There is a lot of talk in publishing these days that we need to become more like the Internet: We need to make books for short attention spans with bells and whistles - books, in short, that are as much like 'Angry Birds' as possible. But I think that's a terrible idea.
John Green
Related Attention spans are short. Like, eight seconds short. That's why it's necessary to grab peop... JOHN RAMPTON Teen problem novels? I can go through them like a box of chocolates. And there are fantasy books out... TAMORA PIERCE I respect country music because I feel like it's more about the talent and the songwriting and I... CARRIE UNDERWOOD But short films are not inferior, just different. I think the short gives a freedom to film-makers. ... JANE CAMPION It's possible there are no two books in publishing history more dissimilar than 'Human Trace... SEBASTIAN FAULKS In '77 there was no Internet, there was no Twitter or Facebook, and I think that, without being ... STEVE JONES We only need so much to survive, but this world we live in tells us we need more stuff to be happy. ... WAYNE DYER I like to read Bengali novels and short stories. I am not that fond of reading English books, as I d... ARIJIT SINGH There's a need for accepting responsibility - for a person's life and making choices that ar... BUZZ ALDRIN Dogs have such short life spans, it's like a concentrated version of a human life. When they get... CAROLINE KNAPP Fiction is able to encompass books that are bleak and which dwell on the manifold and terrible probl... ALEXANDER MCCALL SMITH I believe there's a lot of great marketers out there who know how to package things. Are these goodi... LAURIE BERGER A lot of writers, especially crime writers, have an image that we think we're trying to keep up ... IAN RANKIN There are two of my favorite books, 'The Great Gatsby' and 'Gone With The Wind', tha... TATIANA DE ROSNAY There's a lot of us out here that are birds, man. We all need to just fly. TRAVIS SCOTT I know there are a lot of musicians and a lot of artists, and there are a lot of writers and other p... JOHN F. KERRY Nobody sells books like J.K. Rowling. We have a rule in publishing: Never compare anything to 'H... CASSANDRA CLARE As a teenager I read a lot of books. Books with lots of scary trends, things like nuclear weapons an... JEFFREY SKOLL I want to see children curled up with books, finding an awareness of themselves as they discover oth... PATRICIA REILLY GIFF There's a lot of evidence that shows that if we push as hard as we need to for net-zero emission... ALEX STEFFEN I think 'Humans' is more about provoking the idea that there is a class of beings in society... GEMMA CHAN In many, many places audio books are still unexploited. In a lot of southern European countries, peo... BARRY CLARK In many, many places audio books are still unexploited, ... In a lot of southern European countries,... BARRY CLARK I think there was a sense that the impact was being lost because the audience was so familiar with t... JIM LAMPLEY 'Homeland' is necessarily open-ended since the idea behind television is to spend as much ti... STEVE ERICKSON But there's so much kludge, so much terrible stuff, we are at the 1908 Hurley washing machine st... JEFF BEZOS I want people to be drawn into the space of the work. And a lot of people are like me in that they h... BARBARA KRUGER I need to get better as a player, I need to get fitter, and I need to get better on the mental side.... MILOS RAONIC McSweeney's as a publishing company is built on a business model that only works when we sell ph... DAVE EGGERS We need to move into a culture of peace. What I hope to promote is the idea that we all need each ot... HERBIE HANCOCK I'm reading scripts just like everybody else. Tin cup in hand, knocking on doors, trying to get ... D. J. COTRONA War never accomplishes anything. It's never going to look good in the history books. People are ... ALAN MOORE Are you taking us to the beach?" - Dan Cahill JUDE WATSON It's almost like these games are the modern day comic books, especially when you play Alone in t... CHRISTIAN SLATER Early in my publishing career, someone told me I'd need to have five books in print before I cou... KATE KLISE There's an outline for each of the books that I adhere to pretty closely, but I'm not averse... JUSTIN CRONIN There are a lot of people who consider themselves 'spiritual,' but that can mean a lot of th... ZACHARY LEVI I think kids in every minority need to see people like themselves in books; that's an acknowledg... NANCY GARDEN But I quite like that the public has a very short attention span. If I haven't been on telly for... SOPHIE ELLIS-BEXTOR I write for young people because I like them and because I think they are important. Children's ... NANCY GARDEN When we think about online learning, it's such 'early days.' Bill Gates is a wildly smar... REED HASTINGS As long as they're making beloved books into movies, people are going to be like, 'That'... CASSANDRA CLARE Television and cable have become the new independent films, in a sense, for writers and actors to gr... CAMPBELL SCOTT I believe that there is a Matrix and... to be more accurate I am in the Pornography Matrix. DEYTH BANGER I'm very privy to the way bookstores work, and I think a lot about the ecosystem that my books h... GABRIELLE ZEVIN If people want bells and whistles and all of that, there are bells and whistles available. If they d... JIM LEHRER There's bleeding between age groups in terms of reading material, and there's bleeding betwe... GENE LUEN YANG I've read short stories that are as dense as a 19th century novel and novels that really are sho... LYNN ABBEY I don't think we should see the