John Green Quotes (103 quotes) | Quotes of famous people

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The Fault in Our Stars

John Green

John Green: 103 quotes 11 likes

Famous John Green Quotes

“I’m a good person but a shitty writer. You’re a shitty person but a good writer. We’d make a good team. I don’t want to ask you any favors, but if you have time – and from what I saw, you have plenty – I was wondering if you could write a eulogy for Hazel. I’ve got notes and everything, but if you could just make it into a coherent whole or whatever? Or even just tell me what I should say differently. Here’s the thing about Hazel: 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 want to leave a mark. But Van Houten: The marks humans leave are too often scars. You build a hideous minimall or start a coup or try to become a rock star and you think, “They’ll remember me now,” but (a) they don’t remember you, and (b) all you leave behind are more scars. Your coup becomes a dictatorship. Your minimall becomes a lesion. (Okay, maybe I’m not such a shitty writer. But I can’t pull my ideas together, Van Houten. My thoughts are stars I can’t fathom into constellations.) We are like a bunch of dogs squirting on fire hydrants. We poison the groundwater with our toxic piss, marking everything MINE in a ridiculous attempt to survive our deaths. I can’t stop pissing on fire hydrants. I know it’s silly and useless – epically useless in my current state – but I am an animal like any other. Hazel is different. She walks lightly, old man. She walks lightly upon the earth. Hazel knows the truth: We’re as likely to hurt the universe as we are to help it, and we’re not likely to do either. People will say it’s sad that she leaves a lesser scar, that fewer remember her, that she was loved deeply but not widely. But it’s not sad, Van Houten. It’s triumphant. It’s heroic. Isn’t that the real heroism? Like the doctors say: First, do no harm. The real heroes anyway aren’t the people doing things; the real heroes are the people NOTICING things, paying attention. The guy who invented the smallpox vaccine didn’t actually invent anything. He just noticed that people with cowpox didn’t get smallpox. After my PET scan lit up, I snuck into the ICU and saw her while she was unconscious. I just walked in behind a nurse with a badge and I got to sit next to her for like ten minutes before I got caught. I really thought she was going to die, too. It was brutal: the incessant mechanized haranguing of intensive care. 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 almost blue color, 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. A nurse guy came in and told me I had to leave, that visitors weren’t allowed, and I asked if she was doing okay, and the guy said, “She’s still taking on water.””

John Green book The Fault in Our Stars

A desert blessing, an ocean curse. What else? She is so beautiful. You don’t get tired of looking at her. You never worry if she is smarter than you: You know she is. She is funny without ever being mean. I love her. I am so lucky to love her, Van Houten. You don’t get to choose if you get hurt in this world, old man, but you do have some say in who hurts you. I like my choices. I hope she likes hers."
Augustus "Gus" Waters, p. 310-313
The Fault in Our Stars (2012)

“Being in a relationship, that's something you choose. Being friends, that's just something you are.”

John Green book Will Grayson, Will Grayson

Will Grayson, p. 260
Will Grayson, Will Grayson (2010)

“I wanted so badly to lie down next to her on the couch, to wrap my arms around her and sleep. Not fuck, like in those movies. Not even have sex. 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 hopelessly 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.”

John Green book Looking for Alaska

Miles "Pudge" Halter about Alaska Young, p. 88
Looking for Alaska (2005)

“I would always love Alaska Young, my crooked neighbor, with all my crooked heart.”

John Green book Looking for Alaska

Miles "Pudge" Halter, p. 218
Looking for Alaska (2005)

“The moment Colin sat down, Hollis asked Hassan, "Would you like to say grace?"
"Sure thing." Hassan cleared his throat. "Bismallah." Then he picked up his fork.
"That's it?" Hollis wondered.
"That's it. We are a terse people. Terse, and also hungry."”

John Green book An Abundance of Katherines

Hollis Wells and Hassan Harbish, p. 62
An Abundance of Katherines (2006)

“When I was little, my dad used to tell me, "Will, you can pick your friends, and you can pick your nose, but you can't pick your friend's nose."”

John Green book Will Grayson, Will Grayson

Will Grayson, p. 1 (opening words)
Will Grayson, Will Grayson (2010)

John Green Quotes about people

“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're trying to listen to.”

John Green book Paper Towns

Quentin "Q" Jacobsen, p. 216
Paper Towns (2008)

“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.”

John Green book Will Grayson, Will Grayson

Will Grayson, p. 277
Will Grayson, Will Grayson (2010)

“People just liked Hassan, the way people like fast food and celebrities.”

