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.)

There is no try. There is only do.

You say you're not special because the world doesn't know about you, but that's an insult to me. I know about you.

Because it's kind of great, being an idea that everybody likes. But I could never be the idea to myself, not all the way.

Not to ask the obvious question, but why Alaska?

Because no one thought she was a person, she had no one to really talk to.

All salvation is temporary," Augustus shot back. "I bought them a minute. Maybe that's the minute that buys them an hour, which is the hour that buys them a year. No one's gonna buy them forever, Hazel Grace, but my life bought them a minute. And that's not nothing.