I don't know where people got the idea that characters in books are supposed to be likable. Books are not in the business of creating merely likeable characters with whom you can have some simple identification with. Books are in the business of creating great stories that make you're brain go ahhbdgbdmerhbergurhbudgerbudbaaarr.
John Green
Related Some characters touch your heart, then tear it apart. DASHA LEVITSKY Most of the books that feature supernatural characters blending with the modern world and are usuall... CHARLAINE HARRIS My goal is to write books that are quality books with very real characters and a gripping plot. JOHN SEARLES ...her dearest friends are characters in books. SARAH J. MAAS All the characters in my books are imagined, but all have a bit of who I am in them - much like the ... ALICE HOFFMAN A couple of customers interrupted [...] who wanted to know if we had some YA book about ants and ali... SHAUN DAVID HUTCHINSON Sometimes, you read a book and it fills you with this weird evangelical zeal, and you become convinc... JOHN GREEN Books say: She did this because. Life says: She did this. Books are where things are explained to yo... JULIAN BARNES Sauces or peppers that arent hot, are like books that dont entretain (or vice versa). JAIME TENORIO VALENZUELA I started as a playwright. Any sort of scriptwriting you do helps you hone your story. You have the ... SUZANNE COLLINS To some of them it had just been work, ... But some got caught up in the romance of creating comic b... MICHAEL CHABON The business model - where books can be returned, and where a 50% sell-through is considered accepta... J. A. KONRATH Most of these wild animals depart in autumn when the sun changes their behavior and they feel the ur... JEAN CRAIGHEAD GEORGE Early in 1967 Highsmith's agent told her why her books did not sell in paperback in America. It was,... ANDREW WILSON Electronic books are ideal for people who value the information contained in them, or who have visio... JOE QUEENAN You are the same today that you are going to be in five years from now except for two things: the pe... CHARLES JONES I am not in the business of suppressing books. SALMAN RUSHDIE We are the people of the book. We love our books. We fill our houses with books. We treasure books w... CORY DOCTOROW Take me to the height where success would seek my help to succeed! I ARE They will be given as gifts; books that are especially pretty or visual will be bought as hard copie... SUSAN ORLEAN We're lucky enough, especially in these 'Madagascar' films, to be working with some of t... ERIC DARNELL Sometimes I reread my favorite books from back to front. I start with the last chapter and read back... NICOLA YOON The best characters in books are always the difficult ones, and why would you want to fall in love w... PATRICK NESS I wish - I wish instead of just recommending these books, I could set them down at your doorstep. Th... ALAN CHEUSE I have a feeling that books are a lot like people - they change as you age, so that some books that ... LAUREN GROFF I believe in books. I believe more in 'cross-media' - how characters are adapting across med... BING GORDON But some characters in books are really real--Jane Austen's are; and I know those five Bennets at th... DODIE SMITH People do tell a writer things that they don't tell others. I don't know why, unless it is that havi... W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM If some books are deemed most baneful and their sale forbid, how, then, with deadlier facts, not dre... HERMAN MELVILLE I have always been drawn to coming-of-age stories and books and movies featuring compelling young ch... EMILY GIFFIN Books say: She did this because. Life says: She did this. Books are where things are explained to yo... JULIAN BARNES There are always messages, even enigmas to be searched, mysteries to be solved in all of my books. I... ANA CLAUDIA ANTUNES What I always studied in screenwriting from my mentor John Glavin was that the most interesting char... MIKE BIRBIGLIA Food Allergies Are Not Due to Food, Rather Are Due to the Constant Contamination of That Food That Y... THEHEALTHFOODGURU I want to see children curled up with books, finding an awareness of themselves as they discover oth... PATRICIA REILLY GIFF I dont write books so that you can be fascinated with me. I write them so you can be fascinated with... STEVE MARABOLI What I've always tried to find in my books are points at which the private lives of the characte... SALMAN RUSHDIE Fahrenheit 451 is one of those books that is about how amazing