John Green Quotes & Sayings

I'm about to lose my eyesight and she can't handle it. — John Green

There's some people in this world who you can just love and love and love no matter what. — John Green

I would argue that stupidity is born out of bad reading, bad teaching and bad thinking! — John Green

She spoke quietly then, the tiniest crack in her voice, and all at once Lacey Pemerton was not Lacey Pemberton. She was just - like, a person. — John Green

Eureka' Colin said, and only in saying it did he realize he had just successfully whispered. — John Green

I'm a big believer in random capitalization. The rules of capitalization are so unfair to the words in the middle. (32) — John Green

One day you wake up and you realize something, you see something in a way that you never saw it before, and boom, epiphany. Something is different forever. — John Green

Brainy. Definitely the new Sexy. — John Green

But it's not a cancer book, because cancer books suck. — John Green

I just want to stay away from people and read books. — John Green

Little kids play house; they play war; they play relationships. — John Green

Christ," the Colonel said quite loudly. "That wretched beast, drama, draws nigh. — John Green

Well," Peter Van Houten said, extending his hand to me. "It is at any rate a pleasure to meet such ontologically improbable creatures." I shook his swollen hand, and then he shook hands with Augustus. I was wondering what ontologically meant. Regardless, I liked it. Augustus and I were together in the Improbable Creatures Club: us and duck-billed platypuses. — John Green

COOSA LIQUORS: WE CATER TO YOUR SPIRITUAL NEEDS. — John Green

COLUMBUS BROUGHT SMALLPOX TO THE NATIVES; WE SHALL RECALL THE OCCASION WITH A PICNIC! — John Green

Radar threw his books into his locker and shut it. Then the din of conversation around us quieted just a bit as he turned his eyes toward the heavens and shouted, IT IS NOT MY FAULT THAT MY PARENTS OWN THE WORLD'S LARGEST COLLECTION OF BLACK SANTAS. — John Green

But a lot of times, people die how they live. And so last words tell me a lot about who people were, and why they became the sort of people biographies get written about. — John Green

Whats the point of being alive, if you dont at least try to do something reliable — John Green

We have this weird thing in the world where you don't get insulted for what you do, you get insulted for who you are. — John Green

You wrongly assume that I need to hear your question in order to answer it. — John Green

I write about broken people who need other people in order to go on. But those are the only kind of people I know to exist. We are all broken. — John Green

And I wrote my way out of the labyrinth. — John Green

stuck in their belly like Jonah. — John Green

Complete fugging idiots shoot guns all the time. That's why there are so many dead people. — John Green

Van Houten was still staring at the ceiling beams. He took a drink. The glass was almost empty again. 'Lidewij, I can't do it. I can't. I can't.' He leveled his gaze to me. 'Nothing happens to the Dutch Tulip Man. He isn't a con man or not a con man; he's God. He's an obvious and unambiguous metaphorical representation of God, and asking what becomes of him if the intellectual equivalent of asking what becomes of the disembodied eyes of Dr. T.J. Eckleburg in Gatsby. Do he and Anna's man get married? We are speaking of a novel, dear child, not some historical enterprise. — John Green

Like, what if the people around you had been different?" "How can you separate those things, though? The people are the place is the people. And anyway, I didn't think there was anybody else to be friends with. I thought everyone was either scared, like you, or oblivious, like Lacey. And th - — John Green

Well dress me up in a tutu, put my on a unicycle, and call me Caroline the Dancing Bear. You're a fugging dumper — John Green

You die in the middle of your life. — John Green

I pulled the oxygen tubes from my nostrils and raised the tube up over my head, handing it to Dad. I wanted it to be just me and just him. — John Green

We drank from paper Winnie-the-Pooh cups — John Green

Just saying: stop thinking Ben should be you, and he needs to stop thinking you should be him, and y'all just chill the hell out. — John Green

Pain demands to be felt, he said, which was a line from An Imperial Affliction. — John Green

You shall love your neighbour
With your crooked heart,
It says so much about love and brokenness
it's perfect. — John Green

Where did I get it? Smartypants, getting a gun in Gutshot, Tennessee is easier than getting chlamydia from a hooker. — John Green

I never know you until i got to know you through your clues.I like clues more than I like you. — John Green

Once we got out of Jefferson Park, we rolled down the one window that worked so the world would know we had good taste in music. We — John Green

never makes me talk to him. I don't know — John Green

I would give up all the sick days I had left for a few healthy ones. — John Green

