β
As he read, I fell in love the way you fall asleep: slowly, and then all at once.
β
β
John Green (The Fault in Our Stars)
β
You don't get to choose if you get hurt in this world...but you do have some say in who hurts you. I like my choices.
β
β
John Green (The Fault in Our Stars)
β
Sometimes, you read a book and it fills you with this weird evangelical zeal, and you become convinced that the shattered world will never be put back together unless and until all living humans read the book.
β
β
John Green (The Fault in Our Stars)
β
Some infinities are bigger than other infinities.
β
β
John Green (The Fault in Our Stars)
β
The only way out of the labyrinth of suffering is to forgive.
β
β
John Green (Looking for Alaska)
β
The marks humans leave are too often scars.
β
β
John Green (The Fault in Our Stars)
β
What a slut time is. She screws everybody.
β
β
John Green (The Fault in Our Stars)
β
Books are the ultimate Dumpees: put them down and theyβll wait for you forever; pay attention to them and they always love you back.
β
β
John Green (An Abundance of Katherines)
β
Thomas Edison's last words were "It's very beautiful over there". I don't know where there is, but I believe it's somewhere, and I hope it's beautiful.
β
β
John Green (Looking for Alaska)
β
Oh, I wouldn't mind, Hazel Grace. It would be a privilege to have my heart broken by you.
β
β
John Green (The Fault in Our Stars)
β
So I walked back to my room and collapsed on the bottom bunk, thinking that if people were rain, I was drizzle and she was a hurricane.
β
β
John Green (Looking for Alaska)
β
The world is not a wish-granting factory.
β
β
John Green (The Fault in Our Stars)
β
You can love someone so much...But you can never love people as much as you can miss them.
β
β
John Green
β
What is the point of being alive if you don't at least try to do something remarkable?
β
β
John Green (An Abundance of Katherines)
β
Maybe our favorite quotations say more about us than about the stories and people we're quoting.
β
β
John Green
β
What a treacherous thing to believe that a person is more than a person.
β
β
John Green (Paper Towns)
β
Grief does not change you, Hazel. It reveals you.
β
β
John Green (The Fault in Our Stars)
β
When I look at my room, I see a girl who loves books.
β
β
John Green (Looking for Alaska)
β
I'm in love with you," he said quietly.
"Augustus," I said.
"I am," he said. He was staring at me, and I could see the corners of his eyes crinkling. "I'm in love with you, and I'm not in the business of denying myself the simple pleasure of saying true things. I'm in love with you, and I know that love is just a shout into the void, and that oblivion is inevitable, and that we're all doomed and that there will come a day when all our labor has been returned to dust, and I know the sun will swallow the only earth we'll ever have, and I am in love with you.
β
β
John Green (The Fault in Our Stars)
β
That's always seemed so ridiculous to me, that people want to be around someone because they're pretty. It's like picking your breakfeast cereals based on color instead of taste.
β
β
John Green (Paper Towns)
β
It is so hard to leaveβuntil you leave. And then it is the easiest goddamned thing in the world.
β
β
John Green (Paper Towns)
β
Saying '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.
β
β
John Green
β
Books so special and rare and yours that advertising your affection feels like a betrayal.
β
β
John Green (The Fault in Our Stars)
β
I'm not saying that everything is survivable. Just that everything except the last thing is.
β
β
John Green (Paper Towns)
β
Imagining the future is a kind of nostalgia. (...) You spend your whole life stuck in the labyrinth, thinking about how you'll escape it one day, and how awesome it will be, and imagining that future keeps you going, but you never do it. You just use the future to escape the present.
β
β
John Green (Looking for Alaska)
β
What the hell is that?" I laughed.
"It's my fox hat."
"Your fox hat?"
"Yeah, Pudge. My fox hat."
"Why are you wearing your fox hat?" I asked.
"Because no one can catch the motherfucking fox.
β
β
John Green (Looking for Alaska)
β
Some tourists think Amsterdam is a city of sin, but in truth it is a city of freedom. And in freedom, most people find sin.
β
β
John Green (The Fault in Our Stars)
β
They love their hair because they're not smart enough to love something more interesting.
β
β
John Green (Looking for Alaska)
β
It'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.
β
β
John Green (The Fault in Our Stars)
β
The town was paper, but the memories were not.
β
β
John Green (Paper Towns)
β
Maybe 'okay' will be our 'always
β
β
John Green (The Fault in Our Stars)
β
I may die young, but at least I'll die smart.
β
β
John Green (Looking for Alaska)
β
What you must understand about me is that Iβm a deeply unhappy person.
β
β
John Green (Looking for Alaska)
β
It always shocked me when I realized that I wasnβt the only person in the world who thought and felt such strange and awful things.
β
β
John Green (Looking for Alaska)
β
Some people have lives; some people have music.
β
β
John Green (Will Grayson, Will Grayson)
β
If you don't imagine, nothing ever happens at all.
β
β
John Green (Paper Towns)
β
Thatβs part of what I like about the book in some ways. It portrays death truthfully. You die in the middle of your life, in the middle of a sentence
β
β
John Green (The Fault in Our Stars)
β
When adults say, "Teenagers think they are invincible" with that sly, stupid smile on their faces, they don't know how right they are. We need never be hopeless, because we can never be irreparably broken. We think that we are invincible because we are. We cannot be born, and we cannot die. Like all energy, we can only change shapes and sizes and manifestations. They forget that when they get old. They get scared of losing and failing. But that part of us greater than the sum of our parts cannot begin and cannot end, and so it cannot fail.
β
β
John Green (Looking for Alaska)
β
Francois Rabelais. He was a poet. And his last words were "I go to seek a Great Perhaps." That's why I'm going. So I don't have to wait until I die to start seeking a Great Perhaps.
β
β
John Green (Looking for Alaska)
β
I go to seek a Great Perhaps.
β
β
FranΓ§ois Rabelais
β
I'm so glad I live in a world where there are Octobers.
β
β
L.M. Montgomery (Anne of Green Gables)
β
There are infinite numbers between 0 and 1. There's .1 and .12 and .112 and an infinite collection of others. Of course, there is a bigger infinite set of numbers between 0 and 2, or between 0 and a million. Some infinities are bigger than other infinities. A writer we used to like taught us that. There are days, many of them, when I resent the size of my unbounded set. I want more numbers than I'm likely to get, and God, I want more numbers for Augustus Waters than he got. But, Gus, my love, I cannot tell you how thankful I am for our little infinity. I wouldn't trade it for the world. You gave me a forever within the numbered days, and I'm grateful.
β
β
John Green (The Fault in Our Stars)
β
I'm a grenade and at some point I'm going to blow up and I would like to minimize the casualties, okay?