books are and how amazing the people ... JOSH LIEB Old books, you know well, are books of the world's youth, and new books are the fruits of its age. OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES In the books, I meet characters which I really like and I think that they are like me... but so far ... DEYTH BANGER Books can not be killed by fire. People die, but books never die. No man and no force can abolish me... FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT I love thinking of movie stars who could play the characters in the books I write. KATHRYN LASKY Many good sayings are to be found in holy books, but merely reading them will not make one religious... RAMAKRISHNA My books always focus on the response of the characters to extreme events. As dark as they get, they... DARREN SHAN I think much has been made of this alter ego business. I mean, I actually stopped creating character... DAVID BOWIE For anyone who's read the books, it will be really fun to see the characters come alive. We believe ... GEORGE NELSON Few pleasures, for the true reader, rival the pleasure of browsing unhurriedly among books: old book... AIDAN CHAMBERS You have to go into this with the idea of creating a comprehensive plan that will fulfill what peopl... DAVID JORDAN My writing books with positive gay characters has come more out of anger than anything else: anger a... NANCY GARDEN I most likely like books which are out of my language... English... for example is a great example -... DEYTH BANGER Books are something which by the words breaths when you stop writing it stops it's own proccess = br... DEYTH BANGER The characters that populate my books are global nomads in their own right, keeping multiple homes a... KEVIN KWAN I understood, through rehab, things about creating characters. I understood that creating whole peop... SAMUEL L. JACKSON Dialogue is the place that books are most alive and forge the most direct connection with readers. I... LAINI TAYLOR If you have carefully examined hundred people you met in your life journey, it means that you have r... MEHMET MURAT ILDAN The myth that your waiter in New York is an actor is true. It's a very difficult, competitive busine... CAROL GOODHEART All of our books have to qualify under the vision of creating a world that works for all. JEEVAN SIVASUBRAMANIAM There are enough books in the world. You want to write the ones that are good. The minute you write ... MICHAEL LEWIS I don't believe that there are dangerous writers: the danger of certain books is not in the books th... OCTAVIO PAZ So, tomorrow, I'm leaving. And I'm not going to let that happen again with anyone else. I'm going to... STEPHEN CHBOSKY It's a funny show. The characters are surprisingly likable, given how ugly they are. We've g... MATT GROENING To whom do books belong? The books we read and the books we write are both ours and not ours. They'r... PAMELA PAUL He would talk to them of stories and books, and explain to them how stories wanted to be told and bo... JOHN CONNOLLY Why books...audiobooks... stories are created?...Films and Games!? - The answer, is very ... DEYTH BANGER People start panicking because they think it's the end of everything. But the fact is, you know,... JOHN SCALZI The Brahmins say that in their books there are many predictions of times in which it will rain. But ... LEO TOLSTOY Everyone always talks about the magic of books being able to take you to other places, to let you se... BRANDON SANDERSON The books we think we ought to read are poky, dull, and dry; The books that we would like to read we... CAROLYN WELLS I feel that the care of libraries and the use of books, and the knowledge of books, is a tremendousl... ELEANOR ROOSEVELT I feel that the care of libraries and the use of books, and the knowledge of books, is a tremendousl... ELEANOR ROOSEVELT Never lend books, for no one ever returns them; the only books I have in my library are books that o... ANATOLE FRANCE When you're writing a book, with people in it as opposed to animals, it is no good having people... ROALD DAHL Sections in the bookstore - Books You Haven't Read - Books You Needn't Read - B... ITALO CALVINO People wonder why the novel is the most popular form of literature; people wonder why it is read mor... G.K. CHESTERTON [I]t is a way to break up this monopoly that has gone on where brokers are made overnight by inherit... LINDA FRIEDMAN Through books we can time travel, play make-believe and even create our own intangible art using the... THE MODERN BOWERBIRD: TALES OF A BOOKSHELF Creating authentic