John Green book An Abundance of Katherines

Colin Singleton, p. 62
An Abundance of Katherines (2006)

“Here's what's not beautiful about it: from here, you can't see the rust or the cracked paint or whatever, but you can tell what the place really is. You see how fake it all is. It's not even hard enough to be made out of plastic. It's a paper town. I mean look at it, Q: look at all those cul-de-sacs, those streets that turn in on themselves, all the houses that were built to fall apart. All those paper people living in their paper houses, burning the future to stay warm. All the paper kids drinking beer some bum bought for them at the paper convenience store. Everyone demented with the mania of owning things. All the things paper-thin and paper-frail. And all the people, too. I've lived here for eighteen years and I have never once in my life come across anyone who cares about anything that matters.”

John Green book Paper Towns

Margo Roth Spiegelman, pp. 57-58
Paper Towns (2008)

“You can say a lot of things about Alabama, but you can't say that Alabamans as a people are unduly afraid of deep fryers.”

John Green book Looking for Alaska

Miles "Pudge" Halter, p. 22
Looking for Alaska (2005)

“The Venn Diagram of guys who don't like smart girls and guys you don't want to date is a circle.”

John Green

Love and Romance Questions Answered http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3y49IXavVDE
YouTube

John Green Quotes about the world

“It is so hard to leave—until you leave. And then it is the easiest goddamned thing in the world.”

John Green book Paper Towns

Quentin "Q" Jacobsen, p. 229
Paper Towns (2008)

“[M]aybe the strings break, or maybe our ships sink, or maybe we're grass—our roots so interdependent that no one is dead as long as someone is still alive. We don't suffer from a shortage of metaphors, is what I mean. But you have to be careful which metaphor you choose, because it matters. If you choose the strings, then you're imagining a world in which you can become irreparably broken. If you choose the grass, you're saying that we are all infinitely interconnected, that we can use these root systems not only to understand one another but to become one another. The metaphors have implications.”

John Green book Paper Towns

Quentin "Q" Jacobsen, p. 301
Paper Towns (2008)

“Is the labyrinth living or dying? Which is he trying to escape—the world or the end of it?”

John Green book Looking for Alaska

Alaska Young, p. 19
Looking for Alaska (2005)

“Tiny Cooper is not the world's gayest person, and he is not the world's largest person, but I believe he may be the world's largest person who is really, really gay, and also the world's gayest person who is really, really large.”

John Green book Will Grayson, Will Grayson

Will Grayson, p. 3
Will Grayson, Will Grayson (2010)

“It is easy to forget how full the world is of people, full to bursting, and each of them imaginable and consistently misimagined.”

John Green book Paper Towns

Quentin "Q" Jacobsen, p. 257
Paper Towns (2008)

“The test will measure whether you are an informed, engaged and productive citizen of the world, and it will take place in schools and bars and hospitals and dorm-rooms and in places of worship. You will be tested on first dates, in job interviews, while watching football and while scrolling through your Twitter feed. The test will judge your ability to think about things other than celebrity marriages, whether you'll be easily persuaded by empty political rhetoric and whether you'll be able to place your life and your community in a broader context. The test will last your entire life, and it will be comprised of the millions of decisions that, when taken together, make your life yours. And everything - everything - will be on it.”

John Green

Introduction to Crash Course World History https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yocja_N5s1I&list=PLBDA2E52FB1EF80C9
YouTube

John Green: Trending quotes

“You don't get to choose if you get hurt in this world… but you do have a say in who hurts you.”

John Green book The Fault in Our Stars

Source: The Fault in Our Stars

“As he read, I fell in love the way you fall asleep; Slowly, and then all at once.”

John Green book The Fault in Our Stars

Hazel Grace Lancaster, p. 125
Compare Ernest Hemingway, speaking about the process of going bankrupt: "'Gradually and then suddenly.'"
The Fault in Our Stars (2012)

love , Cute , Romantic , Anniversary

“That's the thing about pain," Augustus said, and then glanced back at me. "It demands to be felt.”

John Green book The Fault in Our Stars

Augustus "Gus" Waters, p. 63
The Fault in Our Stars (2012)

Pain

John Green Quotes

“What a treacherous thing to believe that a person is more than a person.”

John Green book Paper Towns

Quentin "Q" Jacobsen, p. 282
Paper Towns (2008)

Personality

“[Twilight] argues that true love will triumph in the end, which may or may not be true, but if it's a lie, it's the most beautiful lie we have.”

John Green

John Reviews Twilight and New Moon http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PkoBoF9FDXg
YouTube

Love , Lie , Beauty

“I really think that reading is just as important as writing when you're trying to be a writer. Because it's the only apprenticeship we have. It's the only way of learning how to write a story.”