β
β
John Green (The Fault in Our Stars)
β
Because you are beautiful. I enjoy looking at beautiful people, and I decided a while ago not to deny myself the simpler pleasures of existence
β
β
John Green (The Fault in Our Stars)
β
Without pain, how could we know joy?' This is an old argument in the field of thinking about suffering and its stupidity and lack of sophistication could be plumbed for centuries but suffice it to say that the existence of broccoli does not, in any way, affect the taste of chocolate.
β
β
John Green (The Fault in Our Stars)
β
Maybe there's something you're afraid to say, or someone you're afraid to love, or somewhere you're afraid to go. It's gonna hurt. It's gonna hurt because it matters.
β
β
John Green (Will Grayson, Will Grayson)
β
It's been my experience that you can nearly always enjoy things if you make up your mind firmly that you will.
β
β
L.M. Montgomery (Anne of Green Gables (Anne of Green Gables, #1))
β
At some point, you just pull off the Band-Aid, and it hurts, but then it's over and you're relieved.
β
β
John Green (Looking for Alaska)
β
You don't remember what happened. What you remember becomes what happened.
β
β
John Green (An Abundance of Katherines)
β
Kindred spirits are not so scarce as I used to think. It's splendid to find out there are so many of them in the world.
β
β
L.M. Montgomery (Anne of Green Gables (Anne of Green Gables, #1))
β
You gave me a forever within the numbered days, and I'm grateful.
β
β
John Green (The Fault in Our Stars)
β
I didnβt need you, you idiot. I picked you. And then you picked me back.
β
β
John Green (Paper Towns)
β
But it is the nature of stars to cross, and never was Shakespeare more wrong than when he has Cassius note, βThe fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars / But in ourselves.
β
β
John Green (The Fault in Our Stars)
β
I wanted so badly to lie down next to her on the couch, to wrap my arms around her and sleep. Not fuck, like in those movies. Not even have sex. Just sleep together in the most innocent sense of the phrase. But I lacked the courage and she had a boyfriend and I was gawky and she was gorgeous and I was hopelessly boring and she was endlessly fascinating. So I walked back to my room and collapsed on the bottom bunk, thinking that if people were rain, I was drizzle and she was hurricane.
β
β
John Green (Looking for Alaska)
β
It's not gray," Clary felt compelled to point out. "It's green."
"If there was such a thing as terminal literalism, you'd have died in childhood," said Jace.
β
β
Cassandra Clare (City of Bones (The Mortal Instruments, #1))
β
Remember if people talk behind your back, it only means you are two steps ahead.
β
β
Fannie Flagg (Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe)
β
You like someone who can't like you back because unrequited love can be survived in a way that once-requited love cannot.
β
β
John Green (Will Grayson, Will Grayson)
β
I wonder how many people don't get the one they want, but end up with the one they're supposed to be with.
β
β
Fannie Flagg (Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe)
β
And then something invisible snapped insider her, and that which had come together commenced to fall apart.
β
β
John Green (Looking for Alaska)
β
because nerds like us are allowed to be unironically enthusiastic about stuff. Nerds are allowed to love stuff, like jump-up-and-down-in-the-chair-canβt-control-yourself love it. Hank, when people call people nerds, mostly what theyβre saying is βyou like stuff.β Which is just not a good insult at all. Like, βyou are too enthusiastic about the miracle of human consciousnessβ.
β
β
John Green
β
Whenever you read a cancer booklet or website or whatever, they always list depression among the side effects of cancer. But, in fact, depression is not a side effect of cancer. Depression is a side effect of dying.
β
β
John Green (The Fault in Our Stars)
β
It's not because I want to make out with her."
Hold on." He grabbed a pencil and scrawled excitedly at the paper as if he'd just made a mathematical breakthrough and then looked back up at me. "I just did some calculations, and I've been able to determine that you're full of shit
β
β
John Green (Looking for Alaska)
β
I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn't quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.
β
β
Sylvia Plath (The Bell Jar)
β
I believe the universe wants to be noticed. I think the universe is inprobably biased toward the consciousness, that it rewards intelligence in part because the universe enjoys its elegance being observed. And who am I, living in the middle of history, to tell the universe that it-or my observation of it-is temporary?
β
β
John Green (The Fault in Our Stars)
β
Headline?" he asked.
"'Swing Set Needs Home,'" I said.
"'Desperately Lonely Swing Set Needs Loving Home,'" he said.
"'Lonely, Vaguely Pedophilic Swing Set Seeks the Butts of Children,'" I said.
β
β
John Green (The Fault in Our Stars)
β
Iβm on a roller coaster that only goes up, my friend.
β
β
John Green (The Fault in Our Stars)
β
Talking to a drunk person was like talking to an extremely happy, severely brain-damaged three-year-old.
β
β
John Green (Paper Towns)
β
True friends are always together in spirit.
β
β
L.M. Montgomery (Anne of Green Gables (Anne of Green Gables, #1))
β
Sometimes you lose a battle. But mischief always wins the war
β
β
John Green (Looking for Alaska)
β
What is an "instant" death anyway? How long is an instant? Is it one second? Ten? The pain of those seconds must have been awful as her heart burst and her lungs collapsed and there was no air and no blood to her brain and only raw panic. What the hell is instant? Nothing is instant. Instant rice takes five minutes, instant pudding an hour. I doubt that an instant of blinding pain feels particularly instantaneous.
β
β
John Green (Looking for Alaska)
β
My life is a perfect graveyard of buried hopes.
β
β
L.M. Montgomery (Anne of Green Gables (Anne of Green Gables, #1))
β
It is easy to forget how full the world is of people, full to bursting, and each of them imaginable and consistently misimagined.
β
β
John Green (Paper Towns)
β
I figured something out. The future is unpredictable.
β
β
John Green (An Abundance of Katherines)
β
I just did some calculations and I've been able to determine that you're full of shit.
β
β
John Green (Looking for Alaska)
β
That didnβt happen, of course. Things never happened the way I imagined them.
β
β
John Green (Looking for Alaska)
β
Well, we all make mistakes, dear, so just put it behind you. We should regret our mistakes and learn from them, but never carry them forward into the future with us.
β
β
L.M. Montgomery (Anne of Avonlea (Anne of Green Gables, #2))
β
The pleasure of remembering had been taken from me, because there was no longer anyone to remember with. It felt like losing your co-rememberer meant losing the memory itself, as if the things we'd done were less real and important than they had been hours before.
β
β
John Green (The Fault in Our Stars)
β
there is no shortage of fault to be found amid our stars
β
β
John Green (The Fault in Our Stars)
β
But I believe in true love, you know? I don't believe that everybody gets to keep their eyes or not get sick or whatever, but everybody should have true love, and it should last at least as long as your life does.
