At some point, you gotta stop looking up at the sky, or one of these days you'll look back down and see that you floated away, too.

In those fifty, the Old Man made me take religion seriously. I'd never been religious, but he told us that religion is important whether or not we believed in one, the same way that historical events are important whether or not you personally lived through them.

Colin Singleton’s distance from his glasses made him realize the problem: myopia. He was nearsighted. The future lay before him, inevitable but invisible.

We all romanticize the people we adore.

Above us, the wind blew and the branching shadows rearranged themselves on our skin. Gus squeezed my hand. "It is a good life, Hazel Grace.

The good times and the bad times both will pass. It will pass. It will get easier. But the fact that it will get easier does not mean that it doesn’t hurt now. And when people try to minimize your pain they are doing you a disservice. And when you try to minimize your own pain you’re doing yourself a disservice. Don’t do that. The truth is that it hurts because it’s real. It hurts because it mattered. And that’s an important thing to acknowledge to yourself. But that doesn’t mean that it won’t end, that it won’t get better. Because it will.

What's the point in being alive if you don't at least try to do something remarkable? How very odd, to believe God gave you life, and yet not think that life asks more of you than watching TV.