world of books as fundamentally separate from the world of the I... JOHN GREEN I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound or stab us. If the book we're reading doe... FRANZ KAFKA I really like the short stories that Melissa Bank writes. I think she's sort of channeling the f... WHIT STILLMAN If they are any discrepancies, we want to make sure that if there are individuals in need that we su... DERRICK JOHNSON The futures of Crackle and Hulu and so forth become more and more important as we connect to more an... HOWARD STRINGER We need art as much as we need good works. You need it like food. You need it for inspiration, to ke... MERYL STREEP Of the female black authors, I really like Morrison's early books a lot. But she's really be... LESLIE FIEDLER I've never owned a T-shirt. I don't like vests or sweaters or cardies with zips. I like a pr... HOWARD JACOBSON Students do everything on laptops these days, so I definitely think electronic books are a trend tha... STEVEN PINKER It looks ancient," - Amy Cahill JUDE WATSON We have all learned that addiction and mental illnesses are illnesses, and I think a lot of people o... POPPY DELEVINGNE I never made beats to make beats; I only made them when there was a record to make them for. That... RICK RUBIN I think rap music is rap music. I mean, are there heavy writing aspects of it? Absolutely. In a sens... EARL SWEATSHIRT Virgin Books will be publishing an autobiography. But it is relatively early days. We still need to ... WILL WHITEHORN I don't travel and tell stories, because that's not the way these days. But I write my books... LOUIS L'AMOUR I have a feeling that books are a lot like people - they change as you age, so that some books that ... LAUREN GROFF Carnegie Hall is as good as they say it is. It's not like Stonehenge which looks great in books ... BILL BURR We need to find ways to elevate the expectations, particularly of those individuals who may start of... BEN CARSON Lots of kids, including my son, have trouble making the leap from reading words or a few sentences i... RHEA PERLMAN When Americans think of college these days, the first word that often comes to mind is 'debt.... JAMES SUROWIECKI There are days when I'm completely obsessed with Kate Bush, and there are days when I'm comp... CYNTHIA ERIVO The publishing industry has always wanted to make books as cheaply and as ephemerally as they could;... BEN KATCHOR I steer clear of books with ugly covers. And ones that are touted as 'sweeping,'_ 'tende... RACHEL KUSHNER It's funny: when people always talk about the importance of role models, I used to think that wa... DEMETRI MARTIN The dominant theory coming out of Hollywood is that peoples' attention spans are getting shorter... BRIAN ENO I think the idea that life ends when we physically die is as painful as the idea in Cromwell's t... MARK RYLANCE I mean, first, almost all writers these days teach because they don't make enough money publishi... CHAD HARBACH People's attention spans don't run too long these days. DARON MALAKIAN The short story is still like the novel's wayward younger brother, we know that it's not res... NEIL GAIMAN When they make a woman's picture, they treat it like a 'woman's picture.' In the ... ELLEN BARKIN I will tell you this: I have fun, a lot of fun with 'The Apprentice.' When I did the books -... DONALD TRUMP We can get carried away with our heads in books, and although there's so much to be learned from... ROSE MCIVER You initially become funny as a kid because you're looking for attention and love. Psychologists... ERIC IDLE When you learn about stories in school, you get it backward. You start to think 'Oh, the reason ... LYNDA BARRY There is the myth that writing books for children is easier than writing books for grownups, whereas... MICHAEL MORPURGO In this fragmented world, with such short attention spans, you've got a couple of episodes to ma... DAVID WALTON As a Jew, there's a need to keep that atrocity alive. There were Catholics and gypsies and homos... MARTIN LANDAU There is such a very large quantity of books clamouring for a buyer's attention that publishers ... SONNY MEHTA I feel like there's so much darkness in all of my books. RACHEL COHN It's true, too, that I'm tired of using books as political bullets and grenades. Books are t... YANN MARTEL The books we need are of the kind that act upon us like a misfortune,that makes us suffer like the d... FRANZ KAFKA I think about death a lot, like I think we all do. I don't think of suicide as an option, but as... RYAN GOSLING We talk a lot about infrastructure in cities, and it's talking about highways and it's talki... KATHERINE BOO There are so many books I love for different reasons. For superhero stuff, I always go back to Alan ... JEFF LEMIRE I've written a lot of really good books. Now we'll see if I can write any more good books. I... WALTER MOSLEY To me a real patriot is like a real friend. Who's your real friend? It's the person who tell... BILL MAHER It's different in Scotland. People who come to readings are more interested in literature as suc... IRVINE WELSH 'Chronicle 2' has become this question of, 'How do we all make a movie that we all respe... MAX LANDIS The days of our lives, for all of us, are numbered. We know that. And yes, there are certainly times... ELIZABETH EDWARDS I think it's always a good idea to dress as someone you like, as long as it's done in good t... UZO ADUBA To make a long story short, there's nothing like having a boss walk in. DORIS LILLY There's no question that a great teacher can make a huge difference in a student's achieveme... THOMAS FRIEDMAN
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