“No matter what happens, I don’t think that anyone will remember me when I disappear. It will be like I was never here. There will be no proof that I ever existed … you can’t be sad if you disappear, because disappeared people can’t feel sad. They can only be remembered or forgotten.”
“Everyone gets so worried about the people who are still living when the people who are really hurting are the dead ones. People like Grandma and Graham.They don’t exist anymore.There is nothing worse than that”
“I can't imagine us saying these things to each other out loud. But even if I can't imagine hearing these words, I can imagine living them. I don't even picture it. Instead I'm in it. How I feel with him here. That peace. It would be so happy, and it makes me sad because it only exists in words.”
“I hated Pinocchio. I think I was the only one in the class who hated him. Pinocchio was alive, but that was not enough for him. He could walk and talk and touch things in the real world, but he spent the whole book wanting more.Pinocchio didn’t know how lucky he was.”
“I can always look up at the cosmos and marvel, no matter what happens. And when I look up at it, I feel as though my problems are small. I don't know why, but it always makes me feel better.”
“You are not a grenade, not to us. Thinking about you dying makes us sad, Hazel, but you are not a grenade. You are amazing. You can’t know, sweetie, because you’ve never had a baby become 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.”
“And the moral of the story is that you don’t remember what happened. What you remember becomes what happened.”