Even with everything broken and decided inside her she couldn't quite allow herself to disappear for good.
John GreenTiny, the next time that you try to set me up with a girl with a secret boyfriend can you at least INFORM me that she has a secret boyfriend? Also, if you don't call me back within five minutes, I'm going to assume you found a way back to Evanston. Furthermore, you are an asshat. That is all.
John GreenShe has great breasts," the Colonel said without looking up from the whale. "DO NOT OBJECTIFY WOMEN'S BODIES!" Alaska shouted. Now he looked up. "Sorry. Perky breasts." "That's not any better!
John GreenMore than anything, I felt the unfairness of it, the inarguable injustice of loving someone who might have loved you back but can't due to deadness, and then I leaned forward, my forehead against the back of Takumi's headrest, and I cried, whimpering, and I didn't even feel sadness so much as pain.
John GreenThat was the worst part about having cancer, sometimes: The physical evidence of disease separates you from other people.
John GreenHer library filled her bookshelves and then overflowed into waist-high stacks of books everywhere, piled haphazardly against the walls. If just one of them moved... the domino effect could engulf the three of us in an asphyxiating mass of literature.
John GreenIn those fifty, the Old Man made me take religion seriously. I'd never been religious, but he told us that religion is important whether or not we believed in one, the same way that historical events are important whether or not you personally lived through them.
John GreenAnd he found himself thinking that maybe stories don't just make us matter to each other - maybe they're also the only way to the infinite mattering he'd been after for so long.
John GreenColin's skin was alive with the feeling of connection to everyone in that car and everyone not in it. And he was feeling not-unique in the very best possible way.
John GreenHe responded a few minutes later. Okay. I wrote back. Okay. He responded: Oh, my God, stop flirting with me!
John GreenI still think that maybe the "afterlife" is just something we made up to ease the pain of loss, to make our time in the labyrinth bearable. Maybe we are just matter, and matter gets recycled
John Green...I will continue to underscore that I don't think authorial intent is all that important to a reading experience, and I certainly don't think the job of reading is to divine authorial intent.
John Green"Patience, grasshopper," I counseled. "You don't want to seem overeager." "Right, that's why I said tomorrow," he said. "I want to see you again tonight. But I'm willing to wait all night and much of tomorrow." I rolled my eyes. "I'm serious," he said."You don't even know me," I said. I grabbed the book from the center console. "How about I call you when I finish this?""But you don't even have my phone number," he said."I strongly suspect you wrote it in this book."He broke out into that goofy smile. "And you say we don't know each other."
John GreenYou will not kill my girlfriend today, International Terrorists of Ambiguous Nationality!
John GreenHey Pudge," the Colonel said. "What do you think of a truce?" "It reminds me of when the Germans demanded that the U.S. surrender at the Battle of the Bulge," I said. "I guess I'd say to this truce offer what General McAuliffe said to that one: Nuts.
John GreenIf I ever end up being the kind of person who has one kid and seven bedrooms. Do me a favor and shoot me.
John GreenHow about I call you when I finish this?โ โBut you donโt even have my phone number,โ he said. โI strongly suspect you wrote it in the book.โ He broke out into that goofy smile. โA nd you say we donโt know each other.
John GreenI don't decide where I live. My wife decides. She's a curator of contemporary art, and she works at an art museum, so we go wherever she has a job. All basements look the same, so I can write from whatever basement I happen to be living in.
John GreenBut I will say this: When the scientists of the future show up at my house with robot eyes and they tell me to try them on, I will tell the scientists to screw off, because I do not want to see a world without him.
John GreenI came to the conclusion a while ago that there is nothing romantic or supernatural about loving someone: Love is the privilege of being responsible for another. It was, for a time, what kept me going: Each morning, for a little while, I got to feel the weight of the yoke on my back as I pulled the ancient cart of my species.
John GreenIf we'd put them in a vase in the living room, they would have been everyone's flowers. I wanted them to be my flowers.
John GreenShe said, "It's not life or death, the labyrinth." "Um, okay. So what is it?" "Suffering," she said. "Doing wrong and having wrong things happen to you. That's the problem. Bolivar was talking about the pain, not about the living or dying. How do you get out of the labyrinth of suffering?... Nothing's wrong. But there's always suffering, Pudge. Homework or malaria or having a boyfriend who lives far away when there's a good-looking boy lying next to you. Suffering is universal. It's the one thing Buddhists, Christians, and Muslims are all worried about."
John GreenI did some research on this a couple years ago," Augustus continued. "I was wondering if everybody could be remembered. Like, if we got organized, and assigned a certain number of corpses to each living person, would there be enough living people to remember all the dead people?" "And are there?" "Sure, anyone can name fourteen dead people. But we're disorganized mourners, so a lot of people end up remembering Shakespeare and no one ends up remembering the person he wrote Sonnet Fifty-five about
John GreenIt's just that I learned a while ago that the best way to get people to like you is not to like them too much.
John GreenShe would stay on the road and in hiding, a balloon floating through the sky, eating up hundreds of miles a day with a help of the perpetual tailwind.
John GreenA taste so profound and complex that it can't even be compared to other tastes, only to emotions. Cheesy waffles, I was thinking, tastes like love without the fear of love's dissolution.
John GreenWhen you're walking home at night, do you even get creeped out and even though it's silly and embarrassing you just want to run home?" It seemed too secret and personal to admit to virtual stranger, but I told her, "Yeah, totally." For a moment, she was quiet. Then she grabbed my hand, whispered, "Run run run run run," and took off, pulling me behind her.
John GreenReal gangster-ass Nerdfighters don't run from nothing... 'cause real gangster-ass Nerdfighters can't run fast.
John GreenI wanted to, you know, get my story out in the world, which, it turns out, is a very misguided notion.
John GreenAdult librarians are like lazy bakers: their patrons want a jelly doughnut, so they give them a jelly doughnut. Childrenโs librarians are ambitious bakers: 'You like the jelly doughnut? Iโll get you a jelly doughnut. But you should try my cruller, too. My cruller is gonna blow your mind, kid.
John GreenWe have this weird thing in the world where you don't get insulted for what you do, you get insulted for who you are.
John GreenI don't think you're dying," I said. "I think you've just got a touch of cancer. He smiled. Gallows humor.
John GreenIt's total bullshit," he said. "The whole thing. Eighty percent survival rate and he's in the twenty percent? Bullshit. He was such a bright kid. It's bullshit. I hate it. But it was sure a privilege to love him, huh?
John Green