β
β
John Green (The Fault in Our Stars)
β
May I see you again?" he asked. There was an endearing nervousness in his voice.
I smiled. "Sure."
"Tomorrow?" he asked.
"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.
β
β
John Green (The Fault in Our Stars)
β
Sometimes I don't get you,' I said.
She didn't even glance at me. She just smiled toward the television and said, 'You never get me. That's the whole point.
β
β
John Green (Looking for Alaska)
β
Life is worth living as long as there's a laugh in it.
β
β
L.M. Montgomery (Anne of Green Gables (Anne of Green Gables, #1))
β
There will come a time when all of us are dead. All of us. There will come a time when there are no human beings remaining to remember that anyone ever existed or that our species ever did anything. There will be no one left to remember Aristotle or Cleopatra, let alone you. Everything that we did and built and wrote and thought and discovered will be forgotten and all of this will have been for naught. Maybe that time is coming soon and maybe it is millions of years away, but even if we survive the collapse of our sun, we will not survive forever. There was time before organisms experienced consciousness, and there will be time after. And if the inevitability of human oblivion worries you, I encourage you to ignore it. God knows thatβs what everyone else does.
β
β
John Green (The Fault in Our Stars)
β
[Kids] don't remember what you try to teach them. They remember what you are.
β
β
Jim Henson (It's Not Easy Being Green: And Other Things to Consider)
β
You have a choice in this world, I believe, about how to tell sad stories, and we made the funny choice.
β
β
John Green (The Fault in Our Stars)
β
As long as we don't die, this is gonna be one hell of a story.
β
β
John Green (Paper Towns)
β
Maybe all the strings inside him broke.
β
β
John Green (Paper Towns)
β
The real heroes anyway aren't the people doing things; the real heroes are the people NOTICING things, paying attention.
β
β
John Green (The Fault in Our Stars)
β
When did we see each other face-to-face? Not until you saw into my cracks and I saw into yours. Before that, we were just looking at ideas of each other, like looking at your window shade but never seeing inside. But once the vessel cracks, the light can get in. The light can get out.
β
β
John Green (Paper Towns)
β
Margo always loved mysteries. And in everything that came afterward, I could never stop thinking that maybe she loved mysteries so much that she became one.
β
β
John Green (Paper Towns)
β
Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.
β
β
Robert Frost
β
I am going to take this bucket of water and pour it on the flames of hell, and then I am going to use this torch to burn down the gates of paradise so that people will not love God for want of heaven or fear of hell, but because He is God.
β
β
John Green (Looking for Alaska)
β
When things break, it's not the actual breaking that prevents them from getting back together again. It's because a little piece gets lost - the two remaining ends couldn't fit together even if they wanted to. The whole shape has changed.
β
β
John Green (Will Grayson, Will Grayson)
β
Sometimes, you read a book and it fills you with this weird evangelical zeal, and you become convinced that the shattered world will never be put back together unless and until all living humans read the book. And then there are books like An Imperial Affliction, which you can't tell people about, books so special and rare and yours that advertising your affection feels like betrayal
β
β
John Green (The Fault in Our Stars)
β
Dear old world', she murmured, 'you are very lovely, and I am glad to be alive in you.
β
β
L.M. Montgomery (Anne of Green Gables (Anne of Green Gables, #1))
β
I'll fight it. I'll fight it for you. Don't you worry about me, Hazel Grace. I'm okay. I'll find a way to hang around and annoy you for a long time.
β
β
John Green (The Fault in Our Stars)
β
We need never be hopeless because we can never be irreperably broken.
β
β
John Green (Looking for Alaska)
β
Have you really read all those books in your room?β
Alaska laughing- βOh God no. Iβve maybe read a third of βem. But Iβm going to read them all. I call it my Lifeβs Library. Every summer since I was little, Iβve gone to garage sales and bought all the books that looked interesting. So I always have something to read.
β
β
John Green (Looking for Alaska)
β
Y'all smoke to enjoy it. I smoke to die.
β
β
John Green (Looking for Alaska)
β
Here's to all the places we went. And all the places we'll go. And here's to me, whispering again and again and again and again: iloveyou
β
β
John Green (An Abundance of Katherines)
β
That's who you really like. The people you can think out loud in front of.
β
β
John Green (An Abundance of Katherines)
β
Your now is not your forever.
β
β
John Green (Turtles All the Way Down)
β
Weβre as likely to hurt the universe as we are to help it, and weβre not likely to do either.
β
β
John Green (The Fault in Our Stars)
β
Champagne, if you are seeking the truth, is better than a lie detector.
β
β
Graham Greene
β
As much as life can suck, it always beats the alternative.
β
β
John Green (Paper Towns)
β
I try to live life so that I can live with myself.
β
β
John Green
β
There's some people in this world who you can just love and love and love no matter what.
β
β
John Green (An Abundance of Katherines)
β
The more you leave out, the more you highlight what you leave in.
β
β
Henry Green
β
The only person I really wanted to talk to about Augustus Water's death with was Augustus Waters.
β
β
John Green (The Fault in Our Stars)
β
I'm starting to realize that people lack good mirrors. It's so hard for anyone to show us how we look, & so hard for us to show anyone how we feel.
β
β
John Green (Paper Towns)
β
If people could see me the way I see myself - if they could live in my memories - would anyone love me?
β
β
John Green (An Abundance of Katherines)
β
People laugh at me because I use big words. But if you have big ideas, you have to use big words to express them, haven't you?
β
β
L.M. Montgomery (Anne of Green Gables (Anne of Green Gables, #1))
β
Nothing ever happens like you imagine it will
β
β
John Green (Paper Towns)
β
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.
β
β
John Green (Looking for Alaska)
β
Tell me my copy is missing the last twenty pages or something.
Hazel Grace, tell me I have not reached the end of this book.
OH MY GOD DO THEY GET MARRIED OR NOT OH MY GOD WHAT IS THIS?!
β
β
John Green (The Fault in Our Stars)
β
He liked the mere act of reading, the magic of turning scratches on a page into words inside his head.
β
β
John Green (An Abundance of Katherines)
β
Life isn't about waiting for the storm to pass...It's about learning to dance in the rain.
β
β
Vivian Greene
β
And I wondered if hurdlers ever thought, you know, 'This would go faster if we just got rid of the hurdles.
β
β
John Green (The Fault in Our Stars)
β
I told Augustus the broad outline of my miracle: diagnosed with Stage IV thyroid cancer when I was thirteen. (I didnβt tell him that the diagnosis came three months after I got my first period. Like: Congratulations! Youβre a woman. Now die.)
