John Green

Jesus, I__ not going to be one of those people who sits around talking about what they__e gonna do. I__ just going to do it. Imagining the future is a kind of nostalgia._ __uh?_ I asked. __ou spend your whole life stuck in the labyrinth, thinking about how you__l 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.

When adults say, 'Teenagers think they are invincible' with that sly, stupid smile on their faces, they don't know how right they are. We need never be hopeless, because we can never be irreparably broken. We think that we are invincible because we are. We cannot be born, and we cannot die. Like all energy, we can only change shapes and sizes and manifestations. They forget that when they get old. They get scared of losing and failing. But that part of us greater than the sum of our parts cannot begin and cannot end, and so it cannot fail.

I find it really offensive when people say that the emotional experiences of teenagers are less real or less important than those of adults. I am an adult, and I used to be a teenager, and so I can tell you with some authority that my feelings then were as real as my feelings are now.

When adults say, "Teenagers think they are invincible" with that sly, stupid smile on their faces, they don't know how right they are. We need never be hopeless, because we can never be irreparably broken. We think that we are invincible because we are. We cannot be born, and we cannot die. Like all energy, we can only change shapes and sizes and manifestations. They forget that when they get old. They get scared of losing and failing. But that part of us greater than the sum of our parts cannot begin and cannot end, and so it cannot fail.

...getting dumped is predictable, repetitive, and boring.They want to stay friends; they feel smothered; it's always them and it's never you; and afterward you're devastated and they're relieved; it's over for them and just starting for you.

this is why we call people exes, I guess - because the paths that cross in the middle end up separating at the end. it's too easy to see an X as a cross-out. it's not, because there's no way to cross out something like that. the X is a diagram of two paths.

I always like routine. I suppose I never found boredom very boring.

Cousin-screwing. It is not totally safe. It raises the risk of birth defects slightly. But I was reading in a book for history that there's, like, a 99.9999 percent chance that at least one of your great-great-great-grandparents married first cousin.

Either write something worth reading, or do something worth writing.

I believe humans have souls, and I believe in the conservation of souls.

People, I thought, wanted security. They couldn__ bare the idea of death being a big black nothing, couldn__ bear the thought of their loved ones not existing, and couldn__ even imagine themselves not existing. I finally decided that people believed in an afterlife because they couldn__ bear not to.

I am a grenade," I said again. "I just want to stay away from people and read books and think and be with you guys because there's nothing I can do about hurting you: You're too invested, so just please let me do that, okay?"I'm going to go to my room and read for awhile, okay? I'm fine. I really am fine: I just want to go read for a while.

It__ hard as hell to hold on to your dignity when the risen sun is too bright in your losing eyes

What's that?""The laundry basket?""No, next to it.""I don't see anything next to it.""It's my last shred of dignity. It's very small.

It's hard as hell to hold on to your dignity when the risen sun is too bright in your losing eyes, and that's what I was thinking about as we hunted for bad guys through the ruins of a city that didn't exist.

The rules of capitalization are so unfair to words in the middle of a sentence.

It's like she thinks my job is to please her, and that should be my dearest wish, and when I don't please her - I get shut out.

But mothers lie. It's in the job description.