I believe in that line from An Imperial Affliction. 'The risen sun too bright in her losing eyes.' That's God, I think, the rising sun, and the light is too bright and her eyes are losing but they aren't lost.
One day, you’re 17 and you’re planning for someday. And then quietly, without you ever really noticing, someday is today. And then someday is yesterday. And this is your life.
It is so hard to leave—until you leave. And then it is the easiest goddamned thing in the world.
I feel like, like, how you matter is defined by the things that matter to you. You matter as much as the things that matter to you.
It seems to me that the great pleasure of human life is not in having an opinion, but rather in learning all the ways you are wrong, and all the nuances you failed to account for, and all the truths that turned out to be not as simple as you once believed. And it seems to me that one of the central pleasures of attending school is that you get to read with really well-informed people who can help welcome you into a complex world stuffed with rich and maddening ambiguity.
What's the point in being alive if you don't at least try to do something remarkable? How very odd, to believe God gave you life, and yet not think that life asks more of you than watching TV.
Maybe there is something you're afraid to say, or someone you're afraid to love, or somewhere you're afraid to go. It's gonna hurt. It's gonna hurt because it matters.
There is no Them. There are only facets of Us.
The past feels distant, even when it's near. The future feels assured, even when it isn't.
The only way out of the labyrinth of suffering is to forgive.
There's some people in this world who you can just love and love and love no matter what.
Imagining the future is a kind of nostalgia. (...) You spend your whole life stuck in the labyrinth, thinking about how you'll 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.
It hurts because it mattered.
Our lives are composed of a finite set of moments that we choose how to spend.
Without pain, how could we know joy?' This is an old argument in the field of thinking about suffering and its stupidity and lack of sophistication could be plumbed for centuries but suffice it to say that the existence of broccoli does not, in any way, affect the taste of chocolate.
Some tourists think Amsterdam is a city of sin, but in truth it is a city of freedom. And in freedom, most people find sin.
Grief doesn't change you. It reveals you.
Not that smart. Not that hot. Not that nice. Not that funny. That's me: I'm not that.
I dislike the phrase ‘Internet friends,’ because it implies that people you know online aren’t really your friends, that somehow the friendship is less real or meaningful to you because it happens through Skype or text messages. The measure of a friendship is not its physicality but its significance.
Life works best when we think of people as people.
Amsterdam is like the rings of a tree: It gets older as you get closer to the center.
The vast majority of us imagine ourselves as like literature people or math people. But the truth is that the massive processor known as the human brain is neither a literature organ or a math organ. It is both and more.
Home is Where the Heart Is, Good Friends Are Hard to Find and Impossible to Forget. True Love is Born from Hard Times.
As Alaska zipped through something obvious about linear equations, stoner/baller Hank Walsten said, "Wait, wait. I don't get it." "That's because you have eight functioning brain cells." "Studies show that Marijuana is better for your health than those cigarettes," Hank said. Alaska swallowed a mouthful of fries, took a drag on her cigarette, and blew a smoke at Hank. "I may die young," she said. "But at least I'll die smart. Now, back to tangents.
We all use the future to escape the present.
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.
Every year, many, many stupid people graduate from college. And if they can do it, so can you.
Everything that comes together falls apart. Everything. The chair I’m sitting on. It was built, and so it will fall apart. I’m gonna fall apart, probably before this chair. And you’re gonna fall apart. The cells and organs and systems that make you you—they came together, grew together, and so must fall apart. The Buddha knew one thing science didn’t prove for millennia after his death: Entropy increases. Things fall apart.
I don't think your missing pieces ever fit inside you again once they go missing.
Being in a relationship, that's something you choose. Being friends, that's something you just are.
When I look at my room, I see a girl who loves books.
There are always answers. We just have to be smart enough.
My inner goddess is doing the merengue with some salsa moves.
She fell apart because that's what happens.
The urge to make art or contemplate philosophy does not go away when you are sick. Those urges just become transfigured by illness.
Have you really read all those books in your room?” Alaska laughing- “Oh God no. I’ve maybe read a third of ‘em. But I’m going to read them all. I call it my Life’s Library. Every summer since I was little, I’ve gone to garage sales and bought all the books that looked interesting. So I always have something to read.
So I walked back to my room and collapsed on the bottom bunk, thinking that if people were rain, I was drizzle and she was a hurricane.
My thoughts are stars I cannot fathom into constellations.
I'm not saying it was your fault. I'm saying it wasn't nice.
How strange and how lovely it is to be anything at all.
Poetry is just so emo." he said. "Oh, the pain. The pain. It always rains. In my soul.
You do not immortalize the lost by writing about them. Language buries, but does not resurrect.
What you must understand about me is that I’m a deeply unhappy person.