John Green

Nov. 26th: Writing Advice (And Notes on Surnameless Tiffany) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Gf69J1Go98&feature=channel
YouTube

Way , Thinking , Learning , Reading

“Lacey takes the bar from me and reluctantly bites into it. She has to close her eyes to hide the orgasmic pleasure inherent in GoFast-tasting. "Oh. My. God. That tastes like hope feels."”

John Green book Paper Towns

Lacey Pemberton, pp. 255-256
Paper Towns (2008)

God , Pleasure , Hope , Feeling

“The thing about That Guy Is a Gigolo," Radar says, "I mean, the thing about it as a game, is that in the end it reveals a lot more about the person doing the imagining than it does about the person being imagined.”

John Green book Paper Towns

Marcus "Radar" Lincoln, p. 258
Paper Towns (2008)

Guy , Imagination , Game , Personality

“"Getting you a date to prom is so hard that the hypothetical idea itself is actually used to cut diamonds," I added.”

John Green book Paper Towns

Quentin "Q" Jacobsen, p. 16
Paper Towns (2008)

Idea

“Is health care a privilege, or is it a right? If it's a privilege, even if it's a really desirable privilege like indoor plumbing, we need to stop giving health care of any kind to uninsured people who can't pay for it in advance. But… …I think the reason we continue to treat people who are uninsured is because we don't believe that health care is a privilege. We believe that it is a right. And if it is a right, like life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, it is the responsibility of a government to protect that right.”

John Green

Health Care Overhaul Summarized Via Massive Pig http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Z_RVl-ph3s
YouTube

Life , People , Health , Thinking

“The way I figure it, everyone gets a miracle. Like, I will probably never be struck by lightning, or win a Nobel Prize, or become the dictator of a small nation in the Pacific Islands, or contract terminal ear cancer, or spontaneously combust. But if you consider all the unlikely things together, at least one of them will probably happen to each of us. I could have seen it rain frogs. I could have stepped foot on Mars. I could have been eaten by a whale. I could have married the queen of England or survived months at sea. But my miracle was different. My miracle was this: out of all the houses in all the subdivisions in all of Florida, I ended up living next door to Margo Roth Spiegelman.”

John Green book Paper Towns

Quentin "Q" Jacobsen, p. 3
Paper Towns (2008)

Way , Housing , Sea

“I am going to take this bucket of water and pour it on the flames of hell, and then I am going to use this torch to burn down the gates of paradise so that people will not love God for want of heaven or fear of hell, but because He is God.”

John Green book Looking for Alaska

Dr. Hyde explaining a quote by Rabe'a al-Adiwiyah, p. 174
Looking for Alaska (2005)

Love , God , People , Fear

“[We] had to forgive to survive in the labyrinth.”

John Green book Looking for Alaska

Miles "Pudge" Halter, p. 218
Looking for Alaska (2005)

Forgiveness

“Love is the most common miracle”

John Green book Will Grayson, Will Grayson

Will Grayson, p. 192
Will Grayson, Will Grayson (2010)

Love

“It's a penis," Margo said, "in the same sense that Rhode Island is a state: it may have an illustrious history, but it sure isn't big.”

John Green book Paper Towns

Margo Roth Spiegelman, p. 41
Paper Towns (2008)

History , Sense

“They'd just driven past the General Store when Hassan said, "We don't have to go to Hardee's really. We could go anywhere."
"Oh good because I really don't want to go to Hardee's," Lindsey said. "It's sort of horrible. There's a Wendy's two exits down the interstate, in Milan. Wendy's is way better. They have, like, salads."”

John Green book An Abundance of Katherines

Hassan Harbish and Lindsey Wells, p. 214
An Abundance of Katherines (2006)

Way , Past

“The weird thing about houses is that they almost always look like nothing is happening inside of them, even though they contain most of our lives. I wondered if that was sort of the point of architecture.”

John Green book The Fault in Our Stars

Hazel Grace Lancaster, p. 139
The Fault in Our Stars (2012)

Housing

“So I guess the first thing I would say is: you need to write a story that, unlike my story, has a beginning, a middle and an end. Also the beginning shouldn't involve hating foxes and the end shouldn't involve no one liking you.”

John Green

John on a story he wrote when he was in elementary school Nov. 26th: Writing Advice (And Notes on Surnameless Tiffany) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Gf69J1Go98&feature=channel
YouTube

Hate

“How do you get out of the labyrinth of suffering?”

John Green book Looking for Alaska

Alaska Young, p. 82
Looking for Alaska (2005)

Suffering

“I cannot tell you how thankful I am for our little infinity. I wouldn't trade it for the world. You gave me forever within the numbered days, and I'm grateful.”

