You may choose your song, but know this: Tiny. Cooper. Hates. Over. The. Rainbow.

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

It's not fair," I said. "It's just so goddamned unfair." "The world," he said, "is not a wishgranting factory.

One of the pitfalls about writing about illness is that it is very easy to imagine people with cancer as either these wise-beyond-their-years creatures or these sad-eyed tragic people. And the truth is, people living with cancer are very much like people who are not living with cancer. They're every bit as funny and complex and diverse as anyone else.

By the power of the superglue beer sword, I designate you my driver!

The prospect of a world that contains neither humans nor Z's is not so terrifying. Nature will take its world back. Animals will frolic and fight. There will be no lord of the manor, which is not such a bad thing, because it seems to me that people have done a pretty poor job of guiding the biosphere for the last few thousand years.

Here's my answer to the very real existential crisis that grips me midway through everything I've ever tried to do: I think stories help us fight the nihilistic urges that constantly threaten to consume us.