She had this dark cancer water dripping out of her chest. Eyes closed. Intubated. But her hand was still her hand, still warm and the nails painted this almost black dark blue and I just held her hand and tried to imagine the world without us and for about one second I was a good enough person to hope she died so she would never know that I was going, too. But then I wanted more time so we could fall in love. I got my wish, I suppose. I left my scar.
He liked the mere act of reading, the magic of turning scratches on a page into words inside his head.
That's the thing about pain, it demands to be felt.
When you acknowledge that there is nothing repulsive or unforgivable or shameful about yourself, it becomes easier to be that authentic person and feel like you're living a less performed life.
The good times and the bad times both will pass. It will pass. It will get easier. But the fact that it will get easier does not mean that it doesn’t hurt now. And when people try to minimize your pain they are doing you a disservice. And when you try to minimize your own pain you’re doing yourself a disservice. Don’t do that. The truth is that it hurts because it’s real. It hurts because it mattered. And that’s an important thing to acknowledge to yourself. But that doesn’t mean that it won’t end, that it won’t get better. Because it will.
Without Pain, How Could We Know Joy?
You don't remember what happened. What you remember becomes what happened.
She had the kind of fingers you want to interlace with your own.
We think that we are invincible because we are.
Nothing is as boring as other people's dreams.
...whatever you're worried about, you're bigger than the worries.
We all want to do something to mitigate the pain of loss or to turn grief into something positive, to find a silver lining in the clouds. But I believe there is real value in just standing there, being still, being sad.
What matters to you defines your mattering.
How do you just stop being terrified of getting left behind and ending up by yourself forever and not meaning anything to the world?
I love being in cities with lots of other people, because I'm reminded that there are billions of people like me, and we are each stuck inside of our minds, feverishly trying to crawl out to make connections with other people.
Love is keeping the promise anyway.
That smile could end wars and cure cancer.
It seemed like forever ago, like we've had this brief but still infinite forever. Some infinities are bigger than other infinities.
I don't think pandemics make us afraid of death, I think they make us afraid of oblivion. They force us to grapple with the futility of effort. Also they make us barf which isn't fun either... Wash your hands, cover your coughs, and find a way to hold in balance the futility of effort with the necessity to struggle.
What a treacherous thing to believe that a person is more than a person.
All salvation is temporary," Augustus shot back. "I bought them a minute. Maybe that's the minute that buys them an hour, which is the hour that buys them a year. No one's gonna buy them forever, Hazel Grace, but my life bought them a minute. And that's not nothing.
We are as indestructible as we believe ourselves to be.
I think inspiration is always around; it's just a question of whether or not you're noticing it.
Talking to a drunk person was like talking to an extremely happy, severely brain-damaged three-year-old.
...it occurred to me that the voracious ambition of humans is never sated by dreams coming true, because there is always the thought that everything might be done better and again.
You matter as much as the things that matter to you do.
If you don't imagine, nothing ever happens at all.
Great books help you understand, and they help you feel understood.
I don’t know a perfect person. I only know flawed people who are still worth loving.
Just remember that sometimes, the way you think about a person isn't the way they actually are... People are different when you can smell them and see them up close.
You either have a great social life and shitty taste in music, or a fantastic taste in music with barely any social life.
Don’t make stuff because you want to make money - it will never make you enough money. And don’t make stuff because you want to get famous - because you will never feel famous enough. Make gifts for people - and work hard on making those gifts in the hope that those people will notice and like the gifts.
If only we could see the endless string of consequences that result from our smallest actions. But we can't know better until knowing better is useless.
I figured something out. The future is unpredictable.
The human tongue is like wasabi: it's very powerful, and should be used sparingly.
I just want to do something that matters. Or be something that matters. I just want to matter.
That's who you really like. The people you can think out loud in front of.
By saying you don’t care if the world falls apart, in some small way you’re saying you want it to stay together, on your own terms.
You can love someone so much...But you can never love people as much as you can miss them.
Reading a good book helps us to feel un-alone.
You don't get to choose if you get hurt in this world...but you do have some say in who hurts you. I like my choices.
Good friends are hard to find and impossible to forget.
It's just that I learned a while ago that the best way to get people to like you is not to like them too much.
I always had this idea that you should never give up a happy middle in the hopes of a happy ending, because there is no such thing as a happy ending. Do you know what I mean? There is so much to lose.
People always get used to beauty though.
Not to ask the obvious question, but why Alaska?
I don't know how I look, but I know how I feel: Young. Goofy. Infinite.
Pain is like fabric: The stronger it is, the more it’s worth.
I thought being an adult meant knowing what you believe, but that has not been my experience.