β
β
John Green (The Fault in Our Stars)
β
Time takes it all, whether you want it to or not.
β
β
Stephen King (The Green Mile)
β
Look, let me just say it: He was hot. A nonhot boy stares at you relentlessly and it is, at best, awkward and, at worst, a form of assault. But a hot boy . . . well.
β
β
John Green (The Fault in Our Stars)
β
I 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.
β
β
John Green (Looking for Alaska)
β
It's not life or death, the labyrinth. Suffering. 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?
β
β
John Green (Looking for Alaska)
β
The weird thing about houses is that they almost always look like nothing is happening inside of them, even though they contain most of our lives. I wondered if that was sort of the point of architecture.
β
β
John Green (The Fault in Our Stars)
β
Augustus Waters was a self-aggrandizing bastard. But we forgive him. We forgive him not because he had a heart as figuratively good as his literal one sucked, or because he knew more about how to hold a cigarette than any nonsmoker in history, or because he got eighteen years when he should've gotten more.'
'Seventeen,' Gus corrected.
'I'm assuming you've got some time, you interupting bastard.
'I'm telling you,' Isaac continued, 'Augustus Waters talked so much that he'd interupt you at his own funeral. And he was pretentious: Sweet Jesus Christ, that kid never took a piss without pondering the abundant metaphorical resonances of human waste production. And he was vain: I do not believe I have ever met a more physically attractive person who was more acutely aware of his own physical attractiveness.
'But 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.'
I was kind of crying by then.
β
β
John Green (The Fault in Our Stars)
β
Peeing is like a good book in that it is very, very hard to stop once you start.
β
β
John Green (Paper Towns)
β
What matters to you defines your mattering.
β
β
John Green (An Abundance of Katherines)
β
The risen sun too bright in her losing eyes.
β
β
John Green (The Fault in Our Stars)
β
Much of my life had been devoted to trying not to cry in front of people who loved me, so I knew what Augustus was doing. You clench your teeth. You look up. You tell yourself that if they see you cry, it will hurt them, and you will be nothing but a Sadness in their lives, and you must not become a mere sadness, so you will not cry, and you say all of this to yourself while looking up at the ceiling, and then you swallow even though your throat does not want to close and you look at the person who loves you and smile.
β
β
John Green (The Fault in Our Stars)
β
I hated sports. I hated sports, and I hated people who played them, and I hated people who watched them, and I hated people who didn't hate people who watched or played them.
β
β
John Green (Looking for Alaska)
β
It's just that most really good-looking people are stupid, so I exceed expectations.'
'Right, it's primarily his hotness,' I said.
'It can be sort of blinding,' he said.
'It actually did blind our friend Isaac,' I said.
'Terrible tragedy, that. But can I help my own deadly beauty?'
'You cannot.'
'It is my burden, this beautiful face.'
'Not to mention your body.'
'Seriously, don't even get me started on my hot bod. You don't want to see me naked, Dave. Seeing me naked actually took Hazel Grace's breath away,' he said, nodding toward the oxygen tank.
β
β
John Green (The Fault in Our Stars)
β
Come over here so I can examine your face with my hands and see deeper into your soul than a sighted person ever could.
β
β
John Green (The Fault in Our Stars)
β
I'm in love with you, and I know that love is just a shout into the void, and that oblivion is inevitable, and that we're all doomed and that there will come a day when all our labor has been returned to dust, and I know the sun will swallow the only earth we'll ever have, and I am in love with you.
β
β
John Green (The Fault in Our Stars)
β
At some point, you gotta stop looking up at the sky, or one of these days you'll look back down and see that you floated away, too.
β
β
John Green (Paper Towns)
β
You spend your whole life stuck in the labyrinth, thinking about how you'll escape one day, and how awesome it will be, and imagining that future keeps you going, but you never do it. You just use the future to escape the present.
β
β
John Green (Looking for Alaska)
β
Caring doesn't sometimes lead to misery. It always does.
β
β
John Green (Will Grayson, Will Grayson)
β
What else? She is so beautiful. You donβt get tired of looking at her. You never worry if she is smarter than you: You know she is. She is funny without ever being mean. I love her. I am so lucky to love her, Van Houten. You donβt get to choose if you get hurt in this world, old man, but you do have some say in who hurts you. I like my choices. I hope she likes hers.
β
β
John Green (The Fault in Our Stars)
β
I thank you God for this most amazing day, for the leaping greenly spirits of trees, and for the blue dream of sky and for everything which is natural, which is infinite, which is yes.
β
β
E.E. Cummings
β
I've gotten really hot since you went blind.
β
β
John Green (The Fault in Our Stars)
β
After all this time, it seems to me like straight and fast is the only way out- but I choose the labyrinth. The labyrinth blows, but I choose it.
β
β
John Green (Looking for Alaska)
β
I know so many last words. But I will never know hers.
β
β
John Green (Looking for Alaska)
β
Not that smart. Not that hot. Not that nice. Not that funny. That's me: I'm not that.
β
β
John Green
β
After all," Anne had said to Marilla once, "I believe the nicest and sweetest days are not those on which anything very splendid or wonderful or exciting happens but just those that bring simple little pleasures, following one another softly, like pearls slipping off a string.
β
β
L.M. Montgomery (Anne of Avonlea (Anne of Green Gables, #2))
β
When you show yourself to the world and display your talents, you naturally stir all kinds of resentment, envy, and other manifestations of insecurity... you cannot spend your life worrying about the petty feelings of others
β
β
Robert Greene (The 48 Laws of Power)
β
I wanted to know that he would be okay if I died. I wanted to not be a grenade, to not be a malevolent force in the lives of people I loved.
β
β
John Green (The Fault in Our Stars)
β
I found myself thinking about President William McKinley, the third American president to be assassinated. He lived for several days after he was shot, and towards the end, his wife started crying and screaming, "I want to go too! I want to go too!" And with his last measure of strength, McKinley turned to her and spoke his last words: "We are all going.
β
β
John Green (Looking for Alaska)
β
The venn diagram of boys who donβt like smart girls and boys you donβt wanna date is a circle.
β
β
John Green
β
Look...at...me..." he whispered. The green eyes found the black, but after a second, something in the depths of the dark pair seemed to vanish, leaving them fixed, blank, and empty. The hand holding Harry thudded to the floor, and Snape moved no more.
β
β
J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Harry Potter, #7))
β
Because when you are imagining, you might as well imagine something worth while.
β
β
L.M. Montgomery (Anne of Green Gables (Anne of Green Gables, #1))
β
O, there is lovely to feel a book, a good book, firm in the hand, for its fatness holds rich promise, and you are hot inside to think of good hours to come.
