John Green
American author of young adult fiction, who has appeared on the New York Times list of bestselling children's chapter books.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
"As he read, I fell in love the way you fall asleep; Slowly, and then all at once."
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."
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.
"Getting you a date to prom is so hard that the hypothetical idea itself is actually used to cut diamonds," I added.
[We] had to forgive to survive in the labyrinth.
"Tiny: You know what's a great metaphor for love?
Me: I have a feeling you're about to tell me...
Tiny: Sleeping beauty... because you have to plow through this incredible thicket of thorns in order to get to beauty, and even then, when you get there, you still have to wake her up."
"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.""
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.
"My thoughts are stars I can't fathom into constellations."
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.
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.
"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."
"I'm just scared of ghosts, Pudge. And home is full of them."
What a treacherous thing to believe that a person is more than a person.
The Venn Diagram of guys who don't like smart girls and guys you don't want to date is a circle.