Quotes by John Green

Youre both the fire and the water that extinguishes it. Youre the narrator, the protagonist, and the sidekick. Youre the storyteller and the story told. You are somebodys something, but you are also your 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.

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

The existence of broccoli does not in any way affect the taste of chocolate.

The existence of broccoli does not in any way affect the taste of chocolate.

I just want you to be happy. If that’s with me or with someone else or with nobody. I just want you to be happy.

People, I thought, wanted security. They couldnt bear the though of their loved ones not existing, and couldnt even imagine themselves not existing. I finally decided that people believe in an afterlife because they couldnt bear not to.

Let me just acknowlege that the function of grammar is to make language as efficent and clear and transparent as possible. But if we’re all constantly correcting each other’s grammar and being really snotty about it, then people stop talking because they start to be petrified that they’re going to make some sort of terrible grammatical error and that’s precisely the opposite of what grammar is supposed to do, which is to facilitate clear communication.

Writing is something you do alone. Its a profession for introverts who want to tell you a story but dont want to make eye contact while doin

[T]here is something to recommend a story that ends.

Im so proud of you that it makes me proud of me. I hope you know that.

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, wed learned, and that the cessation of desire meant the cessation of suffering. When you stopped wishing things wouldnt fall apart, youd stop suffering when they did.

As a child I was an inveterate liar. As opposed to now, I am a Novelist.

All writing is rewriting.

As he read, I feel in love the way you fall asleep: slow, and then all at once.

I did some research on this a couple years ago, Augustus continued. I was wondering if everybody could be remembered. Like, if we got organized, and assigned a certain number of corpses to each living person, would there be enough living people to remember all the dead people?And are there? Sure, anyone can name fourteen dead people. But were disorganized mourners, so a lot of people end up remembering Shakespeare and no one ends up remembering the person he wrote Sonnet Fifty-five about

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.

If you dont imagine, nothing ever happens at all

Her primary reason for living and my primary reason for living were awfully entangled.

Its hard as hell to hold onto your dignity when the risen sun is too bright in your losing eyes, and thats what I was thinking about as we hunted for bad guys through the ruins of a city that didnt exist.