Quotes by John Green

I called Isaac, who cursed life and the universe and God Himself and who said where are the goddamned trophies to break when you need them, and then I realized there was no one else to call, which was the saddest thing. The only person I really wanted to talk to about Augustus Waters’s death was Augustus Waters.

It lit up like a Christmas Tree Hazel Grace...

That deep, can-still-taste-her-in-my-mouth sleep.

humans lack good mirrors. Its so hard for anyone to show us how we look, and so hard for us to show anyone how we feel

Caroline was always moody and miserable, but I liked it. I liked feeling as if she had chosen me as the only person in the world not to hate, and so we spent all this time together just ragging on everyone, you know?

I hated sports. I hated sports, and I hated people who played them, and I hated people who watched them, and Ihated people who didnt hate people who watched or played them.

The town was paper, but the memories were not.

And the moral of the story is that you don’t remember what happened. What you remember becomes what happened.

The marks humans leave are too often scars. You build a hideous minimall or start a coup or try to become a rockstar and you think, Theyll remember me now, but (a) they dont remember you, and (b) all you leave behind are more scars. Your coup becomes a dictatorship. Your minimall becomes a lesion.

On some fundamental level we find it difficult to understand that other people are human beings in the same way that we are.

Everyone wants to leave an extraordinary life.

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 wasnt made for them by navigating a playground that was.

He reached up t0 grab one and came down with several, and they kept coming, washing over him, floating all around him. Never have tampon strings seemed so beautiful as they rolled up and down with the wind, landing on the ground and then twirling and floating up again, falling and rising and falling and rising.

Why are you looking at me like that?Augustus half smiled. 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.

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

Heres the thing about Hazel: Almost everyone is obsessed with leaving a mark upon the world. Bequeathing a legacy. Outlasting death. We all want to be remembered. I do, too. Thats what bothers me most, is being another unremembered casualty in the ancient and inglorious war against disease.I want to leave a mark.But Van Houten: The marks humans leave are too often scars. You build a hideous minimall or start a coup or try to become a rock star and you think, Theyll remember me now, but (a) they dont remember you, and (b) all you leave behind are more scars. Your coup becomes a dictatorship. Your minimall becomes a lesion....We are like a bunch of dogs squirting on fire hydrants. We poison the groundwater with our toxic piss, marking everything MINE in a ridiculous attempt to survive our deaths. I cant stop pissing on fire hydrants. I know its silly and useless--epically useless in my current state--but I am an animal like any other.Hazel is different. She walks lightly, old man. She walks lightly upon the earth. Hazel knows the truth: Were as likely to hurt the universe as we are to help it, and were not likely to do either.People will say its sad that she leaves a lesser scar, that fewer remember her, that she was loved deeply but not widely. But its not sad, Van Houten. Its triumphant. Its heroic. Isnt that the real heroism? Like the doctors say: First, do no harm.The real heroes anyway arent the people doing things; the real heroes are the people NOTICING things, paying attention. The guy who invented the smallpox vaccine didnt actually invent anything. He just noticed that people with cowpox didnt get smallpox....But then I wanted more time so we could fall in love. I got my wish, I suppose. I left my scar....What else? She is so beautiful. You dont 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 dont 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.

…it argues that true love will triumph in the end (which may or may not be true) but if it’s a lie, it’s the most beautiful lie we have!

But of course, the universe does not conspire to put you in one place rather than another.

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.

Who am I to say that these things might not be forever? Who is Peter Van Houten to assert as fact the conjecture that our labor is temporary? All I know of heaven and all I know of death is in this park; an elegant universe in ceaseless motion, teeming with ruined ruins and screaming children.