John Green book The Fault in Our Stars

Hazel Grace Lancaster, p. 260
The Fault in Our Stars (2012)

World

“The fourth way to get a boy to like you is to be yourself. Now, I am contractually obligated as an adult to give that advice, even though it doesn't work. But yeah, be yourself, even though no one has any idea what it means to be yourself. Like whose self would I otherwise be being?”

John Green

How to Make Guys Like You http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JFiApf_m4H0
YouTube

Way , Boy , Idea

“What's the meaning of life?' Other people.”

John Green

100 QUESTIONS ANSWERED!!!!!!! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJs1dLGbGZY
YouTube

Life , People

“Colin did not laugh. Instead he thought, Tampons have strings? Why? Of all the major human mysteries—God, the nature of the universe, etc.—he knew the least about tampons. To Colin, tampons were a little bit like grizzly bears: he was aware of their existence, but he'd never seen one in the wild, and didn't really care to.”

John Green book An Abundance of Katherines

Colin Singleton, p. 57
An Abundance of Katherines (2006)

God , Nature , Universe

“"'Sup?" asked Hassan.
"Sup is not a word," answered Colin withought looking up.
"You're like sunshine on a cloudy day, Singleton. When it's cold outside, you're the month of May."”

John Green book An Abundance of Katherines

Hassan Harbish and Colin Singleton, p. 128
An Abundance of Katherines (2006)

“That's always seemed so ridiculous to me, that people would want to be around someone because they're pretty. It's like picking your breakfast cereals based on color instead of taste.”

John Green book Paper Towns

Margo Roth Spiegelman, p. 37
Paper Towns (2008)

People , Color

“Late in the winter of my seventeenth year, my mother decided I was depressed, presumably because I rarely left the house, spent quite a lot of time in bed, read the same book over and over, ate infrequently, and devoted quite a bit of my abundant free time to thinking about death.”

John Green book The Fault in Our Stars

Hazel Grace Lancaster, p. 3 (opening words)
The Fault in Our Stars (2012)

Death , Books , Thinking , Winter

“I believe the universe wants to be noticed. I think the universe is inprobably biased toward the consciousness, that it rewards intelligence in part because the universe enjoys its elegance being observed. And who am I, living in the middle of history, to tell the universe that it-or my observation of it-is temporary?”

John Green book The Fault in Our Stars

Hazel's Dad, p. 213-214
The Fault in Our Stars (2012)

History , Intelligence , Thinking , Universe

“He just wanted to play robot, for God's sake. Was that so wrong?”

John Green book An Abundance of Katherines

Colin Singleton, p. 20
An Abundance of Katherines (2006)

God

“"Imagining the future is a kind of nostalgia."
"Huh?" I asked.
"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."”

John Green book Looking for Alaska

Alaska Young and Miles "Pudge" Halter, p. 54
Looking for Alaska (2005)

Life , Imagination , Thinking , Nostalgia

“The fundamental mistake I had always made—and that she had, in fairness, always led me to make—was this: Margo was not a miracle. She was not an adventure. She was not a fine and precious thing. She was a girl.”

John Green book Paper Towns

Quentin "Q" Jacobsen, p. 199
Paper Towns (2008)

Girl

“Thomas Edison's last words were, "It's very beautiful over there." I don't know where there is, but I know it's somewhere, and I hope it's beautiful.”

John Green book Looking for Alaska

Miles "Pudge" Halter, p. 221
Looking for Alaska (2005)

Beauty , Hope

“She has great breasts," the Colonel said without looking up from the whale.
"DO NOT OBJECTIFY WOMEN'S BODIES!" Alaska shouted.
Now he looked up. "Sorry. Perky breasts.”

John Green book Looking for Alaska

"That's not any better!"
Chip "the Colonel" Martin and Alaska Young, pp. 59-60
Looking for Alaska (2005)

Women

“Colin's skin was alive with the feeling of connection to everyone in that car and everyone not in it. And he was feeling not-unique in the very best possible way.”

John Green book An Abundance of Katherines

Colin Singleton, pg. 215 (closing words)
An Abundance of Katherines (2006)

Cars , Way , Feeling

“The funny thing about writing is that whether you're doing it well or you're doing it poorly, it looks the exact same. That is actually one of the main ways that writing is different from ballet dancing.”

John Green

July 19: A Day in the Life of a Writer (Who Has No Friends) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GXbGFyNXLwA
YouTube

Way , Dance

“I may not have facts on my side, Hank, but I still think I'm right. That's the American way.”

