Ultimately, it doesn't matter if the author intended a symbol to be there, because the job of reading is not to understand the authors intend. The job of reading is to see into other people as we see ourselves.

Hazel has to realize that her mom was wrong when she said, “I won’t be a mother anymore.” The truth is, after Hazel dies (assuming she dies), her mom will still be her mom, just as my grandmother is still my grandmother even though she has died. As long as either person is still alive, that relationship survives. (It changes, but it survives.)

Like everyone, I'm saddened and horrified by this. All I'll say is that I'm personally trying to pay more attention to the victims than to their murderer. I certainly will not be mentioning the murderer. I don't think he warrants our attention-particularly since he so clearly wanted it.

He missed his imagined future.

Dad had a sign of his own. MY BEAUTIFUL FAMILY, it read, and then underneath that (AND GUS).

Every second of your definitionally temporary consciousness, you are choosing how you spend something that will not last forever.

For she had embodied the Great Perhaps--she had proved to me that it was worth it to leave behind my minor life for grander maybes, and now she was gone and with her my faith in perhaps.