β
β
Richard Llewellyn (How Green Was My Valley)
β
There's such a lot of different Annes in me. I sometimes think that is why I'm such a troublesome person. If I was just the one Anne it would be ever so much more comfortable, but then it wouldn't be half so interesting.
β
β
L.M. Montgomery (Anne of Green Gables (Anne of Green Gables, #1))
β
But 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.
β
β
John Green (The Fault in Our Stars)
β
Isn't it also that on some fundamental level we find it difficult to understand that other people are human beings in the same way that we are? We idealize them as gods or dismiss them as animals.
β
β
John Green (Paper Towns)
β
Before 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.
β
β
John Green (Looking for Alaska)
β
Writing is something you do alone. Its a profession for introverts who want to tell you a story but don't want to make eye contact while doing it."
[Thoughts from Places: The Tour, Nerdfighteria Wiki, January 17, 2012]
β
β
John Green
β
The Colonel led all the cheers.
Cornbread!" he screamed.
CHICKEN!" the crowd responded.
Rice!"
PEAS!"
And then, all together: "WE GOT HIGHER SATs."
Hip Hip Hip Hooray!" the Colonel cried.
YOU'LL BE WORKIN' FOR US SOMEDAY!
β
β
John Green (Looking for Alaska)
β
You're both the fire and the water that extinguishes it. You're the narrator, the protagonist, and the sidekick. You're the storyteller and the story told. You are somebody's something, but you are also your you.
β
β
John Green (Turtles All the Way Down)
β
We are all going, I thought, and it applies to turtles and turtlenecks, Alaska the girl and Alaska the place, because nothing can last, not even the earth itself. The Buddha said that suffering was caused by desire, we'd learned, and that the cessation of desire meant the cessation of suffering. When you stopped wishing things wouldn't fall apart, you'd stop suffering when they did.
β
β
John Green (Looking for Alaska)
β
Gus: "It tastes like..."
Me: "Food."
Gus: "Yes, precisely. It tastes like food, excellently prepared. But it does not taste, how do I put this delicately...?"
Me: "It does not taste like God Himself cooked heaven into a series of five dishes which were then served to you accompanied by several luminous balls of fermented, bubbly plasma while actual and literal flower petals floated down around your canal-side dinner table."
Gus: "Nicely phrased."
Gus's father: "Our children are weird."
My dad: "Nicely phrased.
β
β
John Green (The Fault in Our Stars)
β
Isabelle drifted over, Jace a pace behind her. She was wearing a long black dress with boots and an even longer cutaway coat of soft green velvet, the color of moss. "I can't believe you did it!" she exclaimed. "How did you get Magnus to let Jace leave?"
"Traded him for Alec," Clary said.
Isabelle looked mildly alarmed. "Not permanently?"
"No," said Jace. "Just for a few hours. Unless I don't come back," he added thoughtfully. "In which case, maybe he does get to keep Alec. Think of it as a lease with an option to buy."
Isabelle looked dubious. "Mom and Dad won't be pleased if they find out."
"That you freed a possible criminal by trading away your brother to a warlock who looks like a gay Sonic the Hedgehog and dresses like the Child Catcher from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang?" Simon inquired. "No, probably not.
β
β
Cassandra Clare (City of Ashes (The Mortal Instruments, #2))
β
We never really talked much or even looked at each other, but it didn't matter because we were looking at the same sky together, which is maybe even more intimate than eye contact anyway. I mean, anybody can look at you. It's quite rare to find someone who sees the same world you see.
β
β
John Green (Turtles All the Way Down)
β
Did you know that for pretty much the entire history of the human species, the average life span was less than thirty years? You could count on ten years or so of real adulthood, right? There was no planning for retirement, There was no planning for a career. There was no planning. No time for plannning. No time for a future. But then the life spans started getting longer, and people started having more and more future. And now life has become the future. Every moment of your life is lived for the future--you go to high school so you can go to college so you can get a good job so you can get a nice house so you can afford to send your kids to college so they can get a good job so they can get a nice house so they can afford to send their kids to college.
β
β
John Green (Paper Towns)
β
People, I thought, wanted security. They couldn't bear the idea of death being a big black nothing, couldn't bear the thought of their loved ones not existing, and couldn't even imagine themselves not existing. I finally decided that people believed in an afterlife because they couldn't bear not to.
β
β
John Green (Looking for Alaska)
β
That is the fear: I have lost something important, and I cannot find it, and I need it. It is fear like if someone lost his glasses and went to the glasses store and they told him that the world had run out of glasses and he would just have to do without.
β
β
John Green (Looking for Alaska)
β
Sorrow prepares you for joy. It violently sweeps everything out of your house, so that new joy can find space to enter. It shakes the yellow leaves from the bough of your heart, so that fresh, green leaves can grow in their place. It pulls up the rotten roots, so that new roots hidden beneath have room to grow. Whatever sorrow shakes from your heart, far better things will take their place.
β
β
Jalal ad-Din Muhammad ar-Rumi
β
I sit beside the fire and think
Of all that I have seen
Of meadow flowers and butterflies
In summers that have been
Of yellow leaves and gossamer
In autumns that there were
With morning mist and silver sun
And wind upon my hair
I sit beside the fire and think
Of how the world will be
When winter comes without a spring
That I shall ever see
For still there are so many things
That I have never seen
In every wood in every spring
There is a different green
I sit beside the fire and think
Of people long ago
And people that will see a world
That I shall never know
But all the while I sit and think
Of times there were before
I listen for returning feet
And voices at the door
β
β
J.R.R. Tolkien
β
Oh, it's delightful to have ambitions. I'm so glad I have such a lot. And there never seems to be any end to them-- that's the best of it. Just as soon as you attain to one ambition you see another one glittering higher up still. It does make life so interesting.
β
β
L.M. Montgomery (Anne of Green Gables (Anne of Green Gables, #1))
β
I was blind and heart broken and didn't want to do anything and Gus burst into my room and shouted, "I have wonderful news!" And I was like, "I don't really want to hear wonderful news right now," and Gus said, "This is wonderful news you want to hear," and I asked him, "Fine, what is it?" and he said, "You are going to live a good and long life filled with great and terrible moments that you cannot even imagine yet!
β
β
John Green (The Fault in Our Stars)
β
This planet has - or rather had - a problem, which was this: most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movement of small green pieces of paper, which was odd because on the whole it wasn't the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy.
β
β
Douglas Adams (The Hitchhikerβs Guide to the Galaxy (Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, #1))
β
Iβm in love with you, and I know that love is just a shout into the void, and that oblivion is inevitable, and that weβre all doomed and that there will come a day when all our labor has been returned to dust, and I know the sun will swallow the only earth weβll ever have, and I am in love with you.