The fault in our stars was the best story book it was amazing — John Green

When was the last good kiss you had? — John Green

The internet is necessarily public. It can be filtered-public or censored-public, but it necessarily has to be open and available. — John Green

With each passing minute, I'm developing a deeper appreciation of the word mortified, — John Green

Shh. Shh. This is getting awesome."
-Augustus — John Green

His voice was low, smoky, and dead sexy. — John Green

I think people who are religious are more likely to want one around, but it's a very secular position. — John Green

And then something invisible snapped insider her, and that which had come together commenced to fall apart. — John Green

The roof, the roof, the roof is on fire! Hell is in your future if you give in to desire! — John Green

So what's your story?" he asked, sitting down next to me at a safe distance. "I already told you my story. I was diagnosed when - " "No, not your cancer story. Your story. Interests, hobbies, passions, weird fetishes, etcetera." "Um," I said. — John Green

How long have you been dating her?' I asked.
Nine months. We never got along. I mean, I didn't even briefly like her. Like, my mom and my dad- my dad would get pissed, and then he would beat the shit out of my mom. And then my dad would be all nice and they'd have a honeymoon period. But with Sara, there's never a honeymoon period. God, how could she think I was a rat? I know, I know: Why don't we break up?' He ran a hand through his hair, clutching a fistful of it atop his head, and said, ' I guess I saty with her because she stays with me. And that's not an easy thing to do. I'm a bad boyfriend. She's a bad girlfriend. We deserve each other. — John Green

13 Among many, many others, the following things were definitely not interesting: the pupillary sphincter, mitosis, baroque architecture, jokes that have physics — John Green

Nerds always say they don't give a shit about popularity; but - not having friends sucks. I never liked quote unquote cool kids, personally - I thought they were all dumb little shits. — John Green

Love is always a miracle, everywhere,every time. But for us, it's a little different. I don't want to say it's more miraculous, ... It is though. — John Green

I felt the fight-or-flight reflex swell up in me over and over again, but I knew that neither fight nor flight had ever worked for me before. — John Green

But he didn't survive a war, not really," Augustus said. "He survived a genocide. — John Green

Omaha, Nebraska. Sac City, Iowa. Alexandria, Indiana. Darwin, Minnesota. Hollywood, California. Alliance, Nebraska. — John Green

You put the thing that does the killing between your teeth, but you never give it the power to kill you — John Green

I inherited that penchant for intellectualism, a character flaw that these days can only be thoroughly eradicated by getting Z'ed up. — John Green

The afterlife mattered to me. Heaven and hell and reincarnation. As much as I wanted to know how Alaska had died, I wanted to know where she was now, if anywhere. — John Green

I sat back down on the couch, between my mom and my dad, and my dad put his arm around me, and we stayed there like that, quiet on the couch together, for a long time, until it seemed okay to turn on the TV, and then we ate artichoke dip for dinner and watched the History Channel, and as going-away parties go, it certainly could have been worse. — John Green

It demands to be felt. — John Green

You can't just change me and then leave. You can't. — John Green

I'm really not up for answering any questions that start with how, when, where, why or what. — John Green

Ignorance is bliss — John Green

Miles, as in 'to go before I sleep'? — John Green

I called Isaac, who cursed life and the universe and God Himself and who said where are the goddamned trophies to break when you need them, and then I realized there was no one else to call, which was the saddest thing. The only person I really wanted to talk to about Augustus Waters's death was Augustus Waters. — John Green

Much of my life had been devoted to trying not to cry in front of people who loved me, so I knew what Augustus was doing. You clench your teeth. You look up. You tell yourself that if they see you cry, it will hurt them, and you will be nothing but a Sadness in their lives, and you must not become a mere sadness, so you will not cry, and you say all of this to yourself while looking up at the ceiling, and then you swallow even though your throat does not want to close and you look at the person who loves you and smile. — John Green

I already picked a punishment. Now you just pick who we're going to rain our mighty wrath down on. — John Green

The kiss lasted forever as Otto Frank kept talking from behind me. "And my conclusion is," he said, "since I had been in very good terms with Anne, that most parents don't know really their children. — John Green

Getting you a date to prom is so hard that the hypothetical idea itself is actually used to cut diamonds," I added. Radar tapped a locker twice with his fist to show his approval, and then came back with another. "Ben, getting you a date to prom is so hard that the American government believes the problem cannot be solved with diplomacy, but will instead require force. — John Green