emotional experiences, whether it's 'Star Wars' or 'Spotlight,... KATHLEEN KENNEDY I do want to play characters that have redeeming qualities, that are likable, for sure, and I have i... PABLO SCHREIBER Never lend books, for no one ever returns them; the only books I have in my library are books that o... ANATOLE FRANCE Never lend books, for no one ever returns them; the only books I have in my library are books that o... ANATOLE FRANCE There are already a lot of regulations in the books that I think are already pretty good. I don't th... JACK DONOVAN I get very tired of books that feel emotionally empty. I would much rather have writers err on the s... ALEXI ZENTNER Though my books are written from a historical perspective, I have goon so far back that I am in the ... JEAN M. AUEL Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested: that is... SIR FRANCIS BACON We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library
filled with books in many differen... UNKNOWN Books change us. Books save us. I know this because it happened to me. Books saved me. So, I do beli... ELIF SAFAK I've definitely been asked about some of the characters. These characters are composites. In general... DAVE GARDNER In the shop window you have promptly identified the cover with the title you were looking for. Follo... ITALO CALVINO Education is not confined to books, and the finest characters often graduate from no college, but ma... LOUISA MAY ALCOTT Books are lighthouses erected in the great sea of time. EDWIN P. WHIPPLE Books are lighthouses erected in the great sea of time EDWIN P. WHIPPLE The environmental movement and the prize winners are becoming more sophisticated. It's not just abou... LORRAE ROMINGER where there are books, there will always be haters of books alongside the lovers of them. JOHN CONNOLLY Dive into the river of the present, but don't thrash about, go with the flow. JIM GENOVESE Books are everywhere; and always the same sense of adventure fills us. Second-hand books are wild bo... VIRGINIA WOOLF I think the only safe medium are books, because people like to hold books in their hand. H. G. BISSINGER The holy books of all religions are powerful books,not because they are religious books,but because ... DAVID ATTA (A.K.A DAVIED ATTLARS & MR DAIN) The books we think we ought to read are poky, dull, and dry; The books that we would like to read... CAROLYN WELLS All good books are different but all bad books are exactly the same. I know this to be a fact becaus... ROBERT HARRIS The go-to reflex all over Hollywood is still likeability. I've always had a problem with it beca... DAMIEN CHAZELLE
More John Green
Words are not static.Language shape our memories, and it is also shaped by our memories. JOHN GREEN The thing about chameleoning your way through life is that it gets to where nothing is real. JOHN GREEN That smile could end wars and cure cancer. JOHN GREEN You don't remember what happened. What you remember becomes what happened. JOHN GREEN Well, while you were in the bathroom, I sat down at this picnic table here in Bumblefug, Kentucky, a... JOHN GREEN you can never love someone as much as you miss them. JOHN GREEN There's some people in this world who you can just love and love and love no matter what. JOHN GREEN He liked the mere act of reading, the magic of turning scratches on a page into words inside his hea... JOHN GREEN Here's to all the places we went. And all the places we'll go. And here's to me, whispering again an... JOHN GREEN I think it's crazy, crazy that book tours lose so much money. They shouldn't. Book tours sho... JOHN GREEN I realize that humans lack good mirrors. It’s so hard for anyone to show us how we look, and so ha... JOHN GREEN True love will triumph in the end—which may or may not be a lie, but if it is a lie, it's the most... JOHN GREEN I'm sitting her thinking, -God, I swear I will take a vow of silence and move to a monastery and wor... JOHN GREEN Headline?" he asked. "'Swing Set Needs Home,'" I said. "'Desperately Lonely Swing Set Need... JOHN GREEN He called out to his fellow monks,'Come quickly I am tasting stars. JOHN GREEN Is it still cool to go to the mall?' she asked. 