John Green Book Quotes & Sayings

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

In retrospect Hank I don't know why I spent four years writing this book when I could have just made a hit sing-a-ma-jig album. — John Green

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 the book. — John Green

I don't have a favourite book, I have hundreds. — John Green

Author's Note
This is not so much an author's note as an author's reminder of what was printed in small type a few pages ago: This book is a work of fiction. I made it up.
Neither novels or their readers benefit from attempts to divine whether any facts hide inside a story. Such efforts attack the very idea that made-up stories can matter, which is sort of the foundational assumption of our species.
I appreciate your cooperation in this matter. — John Green

The fault in our stars is the best book and the movie too — John Green

You cannot invent an algorithm that is as good at recommending books as a good bookseller. — John Green

I change my keyboard between every book. I usually shop around. I'm very passionate about the physical feel of pressing the keys. It's got to have the right springiness. I tend to find the built-in keys very unsatisfying, the keys are low-profile and don't really do anything - I want it to feel like I'm typing. — John Green

Peeing is like a good book in that it is very, very hard to stop once you start. — John Green

If people were rain i was drizzle and she was a hurrican. — John Green

The surprising thing is that so many teenage cancer novels are very good. John Green's 'The Fault in Our Stars,' recently published by Penguin, was voted 'Time Magazine's book of the year in 2012 ahead of Hilary Mantel and Zadie Smith. — Mal Peet

May I see you again?" he asked. There was an endearing nervousness in his voice.
I smiled. "Sure."
"Tomorrow?" he asked.
"Patience, grasshopper," I counseled. "You don't want to seem overeager.
"Right, that's why I said tomorrow," he said. "I want to see you again tonight. But I'm willing to wait all night and much of tomorrow." I rolled my eyes. "I'm serious," he said.
"You don't even know me," I said. I grabbed the book from the center console. "How about I call you when I finish this?"
"But you don't even have my phone number," he said.
"I strongly suspect you wrote it in this book."
He broke out into that goofy smile. "And you say we don't know each other. — John Green

So afterward, while I was getting eviscerated by chemo, for some reason I decided to feel really hopeful. Not about survival but I felt like Anna does in the book, that feeling of excitement and gratitude about just being able to marvel at it all. — John Green

'Looking For Alaska' by John Green is a very great book. I feel like every teenage girl says John Green's 'Fault In Our Stars,' but 'Looking For Alaska' is better. — Alessia Cara

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

I walked to his bedside table next. Infinite Mayhem. the ninth sequel to The Prince of Dawn, lay atop the table next to his reading lamp, the corner of page 138 turned down. He'd never made it to the end of the book. 'Spoiler alert: Mayhem survives,' I said out loud to him, just in case he could hear me. — John Green

We must strike down the insidious lie that a book is the creation of an individual soul labouring in isolation. We must strike it down because it threatens the overall quality and breadth of American literature. — John Green

What I eventually realized is that the real business of books is not done by awards committees or people who turn trees into paper or editors or agents or even writers. We're all just facilitators. The real business is done by readers. — John Green

How can you read and talk at the same time?" I asked.
"Well, I usually can't, but neither the book nor the conversation is particularly intellectually challenging. — John Green

Cause I'm just - I want to go to Amsterdam, and I want him to tell me what happens after the book is over, and I just don't want my particular life, and also the sky is depressing me, and there is this old swing set out here that my dad made for me when I was a kid.'
'I must see this old swing set of tears immediately,' he said. 'I'll be over in twenty minutes. — John Green

It must be some book," she said as she knelt down next to the bed ... "Did that boy give it to you?" She asked out of nowhere.
"By 'it' do you mean herpes?"
"You are too much," Mom said, "The book, Hazel. I mean the book. — John Green

You buy any book on color theory today, and it's just complete poppycock. Everybody comes out of school painting pink, purple and green. The whole damn cartoon industry has pink purple and green on their mind. — John Kricfalusi

Your party kicked so much ass!Even though you suck so much! It's like, instead of blood, your heart pumps liquid suck! But thanks for the beer! — John Green

I'll write you an epilogue, I will, I will. Better than any shit that drunk could write. His brain is Swiss cheese. He doesn't even remember writing the book. I can write ten times the story that guy can. There will be blood and guts and sacrifice. An Imperial Affliction meets The Price of Dawn. You'll love it. — John Green

When I got out of the movie, I had four text messages from Augustus.
Tell me my copy is missing the last twenty pages or something.
Hazel Grace, tell me I have not reached the end of this book.
OH MY GOD DO THEY GET MARRIED OR NOT OH MY GOD WHAT IS THIS
I guess Anna died and so it just ends? CRUEL. Call me when you can. Hope all's okay. — John Green

