John Green Quotes - Page 12

But mothers lie. It's in the job description.

We have to forgive to survive in this labyrinth [of suffering]

My cancer is me. The tumors are made of me. They’re made of me as surely as my brain and my heart are made of me. It is a civil war with a predetermined winner

Well," Ben went on,"someone should just tell her to come on home, because she can find the world's largest balls right here in Orlando, Florida. They're located in a special display case known as 'my scrotum.'" Radar laughed, and Ben continued. "I mean seriously. My balls are so big that when you order french fries from McDonald's, you can choose one of four sizes: small, medium,large, and my balls.

There is only one things in this world shittier than biting it from cancer when you're sixteen, and that's having a kid who bites it from cancer.

Everyone wants to leave an extraordinary life.

Reading a good book helps us to feel un-alone.

Ergo: girls should always make the first move, because (a) they are, on the whole, less likely to be rejected than guys, (b) that way, girls will never get kissed unless they want to be kissed.

Some infinities are bigger than other infinities.

Love is always a miracle, everywhere, every time. But for us, it's a little different.

I don't care if the New York Times writes an obituary for me. I just want you to write one. ... You say you're not special because the world doesn't know about you, but that's an insult to me. I know about you.

...stories don’t just make us matter to each other—maybe they’re also theonly way to the infinite mattering he’d been after for so long.

Maybe life is not about accomplishing some bullshit markers.

That’s always seemed so ridiculous to me, that people would want to be around someone because they’re pretty. It’s like picking your breakfast cereals based on color instead of taste.

There is no try. There is only do.

I always felt like you had to be important to have enemies - Q

With a sigh, he grabbed hold of his chair and lifted himself out of it, then wrote on the blackboard: How will we ever get out of this labyrinth of suffering? - A.Y.'I'm going to leave that up for the rest of the semester,' he said.'Because everybody who has ever lost their way in life has felt the nagging insistence of that question. At some point we all look up and realize we are lost in a maze, and I don't want us to forget Alaska, and I don't want to forget that even when the material we study seems boring, we're trying to understand how people have answered that question and the questions each of you posed in your papers--how different traditions have come to terms with what Chip, in his final, called 'people's rotten lots in life.

The real heroes anyway aren't the people doing things; the real heroes are the people NOTICING things, paying attention. The guy who invented the smallpox vaccine didn't actually invent anything. He just noticed that people with cowpox didn't get smallpox.

In the end, what makes a book valuable is not the paper it’s printed on, but the thousands of hours of work by dozens of people who are dedicated to creating the best possible reading experience for you.

In the best conversations, you don't even remember what you talked about, only how it felt. It felt like we were in some place your body can't visit, some place with no ceiling and no walls and no floor and no instruments

I know love is real because I feel it.

You 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.

You listen to people so that you can imagine them, and you hear all the terrible and wonderful things people do to themselves and to one another, but in the end the listening exposes you even more than it exposes the people you’re trying to listen to.

Mia,' she whispered. I turned around. 'What?' I whispered back.She smiled at me a little. 'LEEERRROOOY JEEENNKKIINNNSS!' she shouted, then spun around and ran toward the Z's in the lighting section.

I'm sorry. I know you loved her. It was hard not to.

I feel like how you matter is defined by the things that matter to you. You matter as much as the things that matter to you do. And I got so backwards, trying to make myself matter to him. All this time, there were real things to care about: real, good people who care about me, and this place. It's so easy to get stuck. You just get caught in being something, being special or cool or whatever, to the point where you don't even know why you need it; you just think you do.

Well, while you were in the bathroom, I sat down at this picnic table here in Bumblefug, Kentucky, and noticed that someone had carved that GOD HATES FAG, which, aside from being a grammatical nightmare, is absolutely ridiculous. So I'm changing it to 'God Hates Baguettes.' It's tough to disagree with that. Everybody hates baguettes.

Nothing ever happens like you imagine it will… but then again, if you don’t imagine, nothing ever happens at all. Imagining isn’t perfect. You can’t get all the way inside someone else… But imagining being someone else, or the world being something else, is the only way in. It is the machine that kills the fascists

Grief does not change you, Hazel. It reveals you.

