75 Insightful John Green Quotes

John Green, renowned for his candid exploration of life’s complexities, has touched the hearts of millions with his thought-provoking novels and speeches. His words, often filled with wit, wisdom, and vulnerability, capture the essence of youth, love, and the human experience. This carefully curated collection highlights 75 of his most insightful quotes, offering a glimpse into Green’s remarkable ability to articulate the ineffable. Whether you're a long-time fan or new to his work, these quotes are sure to inspire reflection and spark meaningful conversation. Embark on a journey through the mind of one of today’s most influential storytellers and discover the enduring impact of his words.

1. “Before I got here, I thought for a long time that the way out of the labyrinth was to pretend that it did not 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.” - John Green

2. “I go to seek a Great Perhaps.” - Francois Rabelais

3. “If people could see me the way I see myself - if they could live in my memories - would anyone love me?” - John Green

4. “And I wanted to tell her that the pleasure for me wasn't planning or doing or leaving; the pleasure was in seeing our strings cross and separate and then come back together.” - John Green

5. “That didn’t happen, of course. Things never happened the way I imagined them.” - John Green

6. “It always shocked me when I realized that I wasn’t the only person in the world who thought and felt such strange and awful things.” - John Green

7. “i feel like my life is so scattered right now. like it’s all these 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.” - David Levithan

8. “Hazel has to realize that her mom was wrong when she said, “I won’t be a mother anymore.” The truth is, after Hazel dies (assuming she dies), her mom will still be her mom, just as my grandmother is still my grandmother even though she has died. As long as either person is still alive, that relationship survives. (It changes, but it survives.)” - John Green

9. “What's the meaning of life? Other people.” - John Green

10. “Collin Singleton could no more stay cool than a blue whale could stay skinny or Bangladesh could stay rich” - John Green

11. “There were five others before they got to him. He smiled a little when his turn came. His voice was low, smoky, and dead sexy. “My name is Augustus Waters,” he said. “I’m seventeen. I had a little touch of osteosarcoma a year and a half ago, but I’m just here today at Isaac’s request.”“And how are you feeling?” asked Patrick.“Oh, I’m grand.” Augustus Waters smiled with a corner of his mouth. “I’m on a roller coaster that only goes up, my friend.” - John Green

12. “And the moral of the story is that you don’t remember what happened. What you remember becomes what happened.” - John Green

13. “I know so many last words. But I will never know hers.” - John Green

14. “I told Augustus the broad outline of my miracle: diagnosed with Stage IV thyroid cancer when I was thirteen. (I didn’t tell him that the diagnosis came three months after I got my first period. Like: Congratulations! You’re a woman. Now die.)” - John Green

15. “My heart is really pounding," I said."That's how you know you're having fun," Margo said.” - John Green

16. “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.” - John Green

17. “I believe the universe wants to be noticed. I think the universe is inprobably biased toward the consciousness, that it rewards intelligence in part because the universe enjoys its elegance being observed. And who am I, living in the middle of history, to tell the universe that it-or my observation of it-is temporary?” - John Green

18. “I don't believe in prom,' I reminded her as she rounded a corner. I expertly angled my raisin bran to accomodate the g-forces. I'd done this before.” - John Green

19. “As the tide washed in, the Dutch Tulip Man faced the Ocean:"Conjoiner rejoinder poisoner concealer revelator. Look at it, rising up and rising down, taking everything with it.""What’s that?" Anna asked."Water," the Dutchman said. "Well, and time.” - John Green

20. “The last time I was this scared, I peed myself.""The last time I was this scared," Radar says, "I actually had to face a Dark Lord in order to make the world safe for wizards.” - John Green

21. “I know it's impossible for you to see your peers this way, but when you're older, you start to see them--the bad kids and the good kids and all kids--as people. They're just people, who deserve to be cared for.” - John Green

22. “I can almost imagine a happiness without her, the ability to let her go, to feel our roots are connected even if I never see that leaf of grass again.” - John Green

