Such is life. We grow up. Planets like Tiny get new moons. Moons like me get new planets.
John GreenIf I had a nervous breakdown every time something awful happened in the world, I'd be crazier than a shithouse rat.
John GreenAugustus Waters died eight days after his prefuneral, at Memorial, in the ICU, when the cancer, which was made of him, finally stopped his heart, which was also made of him.
John GreenWhen I think about [characters], I like to think of them in their relationships to each other. In the same way, I think that's how humans are ultimately defined. We are our relationships to one another. And a lot of what's interesting about us happens in the context of other people.
John GreenIt felt like everything was rising up in me, like I was drowning in this weirdly painful joy, but I couldn't say it back. I just looked at him and let him look at me until he nodded, lips pursed and turned away, placing the side of his head against the window.
John GreenYou cannot invent an algorithm that is as good at recommending books as a good bookseller.
John GreenI'll just go over to the Duke's," I said. "Her parents already told me I could stay there. I'll go over there and open all my presents, and talk about how my parents neglect me, and then maybe the Duke will give me some of her presents because she feels so bad about how my mom doesn't love me.
John GreenThat feeling of finishedness does not come all at once, and it is not easily won, but I think once you get there it is hard to go back.
John GreenThe French verb aimer has two meanings. And that’s why he liked her, and loved her. She spoke to him in a language that, no matter how hard you studied it, could not be completely understood.
John GreenBefore I got here, I thought for a long time that the way out of the labyrinth was to pretend that it did not exist, to build a small, self-sufficient world in the back corner of the endless maze and to pretend that I was not lost, but home.
John GreenI think if you went back to the eighteenth century and you asked a fifteen year old boy, 'Would you like to marry a woman who has had plastic bags needlessly inserted into her breasts?', that fifteen year old boy would probably be like, 'what's plastic?'.
John GreenA small olive-skinned creature who had hit puberty but never hit it very hard, Ben had been my best friend since fifth grade, when we both finally owned up to the fact that neither of us was likely to attract anyone else as a best friend.
John GreenI liked Augustus Waters. I really, really really liked him. I liked the way his story ended with someone else. I liked his voice. I liked that he took existentially-fraught free throws.
John GreenYou can't just make me different, and then leave. Because I was fine before, Alaska. I was just fine with me and last words and school friends, and you can't just make me different and then die.
John GreenThey love their hair because they're not smart enough to love something more interesting.
John GreenAnd yet still I worried. I like being a person. I wanted to keep at it. Worry is yet another side effect of dying.
John GreenAnd then we were kissing. My hand let go of the oxygen cart and I reached up for his neck, and he pulled me up by my waist onto my tiptoes. As his parted lips met mine, I started to feel breathless in a new and fascinating way. The space around us evaporated, and for a weird moment I really liked my body, this cancer-ruined thing I'd spent years dragging around suddenly seemed worth the struggle, worth the chest tubes and PICC lines and the ceaseless bodily betrayal of the tumors.
John GreenAnd I wanted to tell her that the pleasure for me wasn't planning or doing or leaving; the pleasure was in seeing our strings cross and separate and then come back together.
John GreenBeing a person, I had come to realize, is a communal activity. Dogs know how to be dogs. But people do not know how to be people unless and until they learn from other people.
John GreenI jog through the halls and then go upstairs to Jane’s locker and carefully slip the note I wrote last night through the vent: To: The Locker Houdini From: Will Grayson Re: An Expert in the Field of Good Boyfriends? Dear Jane, Just so you know: e. e. cummings cheated on both of his wives. With prostitutes. Yours, Will Grayson
John GreenIt's a metaphor, see: You put the killing thing right between your teeth, but you don't give it the power to do its killing.
John GreenHow are the eyes?' 'Oh, excellent,' he said. 'I mean, they're not in my head is the only problem.
John GreenAnd I wondered if hurdlers ever thought, you know, 'This would go faster if we just got rid of the hurdles.
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 GreenI felt the unfairness of it, the inarguable injustice of loving someone who might have loved you back but can't due to deadness.
John Greenfeeling - probably for the first time in my life - the fear and excitement of living in a place where you never know what's going to happen or when.
John Green"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."
John GreenThe world went on, as it does, without my full participation, and I only woke up from the reverie when someone said my name.
John GreenHigh school is neither a democracy nor a dictatorship - nor, contrary to popular belief, an anarchic state. High school is a divine-right monarchy. And when the queen goes on vacation, things change.
John Green