John Green Quotes - Page 3

There 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. Breaking down that wall is the kind of story that might have a happy middle— oh, look, we broke down this wall, I’m going to look at you like a girl and you’re going to look at me like a boy and we’re going to play a fun game called Can I Put My Hand There What About There What About There. And sometimes that happy middle looks so great that you can convince yourself that it’s not the middle but will last forever.

We bring the fucking rain Q, not the scattered showers.

Me: “I refuse to attend Support Group.”Mom: “One of the symptoms of depression is disinterest in activities.”Me: “Please just let me watch America’s Next Top Model. It’s an activity.”Mom: “Television is a passivity.”Me: “Ugh, Mom, please.”Mom: “Hazel, you’re a teenager. You’re not a little kid anymore. You need to make friends, get out of the house, and live your life.”Me: “If you want me to be a teenager, don’t send me to Support Group. Buy me a fake ID so I can go to clubs, drink vodka, and take pot.”Mom: “You don’t take pot, for starters.”Me: “See, that’s the kind of thing I’d know if you got me a fake ID.”Mom: “You’re going to Support Group.”Me: “UGGGGGGGGGGGGG.”Mom: “Hazel, you deserve a life.

I don't know how I look, but I know how I feel: Young. Goofy. Infinite.

The Degree to which I am blessed staggers me... the degree to which I take that for granted shames me.-Streetwalking with Jesus

And then I crawled into his unmade bed, wrapping myself in his comforter like a cocoon, surrounding myself with his smell. I took out my cannula so I could smell better, breathing him and out, the scent fading even as I lay there, my chest burning until I couldn't distinguish among the pains.

But I was not in the band, because I suffer from the kind of tone deafness that is generally associated with actual deafness

I wish I knew how to quit you, Tumblr.

Where is my chance to be somebody's Peter Van Houten?' He hit the steering wheel weakly, the car honking as he cried. He leaned his head back, looking up. 'I hate myself I hate myself I hate this I hate this I disgust myself I hate it I hate it I hate it just let me fucking die.

Do the thing you're good at. Not many people are lucky enough to be so good at something.

... because Mr. Applebaum, who is ostensibly teaching us precalculus but is mostly teaching me that pain and suffering must be endured stoically, says, "You feel what, Tiny?".

I would not be dying if it were not for her. I would have stayed home, as I have always stayed home, and I would have been safe, and I would have done the one thing I have always wanted to do, which is to grow up.

This squirrel is inadequately afraid of humans! Squirrel, I am a threat to you! We are enemies! Please get off my bench! Oh, god! Oh, god! Don't touch me—oh, god!

I don't really understand the point of crying. Also, I feel that crying is almost - like, aside from deaths of relatives or whatever - totally avoidable if you follow two very simple rules: 1. Don't care too much. 2. Shut up. Everything unfortunate that has ever happened to me has stemmed from failure to follow one of the rules.

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

The opportunity of studying history, is the opportunity to experience empathy.

I will not tell you our love story, because-like all real love stories-it will die with us,as it should.

what we want is to be noticed by the universe, to have the universe give a shit what happens to us- not the collective idea of sentient life but each of us as individuals.

I'm a grenade, I just want to stay away from people and read books, and think...

So I let her go, too. And I'm sorry. I know you loved her. It was hard not to.Takumi

Y'all smoke to enjoy it. I smoke to die.

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.

but there was nothing I could do to dim the supernovae exploding inside my brain, an endless chain of intra cranial firecrackers

Jesus, why would he hook up with Becca?" "Well, she's not known for her personality or generosity of spirit, so it's probably because she's hot." "She's not as hot as you," I said, before I could think better of it. "That's always seemed so ridiculous to me, that people would want to around someone because they're pretty. It's like picking your breakfast cereals based on color instead of taste.

Her underwear, her jeans, the comforter, my corduroys and my boxers between us, I thought. Five layers, and yet I felt it, the nervous warmth of touching – a pale reflection of the fireworks of one mouth on another, but a reflection nonetheless. And in the almostness of the moment, I cared at least enough. I wasn’t sure whether I liked her, and doubted whether I could trust her, but I cared at least enough to try to find out. Her on my bed, wide green eyes staring down at me. The enduring mystery of her sly, almost smirking, smile. Five layers between us.

I bet if you look at the average teenager and the average adult, the average teenager has read more books in the last year than the average adult. Now of course the adult would be all like, 'I'm busy, I got a job, I got stuff to do.' WHATEVER! READ! I mean, you're watching CSI: Miami. Why would you be watching CSI: Miami, when you could be READING CSI: Miami, the novelization?

