Quotes by John Green

When youre on a Ferris wheel all anyone ever talks about is being on the Ferris wheel and the view from the Ferris wheel and whether the Ferris wheel is scary and how many more times it will go around. Dating is like that. Nobody whos doing it ever talks about anything else. I have no interest in dating.

Its funny how they thought we were dating, Colin said, glancing over at her.Hows that funny? she asked, holding his gaze.Um, he said. Distracted from the road, Colin watched as she gave him the slightest version of her inimitable smile.

It became a weekend of reading, of trying to see her in the fragments of the poem shed left for me.

I do my precalc homework, and then when Im done I actually sit with the textbook for like three hours and try to understand what I just did. Thats the kind of weekend it is--the kind where you have so much time you go past the answers and start looking into the ideas.

What are you assholes looking at? Nothing, said Radar. Were certainly not looking at your eyebrows.

...the kind of weather that reminds you after a long winter that while the world wasnt built for humans, we were built for the world.

The longer I do my job ... the more I realize that 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.

Pudge/Colonel: I am sorry that I have not talked to you before. I am not staying for graduation. I leave for Japan tomorrow morning. For a long time, I was mad at you. The way you cut me out of everything hurt me, and so I kept what I knew to myself. But then even after I wasnt mad anymore, I still didnt say anything, and I dont even really know why. Pudge had that kiss, I guess. And I had this secret. Youve mostly figured this out, but the truth is that I saw her that night, Id stayed up late with Lara and some people, and then I was falling asleep and I heard her crying outside my back window. It was like 3:15 that morning, maybe, amd I walked out there and saw her walking through the soccer field. I tried to talk to her, but she was in a hurry. She told me that her mother was dead eight years that day, and that she always put flowers on her mothers grave on the anniversary but she forgot that year. She was out there looking for flowers, but it was too early-too wintry. Thats how I knew about January 10. I still have no idea whether it was suicide. She was so sad, and I didnt know what to say or do. I think she counted on me to be the one person who would always say and do the right things to help her, but I couldnt. I just thought she was looking for flowers. I didnt know she was going to go. She was drunk just trashed drunk, and I really didnt think she would drive or anything. I thought she would just cry herself to sleep and then drive to visit her mom the next day or something. She walked away, and then I heard a car start. I dont know what I was thinking. So I let her go too. And Im sorry. I know you loved her. It was hard not to. Takumi

I couldn’t help but think about school and everything else ending. I liked standing just outside the couches and watching them—it was a kind of sad I didn’t mind, and so I just listened, letting all the happiness and the sadness of this ending swirl around in me, each sharpening the other. For the longest time, it felt kind of like my chest was cracking open, but not precisely in an unpleasant way.

I hated listening to everyone else stumble on their words and try to phrase things in the vaguest possible way so they wouldnt 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.

Be present in this class. And then, when its over, be present out there.

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.

All of us, poor & rich alike, have been conditioned by our upbringings. Impoverished men & women may become lulled into a state of learned helplessness without hope to change their lives. Likewise, the wealthy can walk in a state of learned blindness ignoring the desperation of the local & global poor.

One of the Great Rules of Economics According to John GreenIf you are rich, you have to be an idiot not to stay rich. And if you are poor, you have to be really smart to get rich.

Later, I walked towards the dorm circle beside Alaska. The cicadas hummed their one-note song, just as they had at home in Florida. She turned to me as we made our way through the darkness and said,When you’re walking at night, do you ever get creeped out and even though it’s silly and embarrassing you just want to run home?”It seemed too secret and personal to admit to a virtual stranger but I told her, “Yeah, totally.”For a moment, she was quiet. Then she grabbed my hand, whispered,“Run run run run run,” and took off, pulling me behind her.

... going out late at night and laying in the dewy field and reading a Kurt Vonnegut book by moonlight.

When you date someone, you have the markers along the way, right: You kiss, you have The Talk, you say the Three Little Words, you sit on a swing set and break up. You can plot the points on a graph. And you check up with each other along the way: Can I do this? If I say this, will you say it back?But with friendship, theres nothing like that. Being in a relationship, thats something you choose. Being friends, thats just something you are.

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

Where do you come up with these zingers, Clint? Do you own some kind of joke factory in Indonesia where youve got eight-year-olds working ninety hours a week to deliver you that kind of top-quality witticism? There are boy bands with more original material.

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, its gotta be dangerous, storing children with cancer in your heart.