I realized it in waves and we held on to each other crying and I thought, God we must look so lame, but it doesn't matter much when you have just now realized, all the time later, that you are still alive.

This is what I love about novels - both reading them and writing them. They jump into the abyss to be with you where you are.

Witness also that when we talk about literature, we do so in the present tense. When we speak of the dead, we are not so kind.

I'm a good person but a shitty writer. You're a shitty person but a good writer. We'd make a good team.

Well," Peter Van Houten said, extending his hand to me. "It is at any rate a pleasure to meet such ontologically improbable creatures." I shook his swollen hand, and then he shook hands with Augustus. I was wondering what ontologically meant. Regardless, I liked it. Augustus and I were together in the Improbable Creatures Club: us and duck-billed platypuses.

We left. We did not say: Don't drive, You're drunk. We did not say: We aren't letting you in that car when you are upset. We did not say: We insist on going with you. We did not say: This can wait until tomorrow. Anything-everything-can wait.

I spent your Wish on that doucheface,” I said into his chest. “Hazel Grace. No. I will grant you that you did spend my one and only Wish, but you did not spend it on him. You spent it on us.