John Green Margo Quotes & Sayings

In the end,the rats didn't matter,not really,because I was in a place where Margo had been alive.I was in a place that saw her after I did,and the warmth of that made the minimall almost confortable. — John Green

Ben turned around and offered me his fist. I punched it softly, even though I hated that greeting. "Q!" he shouted over the music. "How good does this feel?" And I knew exactly what Ben meant: he meant listening to the Mountain Goats with your friends in a car that runs on a Wednesday morning in May on the way to Margo and whatever Margotastic prize came with finding her. "It beats calculus, — John Green

You were with Margo Roth Spiegelman last night? At THREE A.M.? I nodded. Alone? I nodded. Oh my God, if you hooked up with her, you have to tell me every single thing that happened. You have to write me a term paper on the look and feel of Margo Roth Spiegelman's breasts. Thrity pages, minimum! I want you to do a photo-realistic pencil drawing. A sculpture would also be acceptable. I was wondering if it would be possible for you to write a sestina about Margo Roth Spiegelman's breasts? Your six words are: pink, round, firmness, succulent, supple, and pillowy. Personally, I think at least one of the words should be buhbuhbuhbuh. — John Green

To find Margo Roth Spiegelman, you must become Margo Roth Spiegelman.
And I had done many of the things she might have done: I had engineered a most unlikely prom coupling. I had quieted the hounds of caste warfare. I had come to feel comfortable inside the rat-infested haunted house where she did her best thinking. I had seen. I had listened. But I could not yet become the wounded person. — John Green

All those paper people living in their paper houses, burning the future to stay warm. — 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

I always liked routine. I suppose I never found boredom very boring. I doubted I could explain it to someone like Margo but drawing circles through life struck me as a kind of reasonable insanity. — John Green

Everything's uglier close up -Margo Roth Spiegelman — John Green

We're not going to break anything. Don't think of it as breaking in to SeaWorld. Think of it as visiting SeaWorld in the middle of the night for free. — John Green

A Margo for each of us
and each more mirror than window. — John Green

I couldn't figure out which of these ideas, if any, was at the core of the poem. But thinking about the grass and all the different ways you could se it made me think about all the ways I'd seen and mis-seen Margo. There was no shortage of ways to see her. I'd been focused on what had become of her, but now with my head trying to understand the multiplicity of grass and her smell from the blanket still in my throat, I realized that the most important question was who I was looking for. If "What is the grass?" has such a complicated answer, I thought, so, too, must "Who is Margo Roth Spiegelman?" Like a metaphor rendered incomprehensible by its ubiquity, there was room enough in what she had left me for endless imaginings, for an infinite set of Margos. — John Green

As we walked, I kept taking glances at her through the crowd, quick snapshots: a photographic series entitled Perfection Stands Still While Mortals Walk Past. — John Green

The way I figure it, everyone gets a miracle. Like, I will probably never be struck by lightening, 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

Maybe all the strings inside him broke. — John Green

As I followed Margo's directions through the maze of one-way streets, we saw a few people sleeping on the sidewalk or sitting on benches, but nobody was moving. Margo rolled down the window, and I felt the thick air blow across my face, warmer than night ought to be. I glanced over and saw strands of her hair blowing all around her face. Even though I could see her there, I felt entirely alone among these big and empty buildings, like I'd survived the apocalypse and the world had been given to me, this whole and amazing and endless world, mine for the exploring. — John Green

I mean, we're ninjas."
"Well maybe you're a ninja," I said
"You're just a really loud, awkward ninja," Margo said, "but we are both ninjas. — John Green

And then Margo proceeded to lie. "He's actually my cousin," she said. Then she sidled up to me, out her hand aroud my waste so that I could feel each of her fingers taut against my hip bone, and she added, "And my lover. — John Green

Nothing ever happens like you imagine it will — John Green

All those poeple living in their paper houses, burning they paper future to stay warm. All the paper kids, drinking paper beer some bum bought for them at the paper convienience store ... All this things paper-thin and paper-frail. — John Green

And I don't really have anyone upon whom I want to rain down my wrath, I said, because in truth I didn't. I always felt like you had to be important to have enemies. Example: Historically, Germany has had more enemies than Luxembourg, Margo Roth Spiegelman was Germany. And Great Britain. And the United States. And czarist Russia. Me, I'm Luxembourg. Just sitting around, tending sheep, and yodeling. — John Green

Q, you're going to go to Duke. You're going to be a very successful lawyer-or-something and get married and have babies and live your whole little life, and then you're going to die, and in the last moments, when you're chocking on your own bile in the nursing home, you'll say to yourself:'Well, I wasted my whole goddamned life, but at least I broke into SeaWorld with Margo Roth Spiegelman my senior year of high school. At least I carpe'd that one diem. — John Green

I always got very nervous whenever I heard that Margo was about to show up, on account of how she was the most fantastically gorgeous creature that God has ever created. — John Green

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

But there she is, and I am watching her through the Plexiglas, and she looks like Margo Roth Spiegelman, this girl I have known since I was two
this girl who was an idea that I loved. — John Green