β
β
John Green (The Fault in Our Stars)
β
PIPPIN: I didn't think it would end this way.
GANDALF: End? No, the journey doesn't end here. Death is just another path, one that we all must take. The grey rain-curtain of this world rolls back, and all turns to silver glass, and then you see it.
PIPPIN: What? Gandalf? See what?
GANDALF: White shores, and beyond, a far green country under a swift sunrise.
PIPPIN: Well, that isn't so bad.
GANDALF: No. No, it isn't.
β
β
J.R.R. Tolkien (The Lord of the Rings (The Lord of the Rings, #1-3))
β
I feel like my life is so scattered right now. Like it's all the small pieces of paper and someone's turned on the fan. But, talking to you makes me feel like the fan's been turned off for a little bit. Like things could actually make sense. You completely unscatter me, and I appreciate that so much.
β
β
John Green (Will Grayson, Will Grayson)
β
He was gone, and I did not have time to tell him what I had just now realized: that I forgave him, and that she forgave us, and that we had to forgive to survive in the labyrinth. There 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 canβt know better until knowing better is useless. And as I walked back to give Takumiβs note to the Colonel, I saw that I would never know. I would never know her well enough to know her thoughts in those last minutes, would never know if she left us on purpose. But the not-knowing would not keep me from caring, and I would always love Alaska Young, my crooked neighbor, with all my crooked heart.
β
β
John Green (Looking for Alaska)
β
People usually consider walking on water or in thin air a miracle. But I think the real miracle is not to walk either on water or in thin air, but to walk on earth. Every day we are engaged in a miracle which we don't even recognize: a blue sky, white clouds, green leaves, the black, curious eyes of a childβour own two eyes. All is a miracle.
β
β
Thich Nhat Hanh (The Miracle of Mindfulness: An Introduction to the Practice of Meditation)
β
Perhaps, after all, romance did not come into oneβs life with pomp and blare, like a gay knight riding down; perhaps it crept to oneβs side like an old friend through quiet ways; perhaps it revealed itself in seeming prose, until some sudden shaft of illumination flung athwart its pages betrayed the rhythm and the music, perhaps . . . perhaps . . . love unfolded naturally out of a beautiful friendship, as a golden-hearted rose slipping from its green sheath.
β
β
L.M. Montgomery
β
When a child first catches adults out -- when it first walks into his grave little head that adults do not always have divine intelligence, that their judgments are not always wise, their thinking true, their sentences just -- his world falls into panic desolation. The gods are fallen and all safety gone. And there is one sure thing about the fall of gods: they do not fall a little; they crash and shatter or sink deeply into green muck. It is a tedious job to build them up again; they never quite shine. And the child's world is never quite whole again. It is an aching kind of growing.
β
β
John Steinbeck (East of Eden)
β
He cleared his throat and held up one hand dramatically.
βGreen grass breaks through snow.
Artemis pleads for my help.
I am so cool.β
He grinned at us, waiting for applause.
"That last line was four syllables.β Artemis said.
Apollo frowned. βWas it?β
βYes. What about I am so bigheaded?β
βNo, no, thatβs six syllable, hhhm.β He started muttering to himself.
Zoe Nightshade turned to us. βLord Apollo has been going through this haiku phase ever since he visited Japan. Tis not as bad as the time he visited Limerick. If Iβd had to hear one more poem that started with, There once was a godess from Sparta-"
βIβve got it!β Apollo announced. βI am so awesome. Thatβs five syllables!β He bowed, looking very pleased with himself.
β
β
Rick Riordan (The Titanβs Curse (Percy Jackson and the Olympians, #3))
β
You're the girl who called me an asshole the first time we spoke. The girl who tried to pay for lunch even after you learned I have more money than God. You're the girl who risked her ass to save a dying dog, who makes my chest ache whether you're wearing green silk or ripped jeans. You're the girl that I--" Noah stopped, then took a step closer to me. "You are my girl.
β
β
Michelle Hodkin (The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer (Mara Dyer, #1))
β
Harry Potter isnβt real? Oh no! Wait, wait, what do you mean by real? Is this video blog real? Am I real if you can see me and hear me, but only through the internet? Are you real if I can read your comment but I donβt know who you are or what your name is or where youβre from or what you look like or how old you are? I know all of those things about Harry Potter. Maybe Harry Potterβs real and youβre not.
β
β
John Green
β
Once on a yellow piece of paper with green lines
he wrote a poem
And he called it "Chops"
because that was the name of his dog
And that's what it was all about
And his teacher gave him an A
and a gold star
And his mother hung it on the kitchen door
and read it to his aunts
That was the year Father Tracy
took all the kids to the zoo
And he let them sing on the bus
And his little sister was born
with tiny toenails and no hair
And his mother and father kissed a lot
And the girl around the corner sent him a
Valentine signed with a row of X's
and he had to ask his father what the X's meant
And his father always tucked him in bed at night
And was always there to do it
Once on a piece of white paper with blue lines
he wrote a poem
And he called it "Autumn"
because that was the name of the season
And that's what it was all about
And his teacher gave him an A
and asked him to write more clearly
And his mother never hung it on the kitchen door
because of its new paint
And the kids told him
that Father Tracy smoked cigars
And left butts on the pews
And sometimes they would burn holes
That was the year his sister got glasses
with thick lenses and black frames
And the girl around the corner laughed
when he asked her to go see Santa Claus
And the kids told him why
his mother and father kissed a lot
And his father never tucked him in bed at night
And his father got mad
when he cried for him to do it.
Once on a paper torn from his notebook
he wrote a poem
And he called it "Innocence: A Question"
because that was the question about his girl
And that's what it was all about
And his professor gave him an A
and a strange steady look
And his mother never hung it on the kitchen door
because he never showed her
That was the year that Father Tracy died
And he forgot how the end
of the Apostle's Creed went
And he caught his sister
making out on the back porch
And his mother and father never kissed
or even talked
And the girl around the corner
wore too much makeup
That made him cough when he kissed her
but he kissed her anyway
because that was the thing to do
And at three a.m. he tucked himself into bed
his father snoring soundly
That's why on the back of a brown paper bag
he tried another poem
And he called it "Absolutely Nothing"
Because that's what it was really all about
And he gave himself an A
and a slash on each damned wrist
And he hung it on the bathroom door
because this time he didn't think
he could reach the kitchen.
β
β
Stephen Chbosky (The Perks of Being a Wallflower)
β
I cannot go to school today"
Said little Peggy Ann McKay.
"I have the measles and the mumps,
A gash, a rash and purple bumps.
My mouth is wet, my throat is dry.
