I believe the universe wants to be noticed. I think the universe is inprobably biased toward the consciousness, that it rewards intelligence in part because the universe enjoys its elegance being observed. And who am I, living in the middle of history, to tell the universe that it-or my observation of it-is temporary?
John GreenAt least it was instant. At least there wasn't any pain." I knew he was only trying to help, but he didn't get it. There was pain. A dul endless pain in my gut that wouldn't go away even when I knelt on the stingingly frozen tile of the bathroom, dry-heaving.
John GreenI was surprised. I'd always associated belief in heaven with, frankly, a kind of intellectual disengagement. But Gus wasn't dumb.
John GreenCold,โ he said, pressing a finger to my pale wrist. โNot cold so much as underoxygenated,โ I said. โI love it when you talk medical to me,โ he said. He stood, and pulled me up with him, and did not let go of my hand until we reached the stairs.
John GreenThe world is broken, and all our attempts to fix it will inevitably fail, and some day all life will be extinguished from the planet and there will be no one to remember that any of us ever did anything. But this fact, strangely, does not delegitimize hope, because every now and again we find evidence that hope is helpful. This evidence, in my opinion, should be celebrated-even as we lament๏ปฟ and fight the devastation.
John GreenI shaved this morning for precisely that reason. I was like, 'Well, you never know when someone is going to clamp down on your calf and try to suck out the snake poison.
John GreenThat's always seemed so ridiculous to me, that people want to be around someone because they're pretty. It's like picking your breakfeast cereals based on color instead of taste.
John GreenThe act of leaning in to kiss someone, or asking them, is fraught with the possibility of rejection, so the person least likely to get rejected should do the leaning in or the asking.
John GreenI was born into Bolรญvar's labyrinth, and so I must believe in the hope of Rabelais' Great Perhaps.
John GreenThe light filtered throught the leaves and pine needles above as if through lace, the ground spotted in shadow.
John GreenThere was quite a lot of competitiveness about it, with everybody wanting to beat not only cancer itself, but also the other people in the room. Like, I realize that this is irrational, but when they tell you that you have, say, a 20 percent chance of living five years, the math kicks in and you figure thatโs one in five . . . so you look around and think, as any healthy person would: I gotta outlast four of these bastards.
John Green'Do you know,' he asked in a delicious accent, 'what Dom Pรฉrignon said after inventing champagne?' 'No?' I said. 'He called out to his fellow monks, 'Come quickly: I am tasting the stars!'
John GreenAfter all this time, it seems to me like straight and fast is the only way out- but I choose the labyrinth. The labyrinth blows, but I choose it.
John GreenShe is close enough to me that I can see her, because even now there is the outward sign of visible light, even at night in this parking lot on the outskirts of Algoe. After we kiss, our foreheads touch as we stare at each other. Yes, I can see her almost perfectly in this cracked darkness.
John GreenIn general-like not just in fiction but in life-it doesn't work out well when someone imagines someone else as a manic pixie dream girl or an Edward Cullen or anything other than a full, complex human being. That said, while I've tried to reflect that in my books, I don't think I've always succeeded, because I am always running up against my own insufficiencies and biases etc.
John GreenIt's not fair," I said. "It's just so goddamned unfair." "The world," he said, "is not a wishgranting factory.
John GreenSomething about me has always liked the drama and inconvience of bad weather. The worse the better, really.
John GreenI think when you're 16, if you have good parents, they generally just fade in the background. I had great parents, and because they were great, I thought very little about them in high school.
John GreenI 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.
John GreenThe Red Wheelbarrow" by William Carlos Williams. So much depends upom a red wheel barrow glazed with rain water beside the white chickens.
John GreenThe real heroes anyway aren't the people doing things; the real heroes are the people NOTICING things, paying attention.
John GreenI'm just reveling in the glory of not having to hear the neediness and impotence of my own voice.
John Green'Cause I'm just - I want to go to Amsterdam, and I want him to tell me what happens after the book is over, and I just don't want my particular life, and also the sky is depressing me, and there is this old swing set out here that my dad made for me when I was a kid.' 'I must see this old swing set of tears immediately,' he said. 'I'll be over in twenty minutes.'
John GreenShe has enough black eyeliner on to outline a corpse, and her skin's so pale she looks like she's just broken dawn.
John GreenWe just sat there quiet for a long time, which was fine, and I was thinking about way back in the very beginning in the Literal Heart of Jesus.
John GreenI dislike the phrase โInternet friends,โ because it implies that people you know online arenโt really your friends, that somehow the friendship is less real or meaningful to you because it happens through Skype or text messages. The measure of a friendship is not its physicality but its significance.
John GreenWhen we think of death, we often imagine it as happening in degrees: We think of a sick person becoming less and less alive until finally they are gone.
John GreenThe marks humans leave are too often scars. You build a hideous minimall or start a coup or try to become a rock star and you'll think "they'll remember me now," but (a) they don't remember you, and (b) all you leave behind are more scars. Your coup becomes a dictatorship. Your minimall becomes a lesion.
John GreenOf course I tensed up when he touched me. To be with him was to hurt him-inevitably. And that's what I'd felt as he reached for me: I'd felt as though I were committing an act of violence against him, because I was.
John GreenI felt tired for the first time, and I thought of us lying down on some grassy patch of SeaWorld together, me on my back and she on her side with her arm draped against me, her head on my shoulder, facing me. Not doing anything--just lying there together beneath the sky, the night here so well lit that it drowns out the stars. And maybe I could feel her breathe against my neck, and maybe we could just stay there until morning and then the people would walk past us as they came into the park, and they would see us and think that we were tourists, too, and we could just disappear into them.
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 Greenthere is no best and no worst, ...those judgments have no real meaning because there is only what is
John GreenColin thought about the dork mantra: sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me. What a dirty lie.
John Green