Because you're beautiful. I enjoy looking at beautiful people, and I decided a while ago not to deny myself the simpler pleasures of existence.

Inside the building, the sun lights up segments of the rotting wooden floor through the many holes in the roof. As I look for her, I register things: the soggy floorboards. The smell of almonds, like her. An old claw-footed bathtub in a corner. So many holes everywhere that this place is simultaneously inside and outside.

Jesus, I'm not going to be one of those people who sits around talking about what they're going to do. I'm just going to do it.

He really was beautiful. I know boys aren’t supposed to be, but he was.

You were with Margo Roth Spiegelman last night? At THREE A.M.? I nodded. Alone? I nodded. Oh my God, if you hooked up with her, you have to tell me every single thing that happened. You have to write me a term paper on the look and feel of Margo Roth Spiegelman's breasts. Thrity pages, minimum! I want you to do a photo-realistic pencil drawing. A sculpture would also be acceptable. I was wondering if it would be possible for you to write a sestina about Margo Roth Spiegelman's breasts? Your six words are: pink, round, firmness, succulent, supple, and pillowy. Personally, I think at least one of the words should be buhbuhbuhbuh.

But alas, the world is not a wish-granting factory.

It´s a metaphor: you see, you put the killing thing right between your teeth,you just don't give it the power to do it's killing.

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.

I always felt like you had to be important to have enemies.

As 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.

People, I thought, wanted security. They couldn’t bare 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.

Jeb is going to grow up to be the kind of man who spends his Saturdays teaching his little boy to ride a bike. (...) Charlie, on the other hand, will be off playing golf while his kid kills people on his Xbox. Charlie will be dashing and debonair, and he'll buy his kid all kinds of crap, but he'll never actually be there.

I lit up like a Christmas tree-Augustus Waters

What are you assholes looking at?" "Nothing," said Radar. "We're certainly not looking at your eyebrows.

Do you ever wonder whether people would like you more or less if they could see inside you? I mean, I’ve always felt like the Katherines dump me right when they start to see what I look like from the inside—well, except K-19. But I always wonder about that. If people could see me the way I see myself—if they could live in my memories—would anyone, anyone, love me?

We are literally in the heart of Jesus," he said."I thought we were in a church basement, but we are literally in the heart of Jesus.""Someone should tell Jesus," I said. "I mean, it's gotta be dangerous, storing children with cancer in your heart.

In my opinion, actual heroism, like actual love, is a messy, painful, vulnerable business—and I wanted to try to reflect that.

If people were rain i was drizzle and she was a hurrican.

Don’t make stuff because you want to make money — it will never make you enough money. And don’t make stuff because you want to get famous — because you will never feel famous enough. Make gifts for people — and work hard on making those gifts in the hope that those people will notice and like the gifts.Maybe they will notice how hard you worked, and maybe they won’t — and if they don’t notice, I know it’s frustrating. But, ultimately, that doesn't change anything — because your responsibility is not to the people you’re making the gift for, but to the gift itself.

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.

You can't just make me different and then leave

In the ensuing silence, I have the time to contemplate the word cute – how dismissive it is, how it’s the equivalent of calling someone little, how it makes a person into a baby, how the word is a neon sign burning through the dark reading, “Feel Bad About Yourself.

Lonely, Vaguely Pedophilic Swing Set Seeks the Butts of Children.

You are a side effect," Van Houten continued, "of an evolutionary process that cares little for individual lives. You are a failed experiment in mutation.

All hurt is brain hurt.

there is no shortage of fault to be found amid our stars

Do you know what your problem is? You can't live with the idea that someone might leave.

Your professional physicist opinion?" I ask.She smiles. "I believe the cat to be alive. And what says my esteemed colleague?""Alive," I say.

if you don't believe,nothing ever happens at all.

What the hell is instant? Nothing is instant. Instant rice takes five minutes, instant pudding in an hour.

You'll... you'll... live your best life today.