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John Green Quotes
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John Michael Green is an American author and YouTube content creator. He won the 2006 Printz Award for his debut novel, Looking for Alaska, and his fourth solo novel, The Fault in Our Stars, debuted at number one on The New York Times Best Seller list in January 2012. The 2014 film adaptation opened at number one at the box office. In 2014, Green was included in Time magazine's list of The 100 Most Influential People in the World. Another film based on a Green novel, Paper Towns, was released on July 24, 2015.

Aside from being a novelist, Green is also well known for his YouTube ventures. In 2007, he launched the Vlogbrothers channel with his brother, Hank Green. Since then, John and Hank have launched events such as Project for Awesome and VidCon and created a total of 11 online series, including Crash Course, an educational channel teaching Literature, History, and Science, later joined by fourteen other courses as of 2018. Wikipedia  

✵ 24. August 1977
John Green photo
John Green: 103   quotes 11   likes

John Green Quotes

“I stand in this parking lot, realizing that I've never been this far from home, and here is this girl I love and cannot follow. I hope this is the hero's errand, because not following her is the hardest thing I've ever done.”

John Green book Paper Towns

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

Love , Hope , Home , Girl

“But mothers lie. It's in the job description.”

John Green book An Abundance of Katherines

Colin Singleton, p. 4
An Abundance of Katherines (2006)

Lie

“There is no them, there are only facets of us.”

John Green

Nerdfighting in Bangladesh http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PEtIR0xHDfk
YouTube

“Hank, before I move forward with this discussion, I should acknowledge that as a child I was an inveterate liar… As opposed to now, when I am a novelist.”

John Green

Poopy Nintendo Mystery Solved With Science http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QyXVTLoR1lI
YouTube

“The Colonel ran ahead of me, gleeful at his ejection, and I jogged after him, trailing in his wake. I wanted to be one of those people who have streaks to maintain, who scorch the ground with their intensity. But for now, at least I knew such people, and they needed me, just like comets need tails.”

John Green book Looking for Alaska

Miles "Pudge" Halter, p. 49
Looking for Alaska (2005)

People

“Good morning Hank. I know what you're thinking. You're thinking: 'My older brother really needs a haircut!' Well, Hank, I've got one thing to say to that. Never!”

John Green

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

Thinking

“Prick us, we bleed. Prick him, he pops.”

John Green book Looking for Alaska

Alaska Young, p. 110
Looking for Alaska (2005)

“I'm in love with cities I've never been to and people I've never met.”

John Green

Incorrectly attributed to John Green on various quotation sites and on social media.
Disputed

Love , People

“When adults say, "Teenagers think they are invincible" with that sly, stupid smile on their faces, they don't know how right they are. We need never be hopeless, because we can never be irreparably broken. We think that we are invincible because we are. We cannot be born, and we cannot die. Like all energy, we can only change shapes and sizes and manifestations. They forget that when they get old. They get scared of losing and failing. But that part of us greater than the sum of our parts cannot begin and cannot end, and so it cannot fail.”

John Green book Looking for Alaska

Miles "Pudge" Halter, pp. 220-221
Looking for Alaska (2005)

Stupidity , Smile , Thinking , Change

“He'd never been all that good at math, but he was a goddamned world-famous expert in getting dumped.”

John Green book An Abundance of Katherines

Colin Singleton, p. 60
An Abundance of Katherines (2006)

World

“If you are rich, you have to be an idiot not to stay rich. And if you are poor, you have to be really smart to get rich.”

John Green

The Greek Debt Crisis Explained in Four Minutes http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mEVqeaFHsHE
YouTube

“"And we'll call you… hmmm. Pudge."
"Huh?"
"Pudge," the Colonel said. "Because you're skinny. It's called irony, Pudge. Heard of it? Now, let's go get some cigarettes and start this year off right."”