Whether the author intended a symbolic resonance to exist in her book is irrelevant. All that matters is whether it's there. Because the book does not exist for the benefit of the author, the book exists for the benefit of YOU. If we as readers can have a bigger and richer experience with the world as a result of reading a symbol and that symbol wasn't intended by the author, WE STILL WIN. — John Green

Cousin-screwing. It is not totally safe. It raises the risk of birth defects slightly. But I was reading in a book for history that there's, like, a 99.9999 percent chance that at least one of your great-great-great-grandparents married first cousin. — John Green

DID YOU KNOW WHETHER OR NOT [SPOILER REDACTED BECAUSE I KNOW PEOPLE WILL READ THIS DISCUSSION GUIDE BEFORE THEY'VE READ THE BOOK, EVEN THOUGH I JUST FORBADE YOU TO DO SO LIKE SIX PARAGRAPHS AGO] WAS INTENTIONAL WHILE YOU WERE WRITING IT? — John Green

Books belong to their readers. — John Green

My favorite book, by a wide margin, was An Imperial Affliction, but I didn't like to tell people about it. Sometimes, you read a book and it fills you withthis weird evangelical zeal, and you become convinced that the shattered world will never be put back together unless and until all living humans read thebook. And then there are books like An Imperial Affliction, which you can't tell people about, books so special and rare and yours that advertising your affection feels like a betrayal.It wasn't even that the book was so good or anything; it was just that the author, Peter Van Houten, seemed to understand me in weird and impossible ways. An Imperial Affliction was my book, in the way my body was my body and my thoughts were my thoughts. — John Green

Books are seldom useful unless they are also beautiful. — John Green

I think it's crazy, crazy that book tours lose so much money. They shouldn't. Book tours should be part of what keeps independent bookstores vibrant and profitable. — John Green

Oh for a book and a shady nook, Either indoors or out, with the green leaves whispering overhead, or the street cries all about. Where I may read at all my ease both of the new and old, For a jolly good book whereon to look is better to me than gold — John Wilson

Hey,' he said, touching my waist. 'Hey. It's okay.' I nodded and wiped my face with the back of my hand. 'He sucks.' I nodded again. 'I'll write you an epilogue,' Gus said. That made me cry harder. 'I will,' he said. 'I will. Better than any sh*t that drunk could write. His brain is Swiss cheese. He doesn't even remember writing the book. I can write ten times the story that guy can. There will be blood and guts and sacrifice. An Imperial Affliction meets The Prince of Dawn. You'll love it.' I kept nodding, faking a smile, and then he hugged me, his strong arms pulling me into his muscular chest, and I sogged up his polo shirt a little but then recovered enough to speak. — John Green

In the end, what makes a book valuable is not the paper it's printed on, but the thousands of hours of work by dozens of people who are dedicated to creating the best possible reading experience for you. — John Green

JG: I had no idea we would ever see the musical in the book when the thought of it first occurred to me; but then as we moved forward, it seemed a good fit for the story we were telling. As to the genesis of "The Nose Tackle (Likes Tight Ends)," it's an old homophobic locker-room joke that I wanted to twist into a proud and celebratory observation. By the way, shouldn't there be an IRL musical? — John Green

Tiny decides to ignore me, and he tells Jane that he hopes one day to have enough texts from Will Grayson to turn them into a book, because his texts are like poetry.

Before I can stop myself, I say, "'Shall I compare thee to a summer's day' becomes 'u r hawt like august. — John Green

As I recall, you promised to CALL when you finished the book, not text. — John Green

Given the entertainment bacchanalia at the disposal of young men and women of your generation, I am grateful to anyone anywhere who sets aside the hours necessary to read my little book. — John Green

Tell me my copy is missing the last twenty pages or something.
Hazel Grace, tell me I have not reached the end of this book.
OH MY GOD DO THEY GET MARRIED OR NOT OH MY GOD WHAT IS THIS?! — John Green

We shove the dirt over the book, tamping down the disturbed soil. The grass will grow back soon enough. It will be for us the beautiful uncut hair of graves. — John Green

That is, to me at least, one of the most helpful and useful things books do for us: They are generous enough to allow us to choose what matters to us. — John Green

Every book title becomes infinitely better if 'in your pants' or 'from your pants' is added to the title. — John Green

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

I brought you a snack," Takumi said, dropping an oatmeal cream pie onto my book.
"Very nutritious," I smiled.
"You've got your oats. You've got your meal. You've got your cream. It's a fuckin' food pyramid. — John Green

