Authors — Quotes

John Green Quotes: 177

As he read, I fell in love the way you fall asleep: slowly, and then all at once.
The Fault in Our Stars
My thoughts are stars I cannot fathom into constellations.
The Fault in Our Stars
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.
The Fault in Our Stars
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.
The Fault in Our Stars
Some infinities are bigger than other infinities.
The Fault in Our Stars
The only way out of the labyrinth of suffering is to forgive.
Looking for Alaska
What a slut time is. She screws everybody.
The Fault in Our Stars
The marks humans leave are too often scars.
The Fault in Our Stars
Books are the ultimate Dumpees: put them down and they’ll wait for you forever; pay attention to them and they always love you back.
An Abundance of Katherines
Oh, I wouldn't mind, Hazel Grace. It would be a privilege to have my heart broken by you.
The Fault in Our Stars
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.
Looking for Alaska
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.
Looking for Alaska
Some people don't understand the promises they're making when they make them,"I said."Right, of course. But you keep the promise anyway. That's what love is. Love is keeping the promise anyway.
The Fault in Our Stars
The world is not a wish-granting factory.
The Fault in Our Stars
You can love someone so much...But you can never love people as much as you can miss them.
What is the point of being alive if you don't at least try to do something remarkable?
An Abundance of Katherines
What a treacherous thing to believe that a person is more than a person.
Paper Towns
Maybe our favorite quotations say more about us than about the stories and people we're quoting.
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.
Looking for Alaska
Grief does not change you, Hazel. It reveals you.
The Fault in Our Stars
When I look at my room, I see a girl who loves books.
Looking for Alaska
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.
Paper Towns
Books so special and rare and yours that advertising your affection feels like a betrayal.
The Fault in Our Stars
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.
Looking for Alaska
I'm not saying that everything is survivable. Just that everything except the last thing is.
Paper Towns
It is so hard to leave—until you leave. And then it is the easiest goddamned thing in the world.
Paper Towns
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.
The Fault in Our Stars
They love their hair because they're not smart enough to love something more interesting.
Looking for Alaska
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.
The Fault in Our Stars
…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-can’t-control-yourself love it. Hank, when people call people nerds, mostly what they’re saying is ‘you like stuff.’ Which is just not a good insult at all. Like, ‘you are too enthusiastic about the miracle of human consciousness’.
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.
The Fault in Our Stars
The town was paper, but the memories were not.
Paper Towns
Maybe 'okay' will be our 'always
The Fault in Our Stars
I may die young, but at least I'll die smart.
Looking for Alaska
It always shocked me when I realized that I wasn’t the only person in the world who thought and felt such strange and awful things.
Looking for Alaska
If you don't imagine, nothing ever happens at all.
Paper Towns
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?
The Fault in Our Stars
Some people have lives; some people have music.
Will Grayson, Will Grayson
That’s 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
The Fault in Our Stars
What you must understand about me is that I’m a deeply unhappy person.
Looking for Alaska
You realize that trying to keep your distance from me will not lessen my affection for you. All efforts to save me from you will fail.
The Fault in Our Stars
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.
Looking for Alaska
You are so busy being YOU that you have no idea how utterly unprecedented you are.
The Fault in Our Stars
I'm a grenade and at some point I'm going to blow up and I would like to minimize the casualties, okay?
The Fault in Our Stars
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
The Fault in Our Stars
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.
Will Grayson, Will Grayson
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
Looking for Alaska
At some point, you just pull off the Band-Aid, and it hurts, but then it's over and you're relieved.
Looking for Alaska
You don't remember what happened. What you remember becomes what happened.
An Abundance of Katherines
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
The Fault in Our Stars
You gave me a forever within the numbered days, and I'm grateful.
The Fault in Our Stars
I didn’t need you, you idiot. I picked you. And then you picked me back.
Paper Towns
But it is the nature of stars to cross, and never was Shakespeare more wrong than when he has Cassius note, ‘The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars / But in ourselves.
The Fault in Our Stars
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.
Paper Towns
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.
The Fault in Our Stars
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.
The Fault in Our Stars
You like someone who can't like you back because unrequited love can be survived in a way that once-requited love cannot.