'I take quite a lot of pride in not knowing what's c... JOHN GREEN Van Houten, I’m a good person but a shitty writer. You’re a shitty person but a good writer... JOHN GREEN Do you have a Wish?' he asked, referring to this organization, The Genie Foundation, which is in the... JOHN GREEN Sometimes people don’t understand the promises they’re making when they make them,” I sai... JOHN GREEN I'm on a roller coaster that only goes up," he said. "And it is my privilege and my resp... JOHN GREEN You don't get to choose if you get hurt in this world, old man, but you do have some say in who hurt... JOHN GREEN Tell me my copy is missing the last twenty pages or something. Hazel Grace, tell me I hav... JOHN GREEN What else? She is so beautiful. You don’t get tired of looking at her. You never worry if she is s... JOHN GREEN I'm starting to think you have an amputee fetish" he answered, still kissing me. I laughed. "I... JOHN GREEN I have an Augustus Waters fetish," I explained. JOHN GREEN Finally, I decided that the proper strategy was to stare back. Boys do not have a monopoly on the St... JOHN GREEN Sure, anyone can name fourteen dead people. But we're disorganized mourners, so a lot of people end ... JOHN GREEN Lonley, Vaguely pedophilic swing set seeks the butts of children. JOHN GREEN There are infinite numbers between 0 and 1. There's .1 and .12 and .112 and an infinite collection o... JOHN GREEN He’s not that smart.” “She’s right,” Augustus says. “It’s just that most re... JOHN GREEN All at once, I couldn’t figure out why I was methodically tossing a spherical object through a tor... JOHN GREEN A day after I got my eye cut out, Gus showed up at the hospital. I was blind and heart-broken and di... JOHN GREEN I enjoy looking at beautiful people, and I decided a while ago not to deny myself the simpler pleasu... JOHN GREEN Support Group featured a rotating cast of characters in various states of tumor-driven unwellness. W... JOHN GREEN Maybe 'Okay' will be our 'always'... JOHN GREEN I was a bit of a Victorian Lady, fainting-wise. JOHN GREEN While I did not fancy myself a particularly good person, I never thought my first real sexual action... JOHN GREEN the world wasn't made for us, we were made for the world JOHN GREEN Mom sobbed something into Dad's chest that I wish I hadn't heard, and that I hope she never finds ou... JOHN GREEN I fell in love like you would fall asleep: slowly and then all at once. JOHN GREEN I missed the future. Obviously I knew even before his recurrence that I'd never grow old with August... JOHN GREEN Come over here so I can examine your face with my hands and see deeper into your soul than a sighted... JOHN GREEN Gus: "It tastes like..." Me: "Food." Gus: "Yes, precisely. It tastes like food, excellentl... JOHN GREEN But it is the nature of stars to cross, and never was Shakespeare more wrong than when he has Cassiu... JOHN GREEN I imagined the Augustus Waters analysis of that comment: If I am playing basketball in heaven, does ... JOHN GREEN I love you present tense. JOHN GREEN She loved mysteries so much, that she became one. JOHN GREEN It's just that I learned a while ago that the best way to get people to like you is not to like them... JOHN GREEN There was time before organisms experienced consciousness, and there will be time after. And if the ... JOHN GREEN As the tide washed in, the Dutch Tulip Man faced the Ocean: "Conjoiner rejoinder poisoner conce... JOHN GREEN And then the line was quite but not dead. I almost felt like he was there in my room with me, but in... JOHN GREEN All salvation is temporary," Augustus shot back. "I bought them a minute. Maybe that's the minute th... JOHN GREEN There were five others before they got to him. He smiled a little when his turn came. His voice was ... JOHN GREEN I know so many last words. But I will never know hers. JOHN GREEN And I wanted to tell her that the pleasure for me wasn't planning or doing or leaving; the pleasure ... JOHN GREEN Thank you for explaining that my eye cancer isn't going to make me deaf. I feel so fortunate that an... JOHN GREEN That's why I like you. Do you realize how rare it is to come across a hot girl who creates a adjecti... JOHN GREEN I’m in love with you, and I know that love is just a shout into the void, and that oblivion is ine... JOHN GREEN I wanted to know that he would be okay if I died. I wanted to not be a grenade, to not be a malevole... JOHN GREEN Before I got here, I thought for a long time that the way out of the labyrinth was to pretend that i... JOHN GREEN If people could see me the way I see myself - if they could live in my memories - would anyone love ... JOHN GREEN We’re as likely to hurt the universe as we are to help it, and we’re not likely to do either. JOHN GREEN I told Augustus the broad outline of my miracle: diagnosed with Stage IV thyroid cancer when I was t... JOHN GREEN there is no shortage of fault to be found amid our stars JOHN GREEN I dislike the phrase 'Internet friends,' because