John Green book Looking for Alaska

Chip "the Colonel" Martin and Miles "Pudge" Halter, p. 14
Looking for Alaska (2005)

“Never go to war with a noun. You will always lose.”

John Green

"CC US History: The 1960 in America", referring to "War on Poverty", but also several later concepts https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lkXFb1sMa38&index=41&list=PL8dPuuaLjXtMwmepBjTSG593eG7ObzO7s
YouTube

War

“When people have to choose between civilization and warm genitals, they choose warm genitals”

John Green

: The Fall of The Roman Empire http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3PszVWZNWVA
YouTube

People

“Standing before this building, I learn something about fear. I learn that it is not the idle fantasies of someone who maybe wants something important to happen to him, even if the important thing is horrible. It is not the disgust of seeing a dead stranger, and not the breathlessness of hearing a shotgun pumped outside of Becca Arrington's house. This cannot be addressed by breathing exercises. This fear bears no analogy to any fear I knew before. This is the basest of all possible emotions, the feeling that was with us before we existed, before this building existed, before the earth existed. This is the fear that made fish crawl out onto dry land and evolve lungs, the fear that teaches us to run, the fear that makes us bury our dead.”

John Green book Paper Towns

Quentin "Q" Jacobsen, pp. 140-141
Paper Towns (2008)

Fear , Feeling , Exercises , Fish

“Sometimes you read a book and it fills you with this weird evangelical zeal and you become convinced that the shattered world will never be put back together unless and until all living humans read that book.”

John Green book The Fault in Our Stars

Hazel Grace Lancaster, p. 33
The Fault in Our Stars (2012)

Books , World , Reading

“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.”

John Green

As quoted from Hank Green http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hank_Green on his Twitter feed http://twitter.com/#!/hankgreen
YouTube

People , World , Sadness

“I mean Hank, the movie was great, but the thirty minutes before the movie started was what I love about being a nerd. Because nerds like us are allowed to be unironically enthusiastic about stuff. We don't have to be like, 'Oh yeah that purse is okay' or like, 'Yeah, I like that band's early stuff.' Nerds are allowed to love stuff, like jump-up-and-down-in-the-chair-can't-control-yourself-love it. Hank, when people call people nerds, mostly what they are saying is, 'You like stuff', which is just not a good insult at all, like 'You are too enthusiastic about the miracle of human consciousness'.”

John Green

Harry Potter Nerds Win at Life http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rMweXVWB918
YouTube

Love , People

“Margo always loved mysteries. And in everything that came afterward, I could never stop thinking that maybe she loved mysteries so much that she became one.”

John Green book Paper Towns

Quentin "Q" Jacobsen, p. 8
Paper Towns (2008)

Love , Thinking

“Maybe all the strings inside him broke.”

John Green book Paper Towns

Margo Roth Spiegelman, p. 4
Paper Towns (2008)

“Luck is for suckers.”

John Green book Looking for Alaska

Alaska Young, p. 113
Looking for Alaska (2005)

“Y'all smoke to enjoy it. I smoke to die.”

John Green book Looking for Alaska

Alaska Young, p. 44
Looking for Alaska (2005)

Depressing

“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.”

John Green book The Fault in Our Stars

Source: The Fault in Our Stars

Hurt , Hope , World

“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

Source: Looking for Alaska

People , Thinking

“It hurt like the worst ass-kicking he'd ever gotten. And he'd gotten plenty.”

John Green book An Abundance of Katherines

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

Hurt

“So often we try to make other people feel better by minimizing their pain, by telling them that it will get better (which it will) or that there are worse things in the world (which there are). But that's not what I actually needed. What I needed was for someone to tell me that it hurt because it mattered.”

John Green

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u9sYmz2lHXA

“Maybe there's 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.”

John Green book Looking for Alaska

Source: Looking for Alaska

“I've always liked quiet people: You never know if they're dancing in a daydream or if they're carrying the weight of the world.”

John Green book Looking for Alaska

Source: Looking for Alaska

“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