Chicago is the Great American City, and it was really great to live there during a time of economic expansion and opportunity and growth. I felt like I was living at the center of the world. Unlike New York, no one expects you to be a professional writer.
John GreenI find it really offensive when people say that the emotional experiences of teenagers are less real or less important than those of adults. I am an adult, and I used to be a teenager, and so I can tell you with some authority that my feelings then were as real as my feelings are now.
John GreenAll along โ not only since she left, but for a decade before โ I had been imagining her without listening, without knowing that she made as a poor a window as I did. And so I could not imagine her as a person who could feel fear, who could feel isolated in a roomful of people, who could be shy about her record collection because it was too personal to share. Someone who might have read travel books to escape having to live in the town that so many people escape to. Someone who โ because no one thought she was a person โ had no one to really talk to.
John GreenLet me just acknowlege that the function of grammar is to make language as efficent and clear and transparent as possible. But if weโre all constantly correcting each otherโs grammar and being really snotty about it, then people stop talking because they start to be petrified that theyโre going to make some sort of terrible grammatical error and thatโs precisely the opposite of what grammar is supposed to do, which is to facilitate clear communication.
John GreenI think maybe the reason I have spent most of my life being afraid is that I have been trying to prepare myself to train my body for real fear when it comes. But I am not prepared.
John GreenI don't see a future where we're all taught by robots. The real life, physical experience of being in a classroom and having conversations with knowledgeable people is immeasurably valuable and irreplaceable.
John GreenI pulled the oxygen tubes from my nostrils and raised the tube up over my head, handing it to Dad. I wanted it to be just me and just him.
John GreenLacey shrugged bashfully. โDo you think Iโm superficial?โ โWell, yeah.โ I thought of myself standing outside Beccaโs bedroom, hoping sheโd take her shirt off. โBut so am I,โ I added. โSo is everyone.
John GreenSaying 'I notice you're a nerd' is like saying, 'Hey, I notice that you'd rather be intelligent than be stupid, that you'd rather be thoughtful than be vapid, that you believe that there are things that matter more than the arrest record of Lindsay Lohan. Why is that?' In fact, it seems to me that most contemporary insults are pretty lame. Even 'lame' is kind of lame. Saying 'You're lame' is like saying 'You walk with a limp.' Yeah, whatever, so does 50 Cent, and he's done all right for himself.
John GreenOne of the jobs of a writer is to add nuance and ambiguity to that straight line that people often draw to very specific kinds of heroism. Most of us don't get to be Snooki. For most of us heroism has to be in our everyday lives.
John GreenWhen you say nasty things about people, you should never say the true ones, because you can't really fully and honestly take those back.
John GreenIs it still cool to go to the mall?' she asked. 'I take quite a lot of pride in not knowing what's cool,' I answered.
John GreenSexuality is important, but it's certainly not the most interesting or important thing happening to you right now. We live in a world that tells us that there are only two important things. One is the acquisition of goods and the other is either the acquisition or avoidance of sex, but it turns out that the question of who's a virgin and who's a virgout is not the most interesting question.
John GreenThe urge to make art or contemplate philosophy does not go away when you are sick. Those urges just become transfigured by illness.
John GreenThere's not even real *popularity* at my school." "That," Coli said emphatically, "is a sentence that has only ever been spoken by popular people.
John GreenI'm in love with you, and I'm not in the business of denying myself the simple pleasure of saying true things.
John GreenSo Zeno is most famous for his tortoise paradox. Let us imagine that you are in a race with a tortoise. The tortoise has a ten-yard head start. In the time it takes you to run that ten yards, the tortoise has moved one yard. And then in the time it takes you to make up that distance, the tortoise goes a bit farther, and so on forever. You are faster than the tortoise but you can never catch him; you can only decrease his lead.
John GreenI've read a lot of bad books. I used to review books for a living, and when you're a reviewer you read tons of terrible books.
John GreenAs far as I can tell, there are two basic (kissing) rules: 1. Don't bite anything without permission. 2. The human tongue is like wasabi: it's very powerful, and should be used sparingly.
John GreenIn the end the listening exposes you even more than it exposes the people you're trying to listen to.
John GreenThere were so many of us who would have to live with things done and things left undone that day. Things that did not go right, things that seemed okay at the time because we could not see the future. If only we could see the endless string of consequences that result from our smallest actions. But we can't know better until knowing better is useless.
John GreenI figured something out," he said aloud. "The future is unpredictable." Hassan said, "Sometimes the kafir likes to say massively obvious things in a really profound voice.
John Green"Nothing ever happens like you imagine it will," she says. The sky is like a monochromatic contemporary painting, drawing me in with its illusion of depth, pulling me up. "Yeah, that's true," I say. But then after I think about it for a second, I add, "But then again, if you don't imagine, nothing ever happens at all."
John GreenYou could hear the wind in the leaves, and on that wind traveled the screams of the kids on the playground in the distance, little kids figuring out how to be alive, how to navigate a world that wasn't made for them by navigating a playground that was.
John GreenPeople are supposed to care. It's good that people mean something to you, that you miss people when they're gone.
John GreenI am in the midst of a soliloquy! I wrote this out and memorized it and if you interrupt me I will completely screw it up,' Augustus interrupted. 'Please to be eating your sandwich and listening.
John GreenThe internet is necessarily public. It can be filtered-public or censored-public, but it necessarily has to be open and available.
John Green"I think forever is an incorrect concept," I answered. He smirked. "You're an incorrect concept." "I know. That's why I'm being taken out of the rotation".
John GreenUltimately, it doesn't matter if the author intended a symbol to be there, because the job of reading is not to understand the authors intend. The job of reading is to see into other people as we see ourselves.
John GreenLike many people, I feel like celebrating. Remember this feeling. It is human, and can help us understand when others express bloodlust.
John GreenThe thing about That Guy Is a Gigolo,' Radar says, 'I mean, the thing about it as a game, is that in the end it reveals a lot more about the person doing the imagining than it does about the person being imagined.
John GreenI kept waiting for that loneliness and nervousness to make me want to go back. But it never did.
John GreenIt's embarrassing that we all just walk through life blindly accepting that scrambled eggs are fundamentally associated with mornings.
John GreenTrue love will triumph in the endโwhich may or may not be a lie, but if it is a lie, it's the most beautiful lie we have.
John GreenThe fundamental mistake I had always made - and that she had, in fairness, always led me to make - was this: Margo was not a miracle. She was not an adventure. She was not a fine and precious thing. She was a girl.
John GreenWe live in a universe devoted to the creation, and eradication, of awareness. Augustus Waters did not die after a lengthy battle with cancer. He died after a lengthy battle with human consciousness, a victim - as you will be - of the universe's need to make and unmake all that is possible.
John Green