it implies that people you know online aren't reall... JOHN GREEN I wish I knew how to quit you, Tumblr. JOHN GREEN Just move to the Internet, its great here. We get to live inside where the weather is always awesome... JOHN GREEN Oh, Wikipedia, with your tension between those who would share knowledge and those who would destroy... JOHN GREEN It's not because I want to make out with her." Hold on." He grabbed a pencil and scrawled excit... JOHN GREEN I'm in love with you, and I'm not in the business of denying myself the simple pleasure of saying tr... JOHN GREEN They love their hair because they're not smart enough to love something more interesting. JOHN GREEN Principled hate is a hell of a lot stronger than "Boy, I wish you hadn't mummified me and thrown me ... JOHN GREEN Some people don't understand the promises they're making when they make them," I said. "R... JOHN GREEN So I walked back to my room and collapsed on the bottom bunk, thinking that if people were rain, I w... JOHN GREEN Thomas Edison's last words were "It's very beautiful over there ". I don't know where there is... JOHN GREEN Oh, I wouldn't mind, Hazel Grace. It would be a privilege to have my heart broken by you. JOHN GREEN When adults say, "Teenagers think they are invincible" with that sly, stupid smile on their faces, t... JOHN GREEN What a slut time is. She screws everybody. JOHN GREEN The only way out of the labyrinth of suffering is to forgive. JOHN GREEN Saying 'I notice you're a nerd' is like saying, 'Hey, I notice that you'd rather be intelligent than... JOHN GREEN You don't get to choose if you get hurt in this world...but you do have some say in who hurts you. I... JOHN GREEN Some people have lives; some people have music. JOHN GREEN You do not immortalize the lost by writing about them. Language buries, but does not resurrect. JOHN GREEN As Alaska zipped through something obvious about linear equations, stoner/baller Hank Walsten said, ... JOHN GREEN Books are the ultimate Dumpees: put them down and they’ll wait for you forever; pay attention to t... JOHN GREEN Sometimes, you read a book and it fills you with this weird evangelical zeal, and you become convinc... JOHN GREEN Some infinities are bigger than other infinities... JOHN GREEN It seemed like forever ago, like we've had this brief but still infinite forever. Some infinities ar... JOHN GREEN There are infinite numbers between 0 and 1. There's .1 and .12 and .112 and an infinite collection o... JOHN GREEN Some infinities are bigger than other infinities. JOHN GREEN What you must understand about me is that I’m a deeply unhappy person. JOHN GREEN Without pain, how could we know joy?' This is an old argument in the field of thinking about sufferi... JOHN GREEN You could hold me and I could hold you. And it would be so peaceful. Completely peaceful. Like the f... JOHN GREEN That's always seemed so ridiculous to me, that people want to be around someone because they're pret... JOHN GREEN The pleasure of remembering had been taken from me, because there was no longer anyone to remember w... JOHN GREEN Apparently, the world is not a wish-granting factory. JOHN GREEN Augustus," I said. "Really. You don't have to do this." "Sure I do," he said. "I found my Wish.... JOHN GREEN Peeing is like a good book in that it is very, very hard to stop once you start. JOHN GREEN You are so busy being YOU that you have no idea how utterly unprecedented you are. JOHN GREEN We are all going, I thought, and it applies to turtles and turtlenecks, Alaska the girl and Alaska t... JOHN GREEN Harry Potter isn’t real? Oh no! Wait, wait, what do you mean by real? Is this video blog real? Am ... JOHN GREEN The marks humans leave are too often scars. JOHN GREEN As he read, I fell in love the way you fall asleep: slowly, and then all at once. JOHN GREEN Much of my life had been devoted to trying not to cry in front of people who loved me, so I knew wha... JOHN GREEN It's just that most really good-looking people are stupid, so I exceed expectations.' 