23. “I spy with my little eye a great story.” - John Green

24. “And then the line was quite but not dead. I almost felt like he was there in my room with me, but in a way it was better, like I was not in my room and he was not in his, but instead we were together in some invisible and tenuous third space that could only be visited on the phone.” - John Green

25. “Headline?" he asked."'Swing Set Needs Home,'" I said."'Desperately Lonely Swing Set Needs Loving Home,'" he said."'Lonely, Vaguely Pedophilic Swing Set Seeks the Butts of Children,'" I said.” - John Green

26. “I wanted to know that he would be okay if I died. I wanted to not be a grenade, to not be a malevolent force in the lives of people I loved.” - John Green

27. “We’re as likely to hurt the universe as we are to help it, and we’re not likely to do either.” - John Green

28. “I am in the midst of a soliloquy! I wrote this out and memorized it and if you interrupt me I will completely screw it up,' Augustus interrupted. 'Please to be eating your sandwich and listening.” - John Green

29. “Is it still cool to go to the mall?' she asked. 'I take quite a lot of pride in not knowing what's cool,' I answered.” - John Green

30. “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.” - John Green

31. “That's why I like you. Do you realize how rare it is to come across a hot girl who creates a adjectival version of the word pedophile? You are so busy being you that you have no idea how utterly unprecedented you are.” - John Green

32. “there is no shortage of fault to be found amid our stars” - John Green

33. “What's the point in being alive if you don't at least try to do something remarkable? How very odd, to believe God gave you life, and yet not think that life asks more of you than watching TV.” - John Green

34. “So I was ugly. I was never fat, really, and I never wore headgear or had zits or anything. But I was ugly. I don't even know how ugly and pretty get decided - maybe there's like a secret cabal of boys who meet in the locker room and decide who's ugly and who's hot, because as far as I can remember, there was no such thing as a hot fourth-grader. - Lindsey Lee Wells” - John Green

35. “10-5 space 16-5-14-19-5 space 17-21-5 space 10-5 space 20-1-9-13-5.” - John Green

36. “You matter as much as the things that matter to you. And I got so backwards trying to 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.” - John Green

37. “Caroline was always moody and miserable, but I liked it. I liked feeling as if she had chosen me as the only person in the world not to hate, and so we spent all this time together just ragging on everyone, you know?” - John Green

38. “The fundamental mistake I had always made - and that she had, in fairness, always led me to make - was this: Margo was not a miracle. She was not an adventure. She was not a fine and precious thing. She was a girl.” - John Green

39. “Shouldn't letting go be painless if you've never learned how to hold on?” - John Green

40. “From the front Rdar announces, "Don't you go talking bad about GoFast bars. Do you want me to stop this car?""Whenever I eat a GoFast bar," Ben says, "I'm always like, 'So this is what blood tastes like to mosquitoes.” - John Green

41. “pg. 231-232: They'd given me a minivan. They could have picked any car and they picked a minivan. A minivan. O God of the Vehicular Justice, why dost thou mock me? Minivan, you albatross around my neck! You mark of Cain! You wretched beast high ceilings and few horsepower!” - John Green

42. “Dumpers may not always be the heartbreakers, and the Dumpees may not always be the heartbroken. But everyone has a tendency.” - John Green

43. “If by that you mean that I dislike celebrity magazines, prefer food to anorexia, refuse to watch TV shows about models, and hate the color pink, then yes. I am proud to be not really a girl.” - John Green

44. “But what could I lose by continuing that had not already been lost?” - John Green

45. “being in a bad mood with your friends beats being in a bad mood without them.” - John Green

46. “I did some research on this a couple years ago," Augustus continued. "I was wondering if everybody could be remembered. Like, if we got organized, and assigned a certain number of corpses to each living person, would there be enough living people to remember all the dead people?""And are there?" "Sure, anyone can name fourteen dead people. But we're disorganized mourners, so a lot of people end up remembering Shakespeare and no one ends up remembering the person he wrote Sonnet Fifty-five about” - John Green

