“According to Maslow, I was stuck on the second level of the pyramid, unable to feel secure in my health and therefore unable to reach for love and respect and art and whatever else, which is, utter horseshit: The urge to make art or contemplate philosophy does not go away when you are sick. Those urges just become transfigured by illness.Maslow's pyramid seemed to imply I was less human than other people, and most people seemed to agree with him.”

“The urge to make art or contemplate philosophy does not go away when you are sick. Those urges just become transfigured by illness.”

“JG: Ha! I will get him Looking for Alaska and tell him this idea that a human being is more than a human being is a mistaken idea and in the end does no service either to him or the person he's imagining. That trope has become so deeply embedded in American culture, and as someone who writes about young people falling in love, I feel like I can't ignore it, but I try to make it clear that life works best when we think of people as people.”

“I imagined the Augustus Waters analysis of that comment: If I am playing basketball in heaven, does that imply a physical location of a heaven containing physical basketballs? Who makes the basketballs in question? Are there less fortunate souls in heaven who work in a celestial basketball factory so that I can play? Or did an omnipotent God create the basketballs out of the vacuum of space? Is this heaven in some kind of unobservable universe where the laws of physics don't apply, and if so, why in the hell would I be playing basketball when I could be flying or reading or looking at beautiful people or something else I actually enjoy? It's almost as if the way you imagine my dead self says more about you than either the person I was or whatever I am now.”

“I find it really offensive when people say that the emotional experiences of teenagers are less real or less important than those of adults.”

“Like many people, I feel like celebrating. Remember this feeling. It is human, and can help us understand when others express bloodlust.”

“The times that were most fun seemed always to be followed by sadness now, because it was when life started to feel like it did when she was with us that we realized how utterly gone she was.”