'Right, i... JOHN GREEN Sometimes, you read a book and it fills you with this weird evangelical zeal, and you become convinc... JOHN GREEN Because you are beautiful. I enjoy looking at beautiful people, and I decided a while ago not to den... JOHN GREEN I'm a grenade and at some point I'm going to blow up and I would like to minimize the casualties, ok... JOHN GREEN You realize that trying to keep your distance from me will not lessen my affection for you. All effo... JOHN GREEN That’s part of what I like about the book in some ways. It portrays death truthfully. You die in t... JOHN GREEN I believe the universe wants to be noticed. I think the universe is inprobably biased toward the con... JOHN GREEN Maybe 'okay' will be our 'always JOHN GREEN It's a metaphor, see: You put the killing thing right between your teeth, but you don't give it the ... JOHN GREEN Some tourists think Amsterdam is a city of sin, but in truth it is a city of freedom. And in freedom... JOHN GREEN Books so special and rare and yours that advertising your affection feels like a betrayal. JOHN GREEN Augustus Waters was a self-aggrandizing bastard. But we forgive him. We forgive him not because he h... JOHN GREEN May I see you again?" he asked. There was an endearing nervousness in his voice. I smile... JOHN GREEN There will come a time when all of us are dead. All of us. There will come a time when there are no ... JOHN GREEN Grief does not change you, Hazel. It reveals you. JOHN GREEN The world is not a wish-granting factory. JOHN GREEN My thoughts are stars I cannot fathom into constellations. JOHN GREEN Everything that comes together falls apart. Everything. The chair I’m sitting on. It was built, an... JOHN GREEN Writing is something you do alone. Its a profession for introverts who want to tell you a story but ... JOHN GREEN You will not kill my girlfriend today, International Terrorists of Ambiguous Nationality! JOHN GREEN I mean, we're ninjas." "Well maybe you're a ninja," I said "You're just... JOHN GREEN The funny thing about writing is that whether you're doing well or doing it poorly, it looks the exa... JOHN GREEN There are times when it is appropriate, even preferable, to get an erection when someone's face is i... JOHN GREEN We were kissing. I thought: This is good. I thought: I am not bad at this kissing. Not bad... JOHN GREEN What the hell is that?" I laughed. "It's my fox hat." "Your fox hat?" "Yeah, Pudge. M... JOHN GREEN I wanted to be one of those people who have streaks to maintain, who scorch the ground with their in... JOHN GREEN Y'all smoke to enjoy it. I smoke to die. JOHN GREEN We need never be hopeless because we can never be irreperably broken. JOHN GREEN It's not life or death, the labyrinth. Suffering. Doing wrong and having wrong things happen to you.... JOHN GREEN Sometimes I don't get you,' I said. She didn't even glance at me. She just smiled toward the t... JOHN GREEN That didn’t happen, of course. Things never happened the way I imagined them. JOHN GREEN I found myself thinking about President William McKinley, the third American president to be assassi... JOHN GREEN I just did some calculations and I've been able to determine that you're full of shit. JOHN GREEN I am going to take this bucket of water and pour it on the flames of hell, and then I am going to us... JOHN GREEN Sometimes you lose a battle. But mischief always wins the war JOHN GREEN And then something invisible snapped insider her, and that which had come together commenced to fall... JOHN GREEN Have you really read all those books in your room?” Alaska laughing- “Oh God no. I’... JOHN GREEN He was gone, and I did not have time to tell him what I had just now realized: that I forgave him, a... JOHN GREEN Francois Rabelais. He was a poet. And his last words were "I go to seek a Great Perhaps." That's why... JOHN GREEN It always shocked me when I realized that I wasn’t the only person in the world who thought and fe... JOHN GREEN I may die young, but at least I'll die smart. JOHN GREEN What is an "instant" death anyway? How long is an instant? Is it one second? Ten? The pain of those ... JOHN GREEN I wanted so badly to lie down next to her on the couch, to wrap my arms around her and sleep. Not fu... JOHN GREEN When I look at my room, I see a girl who loves books. JOHN GREEN pg. 231-232: They'd given me a minivan. They could have picked any car and they picked a minivan. A ... JOHN GREEN Islam and Christianity promise eternal paradise to the faithful. And that is a powerful opiate, cert... JOHN GREEN I figured something out. The future is unpredictable. JOHN GREEN When things break, it's not the actual breaking that prevents them from getting back together again.... JOHN GREEN It is so hard to leave—until you leave. And then it is the easiest goddamned thing in the world. JOHN GREEN Imagining the future is a kind of nostalgia. (...) You spend your whole life stuck in the labyrinth,... JOHN GREEN [I]t occurred to me that the voracious ambition of humans is never sated by dreams coming true, beca... JOHN GREEN Nothing ever happens like you imagine it will… but then again, if you don’t imagine, nothing