I worked hard to meet his eyes, even though they were the kind of pretty that's hard to look at.
John GreenSo how’s it going?” “Okay. Glad to be home, I guess. Gus told me you were in the ICU?” “Yeah,” I said. “Sucks,” he said. “I’m a lot better now,” I said. “I’m going to Amsterdam tomorrow with Gus.” “I know. I’m pretty well up-to-date on your life, because Gus never. Talks. About. Anything. Else.
John GreenWitness also that when we talk about literature, we do so in the present tense. When we speak of the dead, we are not so kind.
John GreenThese are all direct quotes, except every time they use a curse word, I'm going to use the name of a famous American poet: 'You Walt Whitman-ing, Edna St. Vincent Millay! Go Emily Dickinson your mom!' 'Thanks for the advice, you pathetic piece of E.E. Cummings, but I think I'm gonna pass.' 'You Robert Frost-ing Nikki Giovanni! Get a life, nerd. You're a virgin.' 'Hey bro, you need to go outside and get some fresh air into you. Or a girlfriend.' I need to get a girlfriend into me? I think that shows a fundamental lack of comprehension about how babies are made.
John GreenSuffering can bend & break us. But it can also break us open to become the persons God intended us to be. It depends on what we do with the pain. If we offer it back to God, He will use it to do great things in us & through us, because suffering is fertile... it an grow new life.
John GreenI could be worse, you know." "How?" I asked, teasing. "I mean, I have a work of calligraphy over my toilet that reads, 'Bathe yourself in the comfort of God's words,' Hazel. I could be way worse." "Sounds unsanitary," I said.
John GreenDon't make fun of her," the Duke said. "She needs gentle encouragement. Carla, baby, we love you. You are such a good car. And we believe in you one hundred percent." ... "Don't listen to him, Carla. You're gonna do this." ... "I love you, Carla. You know that, don't you? I wake up every morning and the first thing I think is that I love Tobin's mom's car. I know that's weird, baby, but I do. I love you. And I know you can do this." ... "Carla," the Duke said, "it's time to tell you the truth. I'm in love with you. I want to be with you, Carla. I've never felt this way about a c-
John GreenEven then, it hurt. The pain was always there, pulling me inside of myself, demanding to be felt. It always felt like I was waking up from the pain when something in the world outside of me suddenly required my comment or attention.
John GreenI wanted to be one of those people who have streaks to maintain, who scorch the ground with their intensity. But for now, at least I knew such people, and they needed me, just like comets need tails.
John GreenI knew that I would know more dead people. The bodies pile up. Could there be a space in my memory for each of them, or would I forget a little of Alaska every day for the rest of my life?
John GreenWriting fiction is an inherently political activity because people-even imaginary ones-do not live in vacuums... From Twilight to Romeo and Juliet to The Little Mermaid, no work of the imagination is truly apolitical, because the world and our hopes for it are always part of our stories.
John GreenAugustus: “You probably need some rest.” Me: “I’m okay.” Augustus: “Okay.” (Pause.) “What are you thinking about?” Me: “You.” Augustus: “What about me?” Me: “‘I do not know which to prefer, / The beauty of inflections / Or the beauty of innuendos, / The blackbird whistling / Or just after.’” Augustus: “God, you are sexy.” Me: “We could go to your room.” Augustus: “I’ve heard worse ideas.
John GreenCrying adds something: crying is you, plus tears. But the feeling Colin had was some horrible opposite of crying. It was you, minus something. He kept thinking about one word - forever - and felt the burning ache just beneath his rib cage.
John GreenAnd since she drove to work every morning, I could only use the car on weekends. Well, weekends and the middle of the goddamned night.
John GreenYou can say a lot of bad things about Tiny Cooper. I know, because I have said them. But for a guy who knows absolutely nothing about how to conduct his own relationships, Tiny Cooper is kind of brilliant when it comes to dealing with other people's heartbreak. Tiny is like some gigantic sponge soaking up the pain of lost love everywhere he goes.
John GreenHe knew he couldn't tell stories, that he always included extraneous details & tangents that interested only him.
John GreenWho would you die for? Who would you wake up at five forty-five in the morning for even though you don't even know why he needs you?
John GreenThe nature of the labyrinth, I scribbled into my spiral notebook, and the way out of it. This teacher rocked. I hated discussion classes. I hated talking, and I hated listening to everyone else stumble on their words and try to phrase things in the vaguest possible way so they wouldn't sound dumb, and I hated how it was all just a game of trying to figure out what the teacher wanted to hear and then saying it. I'm in class, so teach me.
John GreenOn the morning in question, she wore white shorts and a pink T-shirt that featured a green dragon breathing a fire of orange glitter. It is difficult to explain how awesome I found this T-shirt at the time.
John GreenCaroline was always moody and miserable, but I liked it. I liked feeling as if she had chosen me as the only person in the world not to hate, and so we spent all this time together just ragging on everyone, you know?
John GreenShe spoke quietly then, the tiniest crack in her voice, and all at once Lacey Pemerton was not Lacey Pemberton. She was just—like, a person.
John GreenMaybe our favorite quotations say more about us than about the stories and people we're quoting.
John GreenWe're professional worriers. You're constantly imagining things that could go wrong and then writing about them.
John GreenReading it the night before, I'd wondered if it would be like that for me-if in one moment, I would finally understand her, know her, and understand the role I'd played in her dying. But I wasn't convinced enlightenment struck like lightining.
John GreenThank you for explaining that my eye cancer isn't going to make me deaf. I feel so fortunate that an intellectual giant like yourself would deign to operate on me.
John GreenGus knew. Gus knows. I will not tell you our love story, because—like all real love stories—it will die with us, as it should. I'd hoped that he'd be eulogizing me.
John GreenIt's almost as if the way you imagine my dead self says more about you than it says about either the person I was or the whatever I am now.
John GreenI'm a good person but a shitty writer. You're a shitty person but a good writer. We'd make a good team.
John GreenWhere do you come up with these zingers, Clint? Do you own some kind of joke factory in Indonesia where you've got eight-year-olds working ninety hours a week to deliver you that kind of top-quality witticism? There are boy bands with more original material.
John GreenThe vast majority of us imagine ourselves as like literature people or math people. But the truth is that the massive processor known as the human brain is neither a literature organ or a math organ. It is both and more.
John GreenIt's not life or death, the labyrinth. Suffering. Doing wrong and having wrong things happen to you.
John GreenIt's hard to get movie studios to pay a lot of money for movies that don't have robots or explosions.
John Green