John Green

You had been a paper boy to me all these years - two dimensions as a character on the page and two different, but still flat, dimensions as a person. But that night you turned out to be real.

Because it's kind of great, being an idea that everybody likes. But I could never be the idea to myself, not all the way. And Agloe is a place where a paper creation became real. A dot on the map became a real place, more real than the people who created the dot could never have imagined. I thought maybe the paper cutout of a girl could start becoming real here also. And it seemed like a way to tell that paper girl who cared about popularity and clothes and everything else: 'You are going to the paper towns. And you are never coming back.

You gave me forever within the numbered days.

It seemed like forever ago, like we've had this brief but still infinite forever. Some infinities are bigger than other infinities.

Big, ugly homes for big, ugly people,' I told Margo as we pulled into Casavilla.'No shit. If I ever end up being the kind of person who has one kid and seven bedrooms, do me a favor and shoot me.

If we'd put them in a vase in the living room, they would have been everyone's flowers. I wanted them to be mt flowers.

Do you know what your problem is? You can't live with the idea that someone might leave.

Me: __ refuse to attend Support Group.__om: __ne of the symptoms of depression is disinterest in activities.__e: __lease just let me watch America__ Next Top Model. It__ an activity.__om: __elevision is a passivity.__e: __gh, Mom, please.__om: __azel, you__e a teenager. You__e not a little kid anymore. You need to make friends, get out of the house, and live your life.__e: __f you want me to be a teenager, don__ send me to Support Group. Buy me a fake ID so I can go to clubs, drink vodka, and take pot.__om: __ou don__ take pot, for starters.__e: __ee, that__ the kind of thing I__ know if you got me a fake ID.__om: __ou__e going to Support Group.__e: __GGGGGGGGGGGGG.__om: __azel, you deserve a life.

That doesn't sound like my Margo", she said, and I thought of my Margo, and all of us looking at her reflection in different funhouse mirrors.

Do you ever wonder whether people would like you more or less if they could see inside you? I mean, I__e always felt like the Katherines dump me right when they start to see what I look like from the inside__ell, except K-19. But I always wonder about that. If people could see me the way I see myself__f they could live in my memories__ould anyone, anyone, love me?

I feel like how you matter is defined by the things that matter to you. You matter as much as the things that matter to you do. And I got so backwards, trying to make myself matter to him. All this time, there were real things to care about: real, good people who care about me, and this place. It's so easy to get stuck. You just get caught in being something, being special or cool or whatever, to the point where you don't even know why you need it; you just think you do.

I don't think your missing pieces ever go inside you again once they go missing.

The oblivion fear is something else, fear that I won__ be able to give anything in exchange for my life. If you don__ live alife in service of a greater good, you__e gotta at least die a death in service of a greater good, you know? And I fear that I won__ get either alife or a death that means anything.

Because personally I think mattering is a piss-poor idea. I just want to fly under the radar, because when you start to make yourself into a big deal, that__ when you get shot down. The bigger a deal you are, the worse your life is.

You listen to people so that you can imagine them, and you hear all the terrible and wonderful things people do to themselves and to one another, but in the end the listening exposes you even more than it exposes the people you__e trying to listen to.

I know love is real because I feel it.

I__ really not up for answering any questions that start with how, when, where, why, or what.

Crying adds something: crying is you, plus tears.