We are engaged here in the most important pusuit in history. The search for meaning. What is 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 wha will become of us when we are no longer? In short: What are the rules this game, and how might we best play it?

It is easy to forget how full the world is of people, full to bursting, and each of them imaginable and consistently misimagined.

Oh, I wouldn't mind, Hazel Grace. It would be a privilege to have my heart broken by you.

He told me this while ripping through his duffel bag, throwing clothes into drawers with reckless abandon. 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. My mother would have died.

Being in a relationship, that's something you choose. Being friends, that's something you just are.

I will play out the string. I will not betray your trust. I will find you.

But it was only hot outside, and generally I only walked outside between one air-conditioned place to another.