I'm going blind in my right eye.
My tonsils are as big as rocks,
I've counted sixteen chicken pox.
And there's one more - that's seventeen,
And don't you think my face looks green?
My leg is cut, my eyes are blue,
It might be the instamatic flu.
I cough and sneeze and gasp and choke,
I'm sure that my left leg is broke.
My hip hurts when I move my chin,
My belly button's caving in.
My back is wrenched, my ankle's sprained,
My 'pendix pains each time it rains.
My toes are cold, my toes are numb,
I have a sliver in my thumb.
My neck is stiff, my voice is weak,
I hardly whisper when I speak.
My tongue is filling up my mouth,
I think my hair is falling out.
My elbow's bent, my spine ain't straight,
My temperature is one-o-eight.
My brain is shrunk, I cannot hear,
There's a hole inside my ear.
I have a hangnail, and my heart is ...
What? What's that? What's that you say?
You say today is .............. Saturday?
G'bye, I'm going out to play!
β
β
Shel Silverstein
β
Here's what's not beautiful about it: from here, you can't see the rust or the cracked paint or whatever, but you can tell what the place really is. You can see how fake it all is. It's not even hard enough to be made out of plastic. It's a paper town. I mean, look at it, Q: look at all those culs-de-sac, those streets that turn in on themselves, all the houses that were built to fall apart. All those paper people living in their paper houses, burning the future to stay warm. All the paper kids drinking beer some bum bought for them at the paper convenience store. Everyone demented with the mania of owning things. All the things paper-thin and paper-frail. And all the people, too. I've lived here for eighteen years and I have never once in my life come across anyone who cares about anything that matters.
β
β
John Green (Paper Towns)
β
You know your problem, Quentin? You keep expecting people not to be themselves. I mean, I could hate you for being massively unpunctual and for never being interested in anything other than Margo Roth Spiegelman, and for, like, never asking me about how it's going with my girlfriend - but I don't give a shit, man, because you're you. My parents have a shit ton of black Santas, but that's okay. They're them. I'm too obsessed with a reference website to answer my phone sometimes when my friends call, or my girlfriend. That's okay, too. That's me. You like me anyway. And I like you. You're funny, and you're smart, and you may show up late, but you always show up eventually.
β
β
John Green (Paper Towns)
β
Lucky Charms are like the vampires of breakfast cereal. They're magical, they're delicious, they're a little bit dangerous and bad for you. They initially make you feel great, but then over time you realize that maybe your relationship with Lucky Charms is just a little bit unhealthy and you start to think, 'Maybe I don't want to be in a long-term relationship with a breakfast cereal that tastes delicious but damages my health.' But then the Lucky Charms gets all stalker on you and for some reason you kind of like that. It makes you feel special. So yeah, you spend your life with Lucky Charms. That's awesome. That's a great way to... get diabetes.
β
β
John Green
β
NO. No no no. I don't want to screw you. I just love you. When did who you want to screw become the whole game? Since when is the person you want to screw the only person you get to love? It's so stupid, Tiny! I mean, Jesus, who even gives a fuck about sex?! People act like it's the most important thing humans do, but come on. How can our sentient fucking lives revolve around something slugs can do. I mean, who you want to screw and whether you screw them? Those are important questions, I guess. But they're not that important. You know what's important? Who would you die for? Who do you wake up at five forty-five in the morning for even though you don't even know why he needs you? Whose drunken nose would you pick?!
β
β
John Green (Will Grayson, Will Grayson)
β
The way I figure it, everyone gets a miracle. Like, I will probably never be struck by lightening, or win a Nobel Prize, or become the dictator of a small nation in the Pacific Islands, or contract terminal ear cancer, or spontaneously combust. But if you consider all the unlikely things together, at least one of them will probably happen to each of us. I could have seen it rain frogs. I could have stepped foot on Mars. I could have been eaten by a whale. I could have married the Queen of England or survived months at sea. But 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.
β
β
John Green (Paper Towns)
β
Black for hunting through the night
For death and mourning the color's white
Gold for a bride in her wedding gown
And red to call the enchantment down
White silk when our bodies burn
Blue banners when the lost return
Flame for the birth of a Nephilim
And to wash away our sins.
Gray for the knowledge best untold
Bone for those who don't grow old
Saffron lights the victory march
Green to mend our broken hearts
Silver for the demon towers
And bronze to summon wicked powers
-Shadowhunter children's rhyme
β
β
Cassandra Clare (City of Heavenly Fire (The Mortal Instruments, #6))
β
The 3 types of terror: The Gross-out: the sight of a severed head tumbling down a flight of stairs, it's when the lights go out and something green and slimy splatters against your arm. The Horror: the unnatural, spiders the size of bears, the dead waking up and walking around, it's when the lights go out and something with claws grabs you by the arm. And the last and worse one: Terror, when you come home and notice everything you own had been taken away and replaced by an exact substitute. It's when the lights go out and you feel something behind you, you hear it, you feel its breath against your ear, but when you turn around, there's nothing there...
β
β
Stephen King
β
When you go into the ER, one of the first things they ask you to do is rate your pain on a scale of one to ten, and from there they decide which drugs to use and how quickly to use them. I'd been asked this question hundreds of times over the years, and I remember once early on when I couldn't get my breath and it felt like my chest was on fire, flames licking the inside of my ribs fighting for a way to burn out of my body, my parents took me to the ER. nurse asked me about the pain, and I couldn't even speak, so I held up nine fingers.
Later, after they'd given me something, the nurse came in and she was kind of stroking my head while she took my blood pressure and said, "You know how I know you're a fighter? You called a ten a nine."
But that wasn't quite right. I called it a nine because I was saving my ten. And here it was, the great and terrible ten, slamming me again and again as I lay still and alone in my bed staring at the ceiling, the waves tossing me against the rocks then pulling me back out to sea so they could launch me again into the jagged face of the cliff, leaving me floating faceup on the water, undrowned.
β
β
John Green (The Fault in Our Stars)
β
Percy smiled at her - that sarcastic troublemaker smile that had annoyed her for years but eventually had become endearing. His sea-green eyes were as gorgeous as she remembered. His dark hair was swept to one side, like he'd just come from a walk on the beach. He looked even better than he had six months ago - tanner and taller, leaner and more muscular.
Percy threw his arms around her. They kissed and for a moment nothing else mattered. An asteroid could have hit the planet and wiped out all life, and Annabeth wouldn't have cared.
β
β
Rick Riordan (The Mark of Athena (The Heroes of Olympus, #3))
β
At a few minutes before four, Peeta turns to me again. "Your favorite colour . . . it's green?"
"That's right." Then I think of something to add. "And yours is orange."