I wanted so badly to lie down next to her on the couch, to wrap my arms around her and sleep... Just sleep together, in the most innocent sense of the phrase. But I lacked the courage and she had a boyfriend and I was gawky and she was gorgeous and I was boring and she was endlessly fascinating. So I walked back to my room and collapsed on the bottom bunk, thinking that if people were rain, I was drizzle and she was a hurricane.
Do you ever wonder whether people would like you more or less if they could see inside you? But I always wonder about that. If people could see me the way I see myself—if they could live in my memories—would anyone, anyone, love me?
Oh, I wouldn't mind, Hazel Grace. It would be a privilege to have my heart broken by you.
Just a word of advice. Whenever you're furious with your parents or you think they're terrible, just remember, you vomited on them and they kept you.
They love their hair because they're not smart enough to love something more interesting.
To be human is to catch the falling person.
You can't just make me different and then leave. You can't. You can't change me and make my whole life centered around you, then leave.
If people could see me the way I see myself - if they could live in my memories - would anyone love me?
We all romanticize the people we adore.
When you leave a place, it's best to leave.
We need never be hopeless because we can never be irreperably broken.
The amazing thing is that we're right to hold onto hope. The world may be broken but hope is not crazy.
I'm not sure if I'm depressed. I mean, I'm not exactly sad. But I'm not exactly happy either. I can laugh and joke and smile during the day, But sometimes when I'm alone at night I forget how to feel.
Given the final futility of our struggle, is the fleeting jolt of meaning that art gives us valuable? Or is the only value in passing the time as comfortable as possible? What should a story seek to emulate, Augustus? A ringing alarm? A call to arms? A morphine drip? Of course, like all interrogation of the universe, this line of inquiry inevitably reduces us to asking what it means to be human and whether—to borrow a phrase from the angst-encumbered sixteeen-year-olds you no doubt revile—there is a point to it all.
I was born into Bolívar's labyrinth, and so I must believe in the hope of Rabelais' Great Perhaps.
The world may be broken, but hope is not crazy.
I hate the idea that, when it comes to books and learning, hard is often seen as the opposite of fun. It's strange to me that we should be so quick to give up on a book or a math problem when we are so willing to grapple, for centuries if necessary, with a single level of Angry Birds.
No, I don’t think you’re gonna be single forever, and also I don’t understand your obsession with romantic love. There are other ways to have fulfilling relationships that can sustain you and make your life great and fun other than having a sexualized relationship. It’s not the only kind of fulfilling human interaction. So, even if you are single forever, that doesn’t mean that you’ve had some kind of failed life.
Adult librarians are like lazy bakers: their patrons want a jelly doughnut, so they give them a jelly doughnut. Children’s librarians are ambitious bakers: 'You like the jelly doughnut? I’ll get you a jelly doughnut. But you should try my cruller, too. My cruller is gonna blow your mind, kid.
Harry Potter isn’t real? Oh no! Wait, wait, what do you mean by real? Is this video blog real? Am I real if you can see me and hear me, but only through the internet? Are you real if I can read your comment but I don’t know who you are or what your name is or where you’re from or what you look like or how old you are? I know all of those things about Harry Potter. Maybe Harry Potter’s real and you’re not.
We’re as likely to hurt the universe as we are to help it, and we’re not likely to do either.
You have a choice in this world, I believe, about how to tell sad stories, and we made the funny choice.
Writing is something you do alone. It's a profession for introverts who wanna tell you a story but don't wanna make eye contact while telling it
Almost everyone is obsessed with leaving a mark upon the world. Bequeathing a legacy. Outlasting death. We all want to be remembered. I do, too. That’s what bothers me most, is being another unremembered casualty in the ancient and inglorious war against disease.
I feel like my life is so scattered right now. Like it's all the small pieces of paper and someone's turned on the fan. But, talking to you makes me feel like the fan's been turned off for a little bit. Like things could actually make sense. You completely unscatter me, and I appreciate that so much.
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, we'd learned, and that the cessation of desire meant the cessation of suffering. When you stopped wishing things wouldn't fall apart, you'd stop suffering when they did.
Maybe our favorite quotations say more about us than about the stories and people we're quoting.
It is very sad to me that some people are so intent on leaving their mark on the world that they don’t care if that mark is a scar.
Did I help you to a fate you didn't want?
You are helpful, and you are loved, and you are forgiven, and you are not alone.
I'm not saying that everything is survivable. Just that everything except the last thing is.
The book was turned to the page with Anne Frank's name, but what got me about it was the fact that right beneath her name there were four Aron Franks. FOUR. Four Aron Franks without museums, without historical markers, without anyone to mourn them. I silently resolved to remember and pray for the four Aron Franks as long as I was around.
It always shocked me when I realized that I wasn’t the only person in the world who thought and felt such strange and awful things.
