Throughout the book, she refers to herself as "the side effect," which is just totally correct. Cancer kids are essentially side effects of the relentless mutation that made the diversity of life on earth possible.

So dawn goes down today... Nothing gold can stay. -- Robert Frost

Colder by the hour, more dead with every breath.

"And how are you feeling?" asked Patrick."Oh, I'm grand." Augustus Waters smiled with a corner of his mouth. "I'm on a roller coaster that only goes up, my friend."

I am a grenade," I said again. "I just want to stay away from people and read books and think and be with you guys because there's nothing I can do about hurting you: You're too invested, so just please let me do that, okay? "I'm going to go to my room and read for awhile, okay? I'm fine. I really am fine: I just want to go read for a while.

Breaking down that wall is the kind of story that might have a happy middle - oh, look, we broke down this wall, I'm going to look at you like a girl and you're going to look at me like a boy, and we're going to play a fun game called Can I Put My Hand There What About There What About There.

She’s the kind of person who either dies tragically at twenty-seven, like Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin, or else grows up to win, like, the first-ever Nobel Prize for Awesome.