a day when I didn't think about Alaska, wondered whether I should hope for a time when she would be a distant memory - recalled only on the anniversary of her death, or maybe a couple of weeks after, remembering only after having forgotten.”

“This is unbearable ... God. These books she'll never read. Her Life's Library.”

“It hurt, and that is not a euphemism. It hurt like a beating.”

“Whatever. Great day. Today. Best day of my life.”

“I thought of the one thing about home that I missed, my dad's study with its built-in, floor-to-ceiling shelves sagging with thick biographies and the black leather chair that kept me just uncomfortable enough to keep from feeling sleepy as I read.”

“going out late at night and laying in the dewy field and reading a Kurt Vonnegut book by moonlight.”

“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 what will become of us when we are no longer? In short: what are the rules of this game and how might we best play it?"The nature of the labyrinth, I scribbled into my spiral notebook, and the way out of it.”

“And my conclusion is,' he said, 'since I had been in very good terms with Anne, that most parents don't know really their children.”

“But there is all these time between when the cracks start to open up and when we finally fall apart. And it's only in that time that we can see one another, because we see out of ourselves through our cracks and into others through theirs.”

“Eternity bids thee to forget.”

“That’s why I like you… You are so busy being you that you have no idea how utterly unprecedented you are.”

“You're given a large measure of freedom here. If you abuse it, you'll regret it.”

“He’s not that smart.”“She’s right,” Augustus says. “It’s just that most really good-looking people are stupid, so I exceed expectations.”“Right, it’s primarily his hotness.”“It can be sort of blinding,” he said.“It actually did blind our friend Isaac.”“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.”

“Maybe okay will be our always.""Okay.""Okay.”

“Miles, as in 'to go before I sleep'?”

“Surely among the many outlandish successes of AMRV is that it has eradicated from human beings our original sin: hope. But I don’t have AMRV, which means I still suffer from the cruelest disease of our species, terminal aspiration.”

“I am constantly torn between killing myself and killing everyone around me. Those seem to be the two choices. Everything else is just killing time.”

“But with friendship, there's nothing like that. Being in a relationship, that's something you choose. Being friends, that's just something you are.”

“listening quietly" was my general social strategy.”

“The bad kids and the good kids and all kids... They're just people, who deserve to be cared for.”

“I feel like I might start crying and that I'm going to cry pee.”

“People wanted security. They couldn't bear the idea of death being a black nothing, couldn't bear the thought of their loved ones not existing, and couldn't imagine themselves not existing.”

“Because you simply cannot draw these things out forever. At some point, you just pull off the Band-Aid and it hurts, but then it’s over and you’re relieved.”

“It felt like losing your co-rememberer meant losing the memory itself”

“This comment, however, leads me to wonder: What do you mean by meant? Given the final futility of our struggle, is the fleeting jolt of meaning that art gives us valuable? Or is the only value in passing the time as comfortably as possible? What should a story seek to emulate, Augustus? A ringing alarm?A call to arms? A morphine drip? Of course, like all interrogation of the universe, this line of inquiry inevitably reduces us to asking what it means to be human and whether—to borrow a phrase from the angst-encumbered sixteen-year-olds you no doubt revile— there is a point to it all.”

“To be human is to catch the falling person.”

“Every book title becomes infinitely better if 'in your pants' or 'from your pants' is added to the title.”

“I pointed at the little kids goading each other to jump from rib cage to shoulder and Gus answered just loud enough for me to hear over the din, 'Last time, I imagined myself as the kid. This time, the skeleton.”

“Do you ever wonder whether people would like you more or less if they could see inside you?”

“I'm not interested in dating a girl I'm not gonna marry”

“There's no reason whatsoever to drink eight glasses of water a day unless you, for whatever reason, particularly like the taste of water”

“Crying is you, plus tears”

“Because so many people use goodreads, it is an amazingly good—and amazingly underutilized—resource for understanding what people read, why, and how they feel about their reading experiences.”

“You're so busy being you that you have no idea how utterly unprecedented you are.”

“We did not say: Don't drive. You're drunk.”

“Language buries, but does not resurrect.”

“Turn on the lights; I do not want to go home in the dark”

“I think if you keep the box closed long enough you do kill the cat, actually.”

“Like, each of us starts out as a watertight vessel. And these things happen--these people leave us, or don't love us, or don't get us, or we don't get them, and we lose and fail and hurt one another. And the vessel starts to crack open in places. And I mean, yeah, once the vessel cracks open, the end becomes inevitable... But there is all this time between the cracks start to open up and when we finally fall apart. And it's only in that time that we can see one another because we see out of ourselves through our cracks and into others through theirs......But once the vessel cracks, the light can get in. The light can get out.”

“Reading a good book helps us to feel un-alone.”

“Physical intimacy isn’t and can never be an effective substitute for emotional intimacy.”

“That's the pleasure and challenge of reading great novels; you get to see yourself as others see you and you get to see others as they see themselves.”

“All right. The snow may be falling in the winter of my discontent, but at least I've got sarcastic company.”

“I want you to feel empowered to explore those questions without worrying that there is some secret answer somewhere resting with the author. The author does not have the answer. The author, despite what our culture tells us, is not the powerful one. The reader is the powerful one. The author scratches some symbols onto a page. The reader makes it live.”

“This is what I love about novels, both reading them and writing them. They jump into the abyss, to be with you”

“You never know. It's just. It's like. POOF. And you're gone.”

“We are greater than the sum of our parts.”

“Chip did not believe in having a sock drawer or a T-shirt drawer. He believed that all drawers were created equal and filled each with whatever fit.”

“There are so many of us who would have to live with the 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.”