She'd obviously read the book many times before, and so she read flawlessly and confidently, and I could hear her smile in the reading of it, and the sound of that smile made me think that maybe I would like novels better if Alaska Young read them to me. — John Green

The movie, like the book before it, is an expertly built machine for the mass production of tears. Directed by Josh Boone ('Stuck in Love') with scrupulous respect for John Green's best-selling young-adult novel, the film sets out to make you weep
not just sniffle or choke up a little, but sob until your nose runs and your face turns blotchy. It succeeds. — A.O. Scott

How about I call you when I finish this?"
"But you don't even have my phone number," he said.
"I strongly suspect you write it in the book. — John Green

(from the author Q&A)
Q. After you wrote the book, however much time has passed, do you think back and wish you could write more, or that you could somehow create more of their world?
A. I never wish I could go back and write more, no. I spent a long, long time trying to write the book that became The Fault in Our Stars and to be completely honest with you, I am entirely happy that the story is no longer my problem and is now your problem. — John Green

When you're writing a novel, you spend four years sitting in your basement and a year waiting for the book to come out and then you get the feedback. When you do work online, the moment you're finished making it, people start responding to it which is really fun and allows for a kind of community development you just can't have in novels. — John Green

I know that books seem like the ultimate thing that's made by one person, but that's not true. Every reading of a book is a collaboration between the reader and the writer who are making the story up together. — John Green

The Side Effects of Dying in Your Pants isn't really funny ... Alright, it's a little funny. — John Green

School and a year into remission. You had to be pretty sick for the Genies to hook you up with a Wish. "I got it in exchange for the leg," he explained. There was all this light on his face; he had to squint to look at me, which made his nose crinkle adorably. "Now, I'm not going to give you my Wish or anything. But I also have an interest in meeting Peter Van Houten, and it wouldn't make sense to meet him without the girl who introduced me to his book." "It definitely wouldn't," I said. "So I talked to the Genies, and they are in total agreement. They said Amsterdam is lovely in the beginning of May. They proposed — John Green

Ultimately what I like about reading together is that we all make it happen together. Of course even amid shared experience we're still alone ... each reading of each book is unique. But what a comfort it is to share readings and experiences. How lucky we are when we get to be alone together. — John Green

John Green has written a powerful novel - one that plunges headlong into the labyrinth of life, love, and the mysteries of being human. This is a book that will touch your life, so don't read it sitting down. Stand up, and take a step into the Great Perhaps. — KL Going

You and me will read a book and find three interesting things that we remember. But Colin finds everything intriguing. He reads a book about presidents and he remembers more of it because everything he reads clicks in his head as fugging interesting. — John Green

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

Going out late at night and laying in the dewy field and reading a Kurt Vonnegut book by moonlight. — John Green

I hate the idea that, when it comes to books and learning, hard is often seen as the opposite of fun. It's strange to me that we should be so quick to give up on a book or a math problem when we are so willing to grapple, for centuries if necessary, with a single level of Angry Birds. — John Green

The book was turned to the page with Anne Frank's name, but what got me about it was the fact that right beneath her name there were four Aron Franks. FOUR. Four Aron Franks without museums, without historical markers, without anyone to mourn them. I silently resolved to remember and pray for the four Aron Franks as long as I was around. — John Green

Reading a good book helps us to feel un-alone. — John Green

Mom hooked me up to a portable tank and then reminded me I had class. "Did that boy give it to you?" she asked out of nowhere.
"By it, do you mean herpes?"
"You are too much," Mom said. "The book, Hazel. I mean the book."
"Yeah, he gave me the book. — John Green

Throughout the book, she refers to herself as "the side effect," which is just totally correct. Cancer kids are essentially side effects of the relentless mutation that made the diversity of life on earth possible. — John Green

I'm not interested in writing for adults. I like them as people! I don't like the way they publish books in that world. Nothing ever gets a chance. — John Green

When we sat down, Lacey started reading "Song of Myself," and she agreed that none of it sounded like anything and certainly none of it sounded like Margo. We still had no idea what, if anything, Margo was trying to say. She gave the book back to me, and they started talking about prom again. — John Green

When we read the right book generously, it can change the way think about the world around us. — John Green

Some infinites are longer than other infinites — The Fault In Our Stars John Green.

I am going to read this terrible book with the boring title that does not contain stormtroopers, — John Green

That's part of what I like about the book in some ways. It portrays death truthfully. You die in the middle of your life, in the middle of a sentence — John Green

And okay, fair enough, but there is this unwritten contract between author and reader and I think not ending your book kind of violates that contract. — John Green