Nothing really ever happens like you imagine it will.

So she became impulsive, scared by her inaction into perpetual action.

It is very sad to me that some people are so intent on leaving their mark on the world that they don’t care if that mark is a scar.

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.

but there was nothing I could do to dim the supernovae exploding inside my brain, an endless chain of intra cranial firecrackers

The urge to make art or contemplate philosophy does not go away when you are sick. Those urges just become transfigured by illness.

I'm not from Indianapolis, but I like living in Indianapolis. If I were to explain it, I'd tell someone to imagine a city that perfectly captures the best and the worst of America. Imagine the truly American city, because that's what it is.