John Green

Brotherhood 2.0: May 18: How to Write a Book Proposal https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7GOut8eO2g
YouTube

Way , Thinking

“Now, Hank, obviously you and I are living proof that sometimes a nerd meets another nerd and they fall in nerd-love.”

John Green

The Puff Pwns Gravity http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YY4LZRBHtvc
YouTube

Love

“But, in fact, depression is not a side effect of cancer. Depression is a side effect of dying. (Cancer is also a side effect of dying. Almost everything is, really.)”

John Green book The Fault in Our Stars

Hazel Grace Lancaster, p. 3
The Fault in Our Stars (2012)

“Green, John. (2006). An Abundance of Katherines. New York, New York: Penguin Group, 228..”

John Green

References

“At some point, you just pull off the Band-Aid and it hurts, but then it's over and you're relieved.”

John Green book Looking for Alaska

Miles "Pudge" Halter, p. 7
Looking for Alaska (2005)

Hurt

“That smile could end wars and cure cancer.”

John Green book An Abundance of Katherines

Colin Singleton, p. 32
An Abundance of Katherines (2006)

War , Smile

“Books are the ultimate Dumpees: put them down and they'll wait for you forever; pay attention to them and they always love you back.”

John Green book An Abundance of Katherines

Colin Singleton, p. 111
An Abundance of Katherines (2006)

Love , Books , Waiting

“It was, he thought, just like how authors always wrote things in ways other than how they actually happened.”

John Green book An Abundance of Katherines

Colin Singleton, p. 70
An Abundance of Katherines (2006)

Way

“I just want to do something that matters. Or be something that matters. I just want to matter.”

John Green book An Abundance of Katherines

Colin Singleton, p. 94
An Abundance of Katherines (2006)

“And then he lay there in his fever of sorry and repeated the now memorized note in his head and wanted to cry, but instead he only felt this aching behind his solar plexus. Crying adds something: crying is you, plus tears. But the feeling Colin had was some horrible opposite of crying. It was you, minus something.”

John Green book An Abundance of Katherines

Colin Singleton, p. 7
An Abundance of Katherines (2006)

Feeling , Tear , Cry

“He wanted to draw out the moment before the moment—because as good as kissing feels, nothing feels as good as the anticipation of it.”

John Green book An Abundance of Katherines

Colin Singleton, p. 79
An Abundance of Katherines (2006)

Feeling , Kiss , Drawing

“It is saying these things that keeps us from falling apart. And maybe by imagining these futures we can make them real, and maybe not, but either way we must imagine them. The light rushes out and floods in.”

John Green book Paper Towns

Quentin "Q" Jacobsen, p. 304
Paper Towns (2008)

Way , Imagination , Light , Future

“Saying 'I notice you're a nerd' is like saying, 'Hey, I notice that you'd rather be intelligent than be stupid, that you'd rather be thoughtful than be vapid, that you believe that there are things that matter more than the arrest record of Lindsay Lohan. Why is that?' In fact, it seems to me that most contemporary insults are pretty lame. Even 'lame' is kind of lame. Saying 'You're lame' is like saying 'You walk with a limp.”

John Green

Yeah, whatever, so does 50 Cent, and he's done all right for himself.
John Green asks himself "Why is being a nerd bad?" in July 27: How Nerdfighters Drop Insults http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xy1M5VHF3no
YouTube

Stupidity , Intelligence

“People die. That’s true in novels, and it’s true in life. Dying is one of the very few things we all do. To deny or ignore the omnipresent reality of death seems to me a disservice to human beings. That said, acknowledging in my novels that death exists does not make me a murderer any more than acknowledging that cancer can be treated makes me an oncologist.”

John Green

Hey, some people on tumblr are wondering if writers feel upset or get a thrill when they kill their characters. Care to enlighten us?, John Green's tumblr, Tumblr, January 1, 2013, July 15, 2014 http://fishingboatproceeds.tumblr.com/post/39363824562/hey-some-people-on-tumblr-are-wondering-if-writers,

Life , Death , People , Reality

“Colin believed that the world contained exactly two kinds of people: Dumpers and Dumpees. A lot of people will claim to be both, but those people miss the point entirely: You are predisposed to either one fate or the other. Dumpers may not always be the heartbreakers, and the Dumpees may not always be the heartbroken. But everyone has a tendency.”

John Green book An Abundance of Katherines

Colin Singleton, pp. 15-16
An Abundance of Katherines (2006)

Fate , People , World

“I may die young, but at least I'll die smart.”

John Green book Looking for Alaska

Alaska Young, p. 52
Looking for Alaska (2005)