The sun was a toddler insistently refusing to go to bed: It was past eight thirty and still light.

When we read the right book generously, it can change the way think about the world around us.

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 book was turned to the page with Anne Frank's name, but what got me about it was the fact that right beneath her name there were four Aron Franks. FOUR. Four Aron Franks without museums, without historical markers, without anyone to mourn them. I silently resolved to remember and pray for the four Aron Franks as long as I was around.

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.

AHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!' he screamed. 'So that's Sara,' I said. 'Yes.' 'She seems nice.

I was thinking about the universe wanting to be noticed, and how I had to notice it as best I could. I felt that I owed a debt to the universe that only my attention could repay, and also that I owed a debt to everybody who didn’t get to be a person anymore and everyone who hadn’t gotten to be a person yet.