With all the planning she'd done, she must have known she was leaving, and even she couldn't have been totally immune to the feeling. She'd had good days here. And on the last day, the bad days become so difficult to recall, because one way or another, she made a life here, just as I had. The town was paper, but the memories were not. All the things I'd done here, all the love and pity and compassion and violence and spite, kept welling up inside me. These whitewashed cinder-block walls. My white walls. Margo's white walls. We'd been captive in them for so long, stuck in their belly like Jonah. — John Green

As I took those two steps back, Margo took two equally small and quiet steps forward. — John Green

We were walking away from the car together when Margo reached down for my hand,laced her fingers in mine,and squeezed.I squeezed back and then glanced at her.She nodded her head solemnly,and I nodded back,and then she let go of my hand. — John Green

Hey, I notice you look like you're coming down off a meth binge and smell vaguely of algae. Were you perchance dancing with a snakebit Margo Roth Spiegelman a couple of hours ago? — John Green

The thing about Margo Roth Spiegelman is that really all I could ever do was let her talk, and then when she stopped talking encourage her to go on, due to the facts that 1. I was incontestably in love with her, and 2. She was absolutely unprecedented in every way, and 3. She never really asked me any questions, so the only way to avoid silence was to keep her talking. — John Green

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

Pages later- hearing and exposed- Whitman starts to write about all the travel he can do by imagining, and lists all the places he can visit while loafing on the grass. "My palms cover continents," he writes.
I kept thinking about maps, like the way sometimes when I was kid and I would look at atlases, and just the looking was kind of like being somewhere else. This is what I had to do.I had to hear and imagine my way into her map.
But hadn't I been trying to do that? I looked up at the maps above my computer. I had tried to plot her possible travels, but just as the grass stood for too much so Margo stood for too much. It seemed impossible to pin her down with maps. She was too small and the space covered by the maps too big. They were more than a waste of time- they were the physical representation of the total fruitlessness of all of it, my absolute inability to develop the kinds of palms that cover continents, to have the kind of mind that correctly imagines. — John Green

Margo was so beautiful that even her fake smiles were convincing. (54) — John Green

You know your problem, Quentin? You keep expecting people not to be themselves. I mean, I could hate you for being massively unpunctual and for never being interested in anything other than Margo Roth Spiegelman, and for, like, never asking me about how it's going with my girlfriend - but I don't give a shit, man, because you're you. My parents have a shit ton of black Santas, but that's okay. They're them. I'm too obsessed with a reference website to answer my phone sometimes when my friends call, or my girlfriend. That's okay, too. That's me. You like me anyway. And I like you. You're funny, and you're smart, and you may show up late, but you always show up eventually. — John Green

That doesn't sound like my Margo, she said, and I thought of my Margo, and all of us looking at her reflection in different funhouse mirrors. — John Green

Forever is composed of nows. - Margo Roth Spiegelman — John Green

And all at once I knew how Margo Roth Spiegelman felt when she wasn't being Margo Roth Spiegelman: she felt empty. She felt the unscaleable wall surrounding her. I thought of her asleep on the carpet with only that jagged sliver of sky above her. Maybe Margo felt comfortable there because Margo the person lived like that all the time: in an abandoned room with blocked-out windows, the only light pouring in through holes in the roof. Yes. 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

Everything's uglier up close.

Not you. — John Green

I lay down and started to feel a little depressed about prom. I refused to feel any kind of sadness over the fact that I wasn't going to prom, but I had - stupidly, embarrassingly - thought of finding Margo, and getting her to come home with me just in time for prom, like late on Saturday night, and we'd walk into the Hilton ballroom wearing jeans and ratty T-shirts, and we'd be just in time for the last dance, and we'd dance while everyone pointed at us and marveled at the return of Margo, and then we'd fox-trot the hell out of there and go get ice cream at Friendly's. So yes, like Ben, I harbored ridiculous prom fantasies. But at least I didn't say mine out loud. — John Green

I hit at the dirt with the heels of my fists, and then pounded it again and again, the sand scattering around my hands until I was hitting the bare roots of the tree, and I kept it up, the pain shooting up through my palms and wrists. I had not cried for Margo until then, but now finally I did, pounding against the ground and shouting because there was no one to hear: I missed her I missed her I missed her I miss her. I — John Green

I stopped at a stop sign at the end of the street, and Margo said, "What the hell? Go go go go go," and I said, "Oh, right," because I had forgotten that I was throwing caution to the wind and everything. — John Green

Forever is composed of nows," she says. I have nothing to say to that; I am just chewing through it when Margo says, "Emily Dickinson. Like I said, I'm doing a lot of reading. — John Green

And then, in boating supplies, Margo located an air horn. She took it out of the box and held it up in the air, and I said, "No," and she said, "No what?" And I said, "No don't blow the air horn," except when I got to the b in blow, she squeezed on it and it let out an excruciatingly loud honk that felt in my head like the auditory equivalent of an aneurysm, and then she said, "I'm sorry, I couldn't hear you. What was that?" And I said, "Stop b-" and then she did it again. — John Green

