In my opinion, actual heroism, like actual love, is a messy, painful, vulnerable businessโand I wanted to try to reflect that.
John GreenIt is saying these things that keeps us from falling apart. And maybe by imagining these futures we can make them real, and maybe not, but either way we must imagine them. The light rushes out and floods in.
John GreenColin emphatically pushed the book cover shut when he finished reading. "Did you like it?" His dad asked. "Yup," Colin said. He liked all books, because he liked the mere act of reading, the magic of turning scratches on a page into words inside his head.
John GreenIt is easy to forget how full the world is of people, full to bursting, and each of them imaginable and consistently misimagined.
John GreenSo often we try to make other people feel better by minimizing their pain, by telling them that it will get better (which it will) or that there are worse things in the world (which there are). But that's not what I actually needed. What I actually needed was for someone to tell me that it hurt because it mattered. I have found this very useful to think about over the years, and I find that it is a lot easier and more bearable to be sad when you aren't constantly berating yourself for being sad.
John Green