But it was sure a privilege to love him, huh?" I nodded into his shirt. "Gives you an idea how I feel about you," he said. My old man. He always knew just what to say.

Some wars," he said dismissively. "What am I at war with? My cancer. And what is my cancer? My cancer is me. The tumors are made of me. They're made of me as surely as my brain and my heart is made of me. It is a civil war, Hazel Grace, with a predetermined winner.

The Z’s will kill us all, and then the Z’s will die out and in sixty years there will be no one to remember our silly war, Caroline’s wasted ammunition, my year of zombic survivalism, Rene DesCartes’s musings, or Michelangelo’s sculptures. And that is really only the sadness here as I drink a thousand-dollar bottle of wine down here in the cellar: We did a few things worth remembering, and I wish for someone to remember them.

The risen sun too bright in her losing eyes.

The Colonel explained to me that 1. this was Alaska's room, and that 2. she had a single room because the girl who was supposed to be her roommate got kicked out at the end of last year, and that 3. Alaska had cigarettes, although the Colonel neglected to ask whether 4. I smoked, which 5. I didn't.

I felt the unfairness of it, the inarguable injustice of loving someone who might have loved you back but can't due to deadness.

I make a gesture that is intended to convey, "Hey, no hurry, talk as long as you'd like," and probably actually conveys, "Hey, look at me! I have spastic hands.