eve... JOHN GREEN What the hell is instant ? Nothing is instant. Instant rice takes five minutes, instant puddin... JOHN GREEN I'll fight it. I'll fight it for you. Don't you worry about me, Hazel Grace. I'm okay. I'll find a w... JOHN GREEN You spend your whole life stuck in the labyrinth, thinking about how you'll escape one day, and how ... JOHN GREEN You used," he said, and then took a sharp breath, "to call me Augustus. JOHN GREEN The way I figure it, everyone gets a miracle. Like, I will probably never be struck by lightening, o... JOHN GREEN It's hard to believe in coincidence, but it's even harder to believe in anything else. JOHN GREEN I'm in love with you," he said quietly. "Augustus," I said. "I am," he said. H... JOHN GREEN I looked over at Augustus Waters, who looked back at me. You could almost see through his eyes they ... JOHN GREEN And if the inevitability of human oblivion worries you, I encourage you to ignore it. JOHN GREEN -so if the inevitability of oblivion worries you, than I suggest you ignore it. God knows that's wha... JOHN GREEN Maybe our favorite quotations say more about us than about the stories and people we're quoting. JOHN GREEN You can love someone so much...But you can never love people as much as you can miss them. JOHN GREEN What is the point of being alive if you don't at least try to do something remarkable? JOHN GREEN Whenever you read a cancer booklet or website or whatever, they always list depression among the sid... JOHN GREEN What's that?" "The laundry basket?" "No, next to it." "I don't see anything next to i... JOHN GREEN Do the thing you're good at. Not many people are lucky enough to be so good at something. JOHN GREEN For a moment, she was quiet. Then she grabbed my hand, whispered, “Run run run run run,” and too... JOHN GREEN We don't tend to write about disease in fiction - not just teen novels but all American novels -... JOHN GREEN I know that books seem like the ultimate thing that's made by one person, but that's not tru... JOHN GREEN Chuck Parson did not participate in organized sports, because to do so would distract from his large... JOHN GREEN The thing about a spiral is, if you follow it inward, it never actually ends. It just keeps tighteni... JOHN GREEN Anybody can look at you. It's quite rare to find someone who sees the same world you see. JOHN GREEN You see how fake it all is. It's not even hard enough to be made out of plastic. It's a paper town. JOHN GREEN But there was so much todo: cigarettes to smoke, sex to have, swings to swing on. I'll have more tim... JOHN GREEN How wil we ever get out of this labyrinth of suffering? JOHN GREEN AHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!' he screamed. 'So that's Sara,' I said. 'Yes.' 'She seems nice. JOHN GREEN The pigs can't stop the fox; I'm too quick,' Takumi said to himself. "I can rhyme while I run; I'm t... JOHN GREEN I’m just scared of ghosts, Pudge. And home is full of them. JOHN GREEN You can't just make me different and then leave JOHN GREEN She has great breasts," the Colonel said without looking up from the whale. "DO NOT OBJECTIFY W... JOHN GREEN But why Alaska?' I asked her. 'Well, later, I found out what it means. It's from an Aleut... JOHN GREEN Right, well, he'd been sick for a while and his nurse said to him, 'You seem to be feeling better th... JOHN GREEN I'm really not up for answering any questions that start with how, when, where, why or what. JOHN GREEN You're funny, and you're smart, and you may show up late, but you always show up eventually. JOHN GREEN I have a great affection for people who are intellectually engaged with the world, and who don’t t... JOHN GREEN I've never known before what it feels like to want someone - not to want to hook up with them or wha... JOHN GREEN There's a stark difference between the words 'prodigy' and 'genius.' Prodigies can very quickly lear... JOHN GREEN Why is being a nerd bad? Saying I notice you’re a nerd is like saying, ‘Hey, I notice that you�... JOHN GREEN I wanted us to have an adventure. Because I love that crap. Because I'm not whatever-her-name-is. I ... JOHN GREEN If my public existence does anything worthwhile, hopefully it at least demystifies the author a bit,... JOHN GREEN If people were like rain, I was like drizzle and she was a hurricane. JOHN GREEN I do not say goodbye. I believe that's one of the bullshitiest words ever invented. It's not like yo... JOHN GREEN Do you know what your problem is? You can't live with the idea that someone might leave. JOHN GREEN Nothing ever happens like you imagine it will JOHN GREEN