I would never slay the dragon, because the dragon was also me.

The only thing worse than having a party that no one attends is having a party attended only by two vastly, deeply uninteresting people.

Physical intimacy isn’t and can never be an effective substitute for emotional intimacy.

Maybe I was supposed to hate Caroline Mathers or something because she’d been with Augustus, but I didn’t. I couldn’t see her very clearly amid all the tributes, but there didn’t seem to be much to hate. She seemed to be mostly a professional sick person, like me, which made me worry that when I died they’d have nothing to say about me except that I fought heroically, as if the only thing I’d ever done was Have Cancer.

If people were rain I was a drizzle and she was a hurricane.

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 toward 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.

We are not as frail as the strings would make us believe.

Once we got out of Jefferson Park, we rolled down the one window that worked so the world would know we had good taste in music.

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.

The longer I do my job ... the more I realize that humans lack good mirrors. It's so hard for anyone to show us how we look, and so hard for us to show anyone how we feel.

He was nearsighted. The future lay before him, inevitable but invisible.

Not to sound like a jerk, but Jane isn't really my type. Her hair's kinda disastrously curly and she mostly hangs out with guys. My type's a little girlier. And honestly, I don't even like my type of girl that much, let alone other types. Not that I'm asexual or something - I just find Romance Drama unbearable.

I was caught in a love triangle with one dead side.

If you were to go, and hopefully someday you will, you would see a lot of paintings of dead people. You'd see Jesus on the cross, and you'd see a dude getting stabbed in the neck, and you'd see people dying at sea and in battle and a parade of martyrs. But Not. One. Single. Cancer. Kid. Nobody biting it from the plague or smallpox or yellow fever or whatever, because there is no glory in illness. There is no meaning to it. There is no honor in dying of.

Imagine others complexly.

Most of my friends were in band, and most of my free time during school was spent within twenty feet of the band room

I wasn't disappointed. My expectations had been met.

The oblivion fear is something else, fear that I won’t be able to give anything in exchange for my life. If you don’t live alife 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 alife or a death that means anything.

(I didn’t tell him that thediagnosis came three months after I got my first period. Like: Congratulations! You’re a woman. Now die.)

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.

I looked over at Augustus Waters, who looked back at me. You could almost see through his eyes they were so blue. "There will come a time," I said, "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 for that our species ever did anything. There will be no one left to remember Aristotle or Cleopatra, let alone you.

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

He just waited until I stopped talking and said, 'Jesus, kid, you're almost a detective. All you need now is a gun, a gut, and three ex-wives. So what's your theory?

He was a dying man looking down on the surgeons trying to save him.

I’ll give you my strength if I can have your remission.

I just want to domething that matters. Or be something that matters. I just want to matter.

Ma'am,' Augustus said, nodding toward her, 'your daughter's car has just been deservedly egged by a blind man. Please close the door and go back inside or we'll be forced to call the police.' After wavering for a moment, Monica's mom closed the door and disappeared.

I realized that all my life, my values were based upon typical middle-class American values: hard work, doing good, living well, owning things, following the rules & being the best I can be... but God clearly says, "those are not MY values. I value justice, mercy & humility.

Chip, she’s gone,” and he said, “I thought I’d feel her looking down on us, but you’re right. She’s just gone

I could imagine it. I could remember it. But I couldn't see it again, and it occured to me that the voracious ambition of humans is never sated by dreams coming true, because there is always the thought that everything might be done better and again.

I was surprised. I'd always associated belief in heaven with, frankly, a kind of intellectual disengagement. But Gus wasn't dumb.

I hadn’t been in proper school in three years. My parents were my two best friends. My third best friend was an author who did not know I existed.

Lady and gentleman, when my parents left Korea with nothing but the clothes on their backs and the considerable wealth they had amassed in the shipping business, they had a dream. They had a dream that one day amid the snowy hilltops of western North Carolina, their son would lose his virginity to a cheerleader in the woman's bathroom of a Waffle House just off the interstate. My parents have sacrificed so much for this dream! And that is why we must journey on, despite all trials and tribulations! Not for me and least of all for the poor cheerleader in question, but for my parents and indeed for all immigrants who came to his great nation in what they themselves could never have: CHEERLEADER SEX.

Chuck Parson did not participate in organized sports, because to do so would distract from his larger goal of his life: to one day be convicted of murder