But why Alaska?' I asked her. 'Well, later, I found out what it means. It's from an Aleut word, Alyeska. It means 'that which the sea breaks against,' and I love that. But at the time, I just saw Alaska up there. And it was big, just like I wanted to be.
John GreenAnd so much depends, I told Augustus, upon a blue sky cut open by the branches of the trees above. So much depends upon the transparent G-tube erupting from the gut of the blue-lipped boy. So much depends upon the observer of the universe.
John GreenIt's like people believe all you need to do is like the same bands in order to be soulmates. Or book. Oh my god...you like The Outsiders too...it's like we're the same person! No, we're not. It's like we have the same English teacher. There's a difference.
John GreenIt's hard as hell to hold on to your dignity when the risen sun is too bright in your losing eyes, and that's what I was thinking about as we hunted for bad guys through the ruins of a city that didn't exist.
John GreenI do my precalc homework, and then when I'm done I actually sit with the textbook for like three hours and try to understand what I just did. That's the kind of weekend it is--the kind where you have so much time you go past the answers and start looking into the ideas.
John GreenI wondered whether I could find a Great Perhaps here at all or whether I had made a grand miscalculation.
John GreenThere is always the risk: something is good and good and good and good, and then all at once it gets awkward. All at once, she sees you looking at her, and then she doesn't want to joke around with you anymore, because she doesn't want to seem flirty, because she doesn't want you to think she likes you. It's such a disaster, whenever, in the course of human relationships, someone begins to chisel away at the wall of separation between friendship and kissing.
John GreenAs I followed Margo's directions through the maze of one-way streets, we saw a few people sleeping on the sidewalk or sitting on benches, but nobody was moving. Margo rolled down the window, and I felt the thick air blow across my face, warmer than night ought to be. I glanced over and saw strands of her hair blowing all around her face. Even though I could see her there, I felt entirely alone among these big and empty buildings, like I'd survived the apocalypse and the world had been given to me, this whole and amazing and endless world, mine for the exploring.
John GreenRead a lot. Read broadly... Tell stories to your friends, and pay attention to when they get bored... Write a lot.
John GreenThe challenge is the same whether or not I'm collaborating: to empathize with your reader and to tell a story that will matter to him or her. But the mechanics of going about that challenge change when you're collaborating, because you have someone to help refine your thinking and expand your vision of what might happen.
John GreenDaddy is trying really fugging hard to think of a not-terrifying reason why you'd wake Daddy up in the middle of the night to ask that fugging question. But no. No. Daddy does not have a match or a lighter.
John GreenFrankly, I kind of want you to be haunted by the unansweredness of the question, because I think being haunted by such things is a valuable part of being a person.
John GreenI know that books seem like the ultimate thing that's made by one person, but that's not true. Every reading of a book is a collaboration between the reader and the writer who are making the story up together.
John GreenBut my miracle was different. My miracle was this: out of all the houses in all the subdivisions in all of Florida, I ended up living next door to Margo Roth Spiegelman.
John GreenThat's how writing works, at least for me: even the stuff that doesn't work out gets funneled into the stuff that does work out.
John GreenThese little contradictions are in all of us. They're in me at least. And so I forgot that I had been awake for 30 hours and kept walking, grateful to be a little boat full of water, still floating.
John GreenI pointed at the little kids goading each other to jump from rib cage to shoulder and Gus answered just loud enough for me to hear over the din, 'Last time, I imagined myself as the kid. This time, the skeleton.
John GreenBut to be perfectly frank, this childish idea that the author of a novel has some special insight into the characters in the novel ... it's ridiculous. That novel was composed of scratches on a page, dear. The characters inhabiting it have no life outside of those scratches. What happened to them? They all ceased to exist the moment the novel ended.
John GreenHow are the eyes?' 'Oh, excellent,' he said. 'I mean, they're not in my head is the only problem.' 'Awesome, yeah,' Gus said. 'Not to one-up you or anything, but my body is made out of cancer.' 'So I heard,' Issac said, trying not to let it get to him. He fumbled toward Gus's hand and found only his thigh. 'I'm taken,' Gus said.
John Greenhe is both the source of my happiness and the one i want to share it with. i have to believe that’s a sign.
John GreenThe past feels distant, even when it's near. The future feels assured, even when it isn't.
John GreenBut there are a thousand ways to look at it: maybe the strings break, or maybe our ship s sink, or maybe we're grass--our roots so interdependent that no one is dead as long as someone is still alive. We don't suffer from a shortage of metaphors, is what I mean. But you have to be careful which metaphor you choose, because it matters.
John GreenWhen you’re as charming and physically attractive as myself, it’s easy enough to win over people you meet. But getting strangers to love you...now, that’s the trick.
John GreenIf you don't live a life in service of a greater good, you've gotta at least die a death in service of a greater good, you know? And I fear that I won't get either a life or a death that means anything.
John GreenGetting a life’ is something only a complete idiot could believe. Like you can just drive to a store and get a life. See it in its shiny box and look inside the plastic window and catch a glimpse of yourself in a new life and say, ‘Wow, I look much happier — I think this is the life I need to get!’, take it to the counter, ring it up, put it on your credit card. If getting a life was that easy, we’d be one blissed-out race.
John Greenstill, what could i say? that i didn't just feel depressed - instead, it was like the depression was the core of me, of every part of me, from my mind to my bones? that if he got blue, i got black? that i hated those pills so much, because i knew how much i relied on them to live?
John GreenI needed, I decided, to really know her, because I needed more to remember. Before I could begin the shameful process of forgetting the how and the why of her living and dying, I needed to learn it: How. Why. When. Where. What.
John GreenCollin Singleton could no more stay cool than a blue whale could stay skinny or Bangladesh could stay rich
John GreenThe nature of the love between a parent and child really is literally stronger than death. As long as either person in that relationship is alive, that relationship is still alive.
John Green