You know what sucks about love? That it's so tied to truth. — John Green

Let me just acknowlege that the function of grammar is to make language as efficent and clear and transparent as possible. But if we're all constantly correcting each other's grammar and being really snotty about it, then people stop talking because they start to be petrified that they're going to make some sort of terrible grammatical error and that's precisely the opposite of what grammar is supposed to do, which is to facilitate clear communication. — John Green

That was what I liked most about my friends: just sitting around and telling stories. Window stories and mirror stories. I only listened - the stories on my mind weren't that funny. — John Green

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

You're not boring. You've got to stop saying that, or people will start believing you. — John Green

Sometimes I don't get you,' I said.
She didn't even glance at me. She just smiled toward the television and said, 'You never get me. That's the whole point. — John Green

Great news for someone is always bad news for someone else — John Green

About nine seconds later, a blond stewardess rushed over to our row and said, "Sir, you can't smoke on this plane. Or any plane." "I don't smoke," he explained, the cigarette dancing in his mouth as he spoke. "But - " "It's a metaphor," I explained. "He puts the killing thing in his mouth but doesn't give it the power to kill him." The stewardess was flummoxed for only a moment. "Well, that metaphor is prohibited on today's flight," she said. Gus nodded and rejoined the cigarette to its pack. — John Green

How will we ever get out of this labyrinth of suffering? — John Green

Why is being a nerd so bad?
saying " I noticed you're a nerd is like saying hey, I noticed you'd rather be intelligent that 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 — John Green

Always' was a promise! How can you just break the promise?"
"Sometimes people don't always understand the promises they're making when they make them," I said.
Isaac shot me a look. "Right, of course. But you keep the promise anyway. That's what love is. Love is keeping the promise anyway. Don't you believe in true love?"
I didn't answer. I didn't have an answer.
But I thought that if true love did exist, that was a pretty good definition of it. — John Green

She cannot possibly be dead, people do not just die — John Green

A woman needs a strong man to take care of her like a fish needs a bicycle. — John Green

Your book has a way of telling me what I'm feeling before I even feel it — John Green

There are a thousand ways to look at it ... We don't suffer from a shortage of metaphors ... But you have to be careful which metaphor you choose, because it matters ... The metaphors have implications and imperfections. — John Green

I thought it might be a fine time to say the Three Little Words. And I steeled myself to say them as I stared up at that starriest night, convinced myself that she felt it, too, that her hand so alive and vivid against my leg was more than playful, and fuck Lara and fuck Jake because I do, Alaska Young, I do love you and what else matters but that and my lips parted to speak and before I could even begin to breathe out the words, she said, It's not life or death, the labyrinth. — John Green

Is it so hard to die, Mr. Lewis? Is that labyrinth really worse than this one? — John Green

We'll now hear a few words from Augustus's special friend, Hazel." Special friend? There were some titters in the audience, so I figured it was safe for me to start out by saying to the minister, "I was his girlfriend." That got a laugh. — John Green

Best day of my life was January 9, 1997. I was eight years old and my mom and I went to the zoo on a class trip. I liked the bears. She liked the monkeys. Best day ever. End of story. — John Green

She loved so much mysteries that she became one — John Green

I was blind and heart broken and didn't want to do anything and Gus burst into my room and shouted, "I have wonderful news!" And I was like, "I don't really want to hear wonderful news right now," and Gus said, "This is wonderful news you want to hear," and I asked him, "Fine, what is it?" and he said, "You are going to live a good and long life filled with great and terrible moments that you cannot even imagine yet! — John Green

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

Everything's uglier up close. — John Green

I'm hungrier than a kid on his third day of fat camp. — John Green

The thing is that I do believe in college, and jobs, and maybe even babies one day. I believe in the future. Maybe it's a character flaw, but for me it is a congenital one. — John Green

Don't tell me you're one of those people who becomes their disease. I know so many people like that. It's disheartening. — John Green

Living our bestlife today — John Green

You live for pretentious metaphors. — John Green

I can almost imagine a happiness without her, the ability to let her go, to feel our roots are connected even if I never see that leaf of grass again. — John Green

But you know what they say about Gutshot: the population never goes up and never goes down, because every time a woman gets pregnant, a man leaves town. — John Green

Caroline is no longer sufffering from personhood. — John Green