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

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

49. “We are greater than the sum of our parts.” - John Green

50. “It sounded like a dragon breathing in time with me, like I had this pet dragon who was cuddled up next to me and cared enough about me to time his breaths to mine.” - John Green

51. “Girls think they’re only allowed to wear dresses on formal occasions, but I like a woman who says, you know, I’m going over to see a boy who is having a nervous breakdown, a boy whose connection to the sense of sight itself is tenuous, and gosh dang it, I am going to wear a dress for him.” - John Green

52. “I want to minimize the deaths I am responsible for.” - John Green

53. “Indiana,’ he said. ‘They steal the land from the Indians and leave the name, yes?” - John Green

54. “Thank you for wearing that dress which is like whoa.” - John Green

55. “I kind of conned you into believing you were falling in love with a healthy person.” - John Green

56. “I pulled the oxygen tubes from my nostrils and raised the tube up over my head, handing it to Dad. I wanted it to be just me and just him.” - John Green

57. “I love you present tense.” - John Green

58. “To find Margo Roth Spiegelman, you must become Margo Roth Spiegelman. And I had done many of the things she might have done: I had engineered a most unlikely prom coupling. I had quieted the hounds of caste warfare. I had come to feel comfortable inside the rat-infested haunted house where she did her best thinking. I had seen. I had listened. But I could not yet become the wounded person.” - John Green

59. “Their sneak-out was over. But by then it was too late. In his mind, Katherine I was already becoming Katherine XIX. She would soon retake the throne that, all along, had rightfully been hers.” - John Green

60. “Observation: It would be awesome to fly in a superfast airplane that could chase the sunrise around the world for a while.” - John Green

61. “The food was so good that with each passing course, our conversation devolved further into fragmented celebrations of its deliciousness:'I want this dragon carrot risotto to become a person so I can take it to Las Vegas and marry it.” - John Green

62. “He took a long drink, then grimaced. “I do not have a drinking problem,” he announced, his voice needlessly loud. “I have a Churchillian relationship with alcohol: I can crack jokes and govern England and do anything I want to do. Except not drink.” - John Green

63. “I fear oblivion. I fear it like the proverbial blind man who's afraid of the dark.” - John Green

64. “My parents were my two best friends. My third best friend was an author who did not know I existed.” - John Green

65. “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.” - John Green

66. “The whole thing was the precise opposite of what I figured it would be: slow and patient and quiet and neither particularly painful nor particularly ecstatic” - John Green

67. “My cancer is me. The tumors are made of me. They’re made of me as surely as my brain and my heart are made of me. It is a civil war with a predetermined winner” - John Green

68. “Sería un honor tener el corazón roto por ti, Hazel Grace.” - John Green

69. “You deserve a life.” - John Green

70. “They don't plant in rows because they're idiots,and they don't use farm equipment because they're idiots,and they don't plant in spring because they're idiots..” - John Green

71. “Creo que somos más grandes que la suma de nuestras partes.” - John Green

72. “Llega un momento en que nos damos cuenta de que nuestros padres no se pueden salvar a ellos mismos ni salvarnos a nosotros,que a todos los que navegan por el tiempo,tarde o temprano,la corriente los arrastra hacia el mar, y que, en pocas palabras, todos nos vamos.p” - John Green

73. “Cuando los adultos dicen: “Los adolescentes piensan que son invencibles”, con esa sonrisa mañosa y estúpida en sus rostros, no saben cuán en lo correcto están. Necesitamos no perder nunca la esperanza, porque nunca nos podemos romper de manera irreparable. Pensamos que somos invencibles porque los somos. No podemos nacer y no podemos morir. Como toda la energía, sólo podemos cambiar formas, tamaños y manifestaciones. Ellos olvidan eso al envejecer. Temen perder y fracasar. Pero esa parte nuestra, más grande que la suma de nuestras partes, no puede nacer y no puede morir, así que no puede fracasar.” - John Green

74. “You don't give a shit if people like you.” - John Green

75. “You get caught in being something, being cool or special or whatever, to the point where you don’t even know why you need it; you just think you do” - John Green