The fundamental mistake I had always made ... was this: Margo was not a miracle. She was not an adventure. She was not a fine and precious thing. She was a girl. (pg. 199) — John Green

I had not cried for Margo until then, but now finally I did, pounding against the ground and shouting because there was no on to hear: I missed her I missed her I missed her I miss her. — John Green

She loved so much misteries tha she became one — John Green

Margo herself was - at least part of the time - very unMargo — John Green

But then again, if you don't imagine, nothing ever happens at all. Imagining isn't perfect. You can't get all the way inside someone else. I could never have imagined Margo's anger at being found, or the story she was writing over. But imagining being someone else, or the world being something else, is the only way in. — John Green

Everything's uglier close up — John Green

To what do I owe the pleasure?' I asked. Margo and I were still friendly, I guess, but we weren't meet-in-the-dead-of-night-wearing-black-face-paint friendly. She had friends for that, I'm sure. I just wasn't among them. — John Green

A normal mother might have said, "Hey, I notice you look like you're coming down off a meth binge and smell vaguely of algae. Were you perchance dancing with a snakebit Margo Roth Spiegelman a couple hours ago?" But no. They preferred dreams. I showered, put on a T-shirt and a pair of jeans. I was late, but then again, I was always late. — John Green

I'm so pissed at her. For ... for, I don't know. Not being the Margo I had expected her to be. — John Green

For so long, I hadn't really heard Margo - I'd seen her screaming and thought her laughing - that now I figured it was my job. To try, even at this great remove, to hear the opera of her. — John Green

That night,I lay on my side,staring out the window into the invisible world outside.I kept trying to fall asleep,but then my eyes would dart open,just to check.I couldn't help but hope that Margo Roth Spiegelman would return to my window and drag my tired ass through one more night I'd never forget. — John Green

Radar half raised his hand. I dutifully called on him. Yes, I was wondering if it would be possible for you to write a sestina about Margo Roth Spiegelman's breasts? Your six words are: pink, round, firmness, succulent, supple, and pillowy. — John Green

You're going to be a very successful lawyer-or-something and get married and have babies and live your whole little life, and then you're going to die, and in your last moments, when you're choking on your own bile in the nursing home, you'll say to yourself: 'Well I wasted my whole goddamned life, but at least I broke into SeaWorld with Margo Roth Spiegelman in my senior year of high school. At least I carpe'd the one diem — John Green

The sky is like a monochromatic contemporay painting, drawing me in its illusion of depth, pulling me up. — John Green

curvy." I liked Lacey, but I saw Margo's — John Green

Oh, bullshit. You didn't come here to make sure I was okay. You came here because you wanted to save poor little Margo from her troubled little self, so that I would be oh-so-thankful to my knight in shining armour — John Green

Margo was not a miracle.She was not an adventure.She was not a fine and precious thing.She was just a girl. — John Green

But her shoulder was against my arm, and the backs of our hands were touching, and although I was not looking at Margo, pressing myself against the glass felt almost like pressing myself against her. — John Green

Physical space between us evaporates. We play the broken strings of our instruments one last time — John Green

Its a paper town, with paper houses and paper people, everything is uglier up close. — 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

I was standing above Chuck with his right eyebrow on my T-shirt when his eyes shot open. Lightning fast, Margo grabbed his comforter and threw it over him, and when I looked up, the little ninja was already out the window. I followed as quickly as I could, as Chuck screamed, "MAMA! DAD! ROBBERY ROBBERY!" I wanted to say, The only thing we stole was your eyebrow, but I kept mum as I swung myself feetfirst out the window. — John Green

I shaved this morning for precisely that reason. I was like, 'Well, you never know when someone is going to clamp down on your calf and try to suck out the snake poison. — John Green

Tonight, darling, we are going to right a lot of wrongs. And we are going to wrong some rights. The first shall be last; the last shall be first; the meek shall do some earth-inheriting. But before we can radically reshape the world, we need to shop. — John Green

And so when she left, she left for good. But I could not believe she had left for a perpetual journey. She had, I felt sure, left for a place - a place where she could stay long enough for it to matter, long enough for the next leaving to feel as good as the last one had. There is a corner of the world somewhere far away from here where no one knows what "Margo Roth Spiegelman" means. And Margo is sitting in that corner, scrawling in her black notebook. — John Green

Margo says, I know what she's talking about. The something deeper and more secret. It's like cracks inside of you. Like there are these fault lines where things don't meet up right. — John Green

Because Margo knows the secret of leaving, the secret I have only just now learned: leaving feels good and pure only when you leave something important, something that mattered to you. Pulling life out y the roots. But you can't do that until your life grown roots. — John Green

I laugh, but I'm still thinking about ten-year-old Margo having a crush on ten-year-old me. — John Green

Here is Margo Roth Spiegelman, five feet away from me, her lips chapped to cracking, makeup-less, dirt in her fingernails, her eyes silent. I've never seen her eyes dead like that, but then again, maybe I've never seen her eyes before. — John Green