I mean, if Hardee's is urban, I'm not sure I want to see rural.

Ben Starling, you better not have bought your token black friend a racist shirt

the problem is not suffering itself or oblivion itself but the depraved meaninglessness of these things, the absolutely inhuman nihilism of suffering.

She is close enough to me that I can see her, because even now there is the outward sign of visible light, even at night in this parking lot on the outskirts of Algoe. After we kiss, our foreheads touch as we stare at each other. Yes, I can see her almost perfectly in this cracked darkness.

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

In the ensuing silence, I have time to contemplate the word cute— how dismissive it is, how it’s the equivalent of calling someone little, how it makes a person into a baby, how the word is a neon sign burning through the dark reading, “Feel Bad About Yourself.

We are as indestructible as we believe ourselves to be.