"Orange?" He seems unconvinced.
"Not bright orange. But soft. Like the sunset," I say. "At least, that's what you told me once."
"Oh." He closes his eyes briefly, maybe trying to conjure up that sunset, then nods his head. "Thank you."
But more words tumble out. "You're a painter. You're a baker. You like to sleep with the windows open. You never take sugar in your tea. And you always double-knot your shoelaces."
Then I dive into my tent before I do something stupid like cry.
β
β
Suzanne Collins (Mockingjay (The Hunger Games, #3))
β
Maybe its like you said before, all of us being cracked open. Like each of us starts out as a watertight vessel. And then things happen - these people leave us, or donβt love us, or donβt get us, or we donβt get them, and we lose and fail and hurt one another. And the vessel starts to crack in places. And I mean, yeah once the vessel cracks open, the end becomes inevitable. Once it starts to rain inside the Osprey, it will never be remodeled. But there is all this time between when the cracks start to open up and when we finally fall apart. And its only that time that we see one another, because we see out of ourselves through our cracks and into others through theirs. When did we see each other face to face? Not until you saw into my cracks and I saw into yours. Before that we were just looking at ideas of each other, like looking at your window shade, but never seeing inside. But once the vessel cracks, the light can get in. The light can get out.
β
β
John Green (Paper Towns)
β
And all at once I knew how Margo Roth Spiegelman felt when she wasn't being Margo Roth Spiegelman: she felt empty. She felt the unscaleable wall surrounding her. I thought of her asleep on the carpet with only that jagged sliver of sky above her. Maybe Margo felt comfortable there because Margo the person lived like that all the time: in an abandoned room with blocked-out windows, the only light pouring in through holes in the roof. Yes. The fundamental mistake I had always madeβand that she had, in fairness, always led me to makeβwas this: Margo was not a miracle. She was not an adventure. She was not a fine and precious thing. She was a girl.
β
β
John Green (Paper Towns)
β
All I'm telling you to do is to be smart about it. Know that if this man isn't looking for a serious relationship, you're not going to change his mind just because you two are going on dates and being intimate. You could be the most perfect woman on the Lord's green earth-you're capable of interesting conversation, you cook a mean breakfast, you hand out backrubs like sandwiches, you're independent (which means, to him, that you're not going to be in his pockets)-but if he's not ready for a serious relationship, he going to treat you like sports fish.
β
β
Steve Harvey (Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man: What Men Really Think About Love, Relationships, Intimacy, and Commitment)
β
And as I sat there brooding on the old, unknown world, I thought of Gatsbyβs wonder when he first picked out the green light at the end of Daisyβs dock. He had come a long way to this blue lawn, and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. He did not know that it was already behind him, somewhere back in that vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the night.
Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that's no matterβto-morrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther. . . . And one fine morningββ
So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.
β
β
F. Scott Fitzgerald (The Great Gatsby)
β
He turned to Frank who was trying to pull his fingers out of the Chinese handcuffsβ¦
βOkay,β Frank relented. βSure.β He frowned at his fingers, trying to pull them out of the trap. βUh, how do youββ
Leo chuckled. βMan, youβve never seen those before? Thereβs a simple trick to getting out.β
Frank tugged again with no luck. Even Hazel was trying not to laugh.
Frank grimaced with concentration. Suddenly, he disappeared. On the deck where heβd been standing, a green iguana crouched next to an empty set of Chinese handcuffs.
βWell done, Frank Zhang,β Leo said dryly, doing his impression of Chiron the centaur. βThat is exactly how people beat Chinese handcuffs. They turn into iguanas.
β
β
Rick Riordan (The Mark of Athena (The Heroes of Olympus, #3))
β
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rage at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
β
β
Dylan Thomas (Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night)
β
Good Morning!" said Bilbo, and he meant it. The sun was shining, and the grass was very green. But Gandalf looked at him from under long bushy eyebrows that stuck out further than the brim of his shady hat.
"What do you mean?" he said. "Do you wish me a good morning, or mean that it is a good morning whether I want it or not; or that you feel good this morning; or that it is a morning to be good on?"
"All of them at once," said Bilbo. "And a very fine morning for a pipe of tobacco out of doors, into the bargain.
...
"Good morning!" he said at last. "We don't want any adventures here, thank you! You might try over The Hill or across The Water." By this he meant that the conversation was at an end.
"What a lot of things you do use Good morning for!" said Gandalf. "Now you mean that you want to get rid of me, and that it won't be good till I move off.
β
β
J.R.R. Tolkien (The Hobbit, or There and Back Again)
β
My name is Hazel. Augustus Waters was the great sat-crossed love of my life. Ours was an epic love story, and I won't be able to get more than a sentence into it without disappearing into a puddle of tears. Gus 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, because there's no one I'd rather have..." I started crying. "Okay, how not to cry. How am I-okay. Okay."
I took a few deep breaths and went back to the page. "I can't talk about our love story, so I will talk about math. I am not a mathematician, but I know this: There are infinite numbers between 0 and 1. There's .1 and .12 and .112 and infinite collection of others. Of course, there is a Bigger infinite set of numbers between 0 and 2, or between 0 and a million. Some infinities are bigger than other infinities. A writer we used to like taught us that. There are days, many of them, when I resent the size of my unbounded set. I want more numbers than I'm likely to get, and God, I want more numbers for Augustus Waters than he got. But, Gus, my love, I cannot tell you how thankful I am for our little infinity. I wouldn't trade it for the world. You gave me a forever within the numbered days, and I'm grateful.
β
β
John Green (The Fault in Our Stars)
β
Roads Go Ever On
Roads go ever ever on,
Over rock and under tree,
By caves where never sun has shone,
By streams that never find the sea;
Over snow by winter sown,
And through the merry flowers of June,
Over grass and over stone,
And under mountains in the moon.
Roads go ever ever on,
Under cloud and under star.
Yet feet that wandering have gone
Turn at last to home afar.
Eyes that fire and sword have seen,
And horror in the halls of stone
Look at last on meadows green,
And trees and hills they long have known.
The Road goes ever on and on
Down from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
And I must follow, if I can,
Pursuing it with eager feet,
Until it joins some larger way,
Where many paths and errands meet.
The Road goes ever on and on
Down from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
And I must follow, if I can,
Pursuing it with weary feet,
Until it joins some larger way,
Where many paths and errands meet.
And whither then? I cannot say.
The Road goes ever on and on
Out from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone.
Let others follow, if they can!
Let them a journey new begin.
But I at last with weary feet
Will turn towards the lighted inn,
My evening-rest and sleep to meet.
β
β
J.R.R. Tolkien (The Lord of the Rings (The Lord of the Rings, #1-3))