Quotes by John Green

If you were to go, and hopefully someday you will, you would see a lot of paintings of dead people. Youd see Jesus on the cross, and youd see a dude getting stabbed in the neck, and youd 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.

Osteosarcoma sometimes takes a limb to check you out. The, if it like you, it takes the rest.

Im a big believer in pairing classics with contemporary literature, so students have the opportunity to see that literature is not a cold, dead thing that happened once but instead a vibrant mode of storytelling thats been with us a long time - and will be with us, I hope, for a long time to come.

Every time I try to set something in Chicago, I get intimidated by Augie March. Its easy to set something in Indianapolis - we dont have Augie March here. But I love writing about Chicago, and I love being there and imagining lives in Chicago. I hope to set something there in the future, but its intimidating.

We dont tend to write about disease in fiction - not just teen novels but all American novels - because it doesnt fit in with our idea of the heroic romantic epic. There is room only for sacrifice, heroism, war, politics and family struggle.

When you go to a great concert, you feel this arc, almost like the music of a well-chosen set takes you on this trip through emotions and through various forms of intellectual engagement.

“There is no try. There is only do.”

“Photographs are just light and time,”

“Id had nearly four years of experience looking at these clocks, but their sluggishness never ceased to surprise. If I am ever told that I have one day to live, I will head straight to the hallowed halls of Winter Park High School, where a day has been known to last a thousand years.”

“Witness also that when we talk about literature, we do so in the present tense. When we speak of the dead, we are not so kind.”

“What a slut time is. She screws with everybody.”

“What a slut time is. She screws everybody...”

“I spent the next three hours in classrooms, trying not to look at the clocks over various blackboards, and then looking at the clocks, and then being amazed that only a few minutes had passed since I last looked at the clocks, but their sluggishness never ceased to surprise. If I am ever told that I have one day to live, I will head straight for the hallowed halls of Winter Park High School, where a day has been known to last a thousand years.”

“For days now, my brain has refused to allow me to finish a thought, constantly interrupting with worries. Even my worries get interrupted--by new worries, or facets of old worries I had not adequately considered. My thoughts are a river overflowing its banks, churning and muddy and ceaseless. I wish I wasnt so scared all the time--scared of the virus, yes, but there is also some deeper fear: the terror of time passing, and me with it.”

“Nothing ever happens like you imagine it will”

“One swing set, well worn but structurally sound, seeks new home. Make memories with your kid or kids so that someday he or she or they will look into the backyard and feel the ache of sentimentality as desperately as I did this afternoon. Its all fragile and fleeting, dear reader, but with this swing set, your child(ren) will be introduced to the ups and downs of human life gently and safely, and may also learn the most important lesson of all: No matter how hard you kick, no matter how high you get, you cant go all the way around.”

“What the hell is instant? Nothing is instant. Instant rice takes five minutes, instant pudding an hour. I doubt that an instant of blinding pain feels particularly instantaneous.”

“All along — not only since she left, but for a decade before — I had been imagining her without listening, without knowing that she made as a poor a window as I did. And so I could not imagine her as a person who could feel fear, who could feel isolated in a roomful of people, who could be shy about her record collection because it was too personal to share. Someone who might have read travel books to escape having to live in the town that so many people escape to. Someone who — because no one thought she was a person — had no one to really talk to.”

“I just think if you dont say the honest thing, sometimes the honest thing never becomes true, you know, and I-”

“Ergo: girls should always make the first move, because (a) they are, on the whole, less likely to be rejected than guys, (b) that way, girls will never get kissed unless they want to be kissed.”