Will Grayson, Will Grayson
Have you really read all those books in your room?”Alaska laughing- “Oh God no. I’ve maybe read a third of ‘em. But I’m going to read them all. I call it my Life’s Library. Every summer since I was little, I’ve gone to garage sales and bought all the books that looked interesting. So I always have something to read.
Looking for Alaska
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.
The Fault in Our Stars
Talking to a drunk person was like talking to an extremely happy, severely brain-damaged three-year-old.
Paper Towns
I’m on a roller coaster that only goes up, my friend.
The Fault in Our Stars
And then something invisible snapped insider her, and that which had come together commenced to fall apart.
Looking for Alaska
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.
The Fault in Our Stars
It is easy to forget how full the world is of people, full to bursting, and each of them imaginable and consistently misimagined.
Paper Towns
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.
Looking for Alaska
Sometimes you lose a battle. But mischief always wins the war
Looking for Alaska
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.
Will Grayson, Will Grayson
What else? She is so beautiful. You don’t 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 don’t 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.
The Fault in Our Stars
I figured something out. The future is unpredictable.
An Abundance of Katherines
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.
Looking for Alaska
I just did some calculations and I've been able to determine that you're full of shit.
Looking for Alaska
That didn’t happen, of course. Things never happened the way I imagined them.
Looking for Alaska
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.
Looking for Alaska
there is no shortage of fault to be found amid our stars
The Fault in Our Stars
You have a choice in this world, I believe, about how to tell sad stories, and we made the funny choice.
The Fault in Our Stars
The real heroes anyway aren't the people doing things; the real heroes are the people NOTICING things, paying attention.
The Fault in Our Stars
I told Augustus the broad outline of my miracle: diagnosed with Stage IV thyroid cancer when I was thirteen. (I didn’t tell him that the diagnosis came three months after I got my first period. Like: Congratulations! You’re a woman. Now die.)
The Fault in Our Stars
As long as we don't die, this is gonna be one hell of a story.
Paper Towns
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.
The Fault in Our Stars
Y'all smoke to enjoy it. I smoke to die.
Looking for Alaska
We need never be hopeless because we can never be irreperably broken.
Looking for Alaska
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.
The Fault in Our Stars
Nothing ever happens like you imagine it will
Paper Towns
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.
Looking for Alaska
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!
Looking for Alaska
He liked the mere act of reading, the magic of turning scratches on a page into words inside his head.
An Abundance of Katherines
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.
Looking for Alaska
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.
Looking for Alaska
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.
The Fault in Our Stars
You do not immortalize the lost by writing about them. Language buries, but does not resurrect.
The Fault in Our Stars
Nerd girls are the world’s most underutilized romantic resource. And guys, do not tell me that nerd girls are not hot because that shows a Paris Hilton-esque failure to understand hotness.
Poetry is just so emo."he said. "Oh, the pain. The pain. It always rains. In my soul.
Paper Towns
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]
Because there is no glory in illness. There is no meaning to it. There is no honor in dying of.
The Fault in Our Stars
She's cute, I thought, but you don't need to like a girl who treats you like you're ten: You've already got a mom.
Looking for Alaska
At some point we all look up and realize we are lost in a maze.
Looking for Alaska
Augustus,"I said. "Really. You don't have to do this." "Sure I do,"he said. "I found my Wish." "God, you're the best,"I told him."I bet you say that to all the boys who finance your international travel,"he answered.
The Fault in Our Stars
We were kissing.I thought: This is good.I thought: I am not bad at this kissing. Not bad at all.I thought: I am clearly the greatest kisser in the history of the universe.Suddenly she laughed and pulled away from me. She wiggled a hand out of her sleeping bag and wiped her face. "You slobbered on my nose,"she said, and laughed
Looking for Alaska
I felt the unfairness of it, the inarguable injustice of loving someone who might have loved you back but can't due to deadness.
Looking for Alaska
And then the line was quite but not dead. I almost felt like he was there in my room with me, but in a way it was better, like I was not in my room and he was not in his, but instead we were together in some invisible and tenuous third space that could only be visited on the phone.
The Fault in Our Stars