Quotes & Sayings About Life John Green

Aparrently, life is not a wish-granting factory. - Augustus Waters — John Green

It is worth it to leave behing my minor life for grander maybes
-Miles Pudge — John Green

In the darkest days, the Lord puts the best people into your life. (p. 28) — John Green

You need not specifically discuss the perspectives of different religions in your essay, so no research is necessary. Your knowledge, or lack thereof, has been established in the quizzes you've taken this semester. I am interested in how you are able to fit the uncontestable fact of suffering into your understanding of the world, and how you hope to navigate through life in spite of it. — John Green

Thank you," I say, pounding his back probably too hard. "That was the best damned passenger-seat driving I've ever seen in my life." He pats my uninjured cheek with his greasy hand. "I did it to save myself, not you," he says. "Believe me when I say that you did not once cross my mind. " I laugh. "Nor you mine," I say. — John Green

I just want to be enough for you, but I never can be. This can never be enough for you. But this is all you get. You get me, and your family, and this world. This is your life. I'm sorry if it sucks. — John Green

Such was life that morning: nothing really mattered that much, not the good things and not the bad ones. We were in the business of mutual amusement, and we were reasonably prosperous. (pg. 18) — John Green

Some infinities are bigger than other infinities. — 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

There was quite a lot of competitiveness about it, with everybody wanting to beat not only cancer itself, but also the other people in the room. Like, I realize that this is irrational, but when they tell you that you have, say, a 20 percent chance of living five years, the math kicks in and you figure that's one in five ... so you look around and think, as any healthy person would: I gotta outlast four of these bastards. — John Green

Love is the most common miracle. — John Green

I'm a lot better now," I said. "I'm going to Amsterdam tomorrow with Gus." "I know. I'm pretty well up-to-date on your life, because Gus never. Talks. About. Anything. Else." I — John Green

All salvation is temporary," Augustus shot back. "I bought them a minute. Maybe that's the minute that buys them an hour, which is the hour that buys them a year. No one's gonna buy them forever, Hazel Grace, but my life bought them a minute. And that's not nothing. — John Green

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

BEANNACHT For Josie On the day when the weight deadens on your shoulders and you stumble, may the clay dance to balance you. And when your eyes freeze behind the gray window and the ghost of loss gets in to you, may a flock of colors, indigo, red, green and azure blue come to awaken in you a meadow of delight. When the canvas frays in the curach of thought and a stain of ocean blackens beneath you, may there come across the waters a path of yellow moonlight to bring you safely home. May the nourishment of the earth be yours, may the clarity of light be yours, may the fluency of the ocean be yours, may the protection of the ancestors be yours. And so may a slow wind work these words of love around you, an invisible cloak to mind your life. — John O'Donohue

Whether you're studying electrical engineering or poetry, college is not about maximizing income, it's about becoming a better and more informed observer of the universe. And for me, at least, that what's leads to a more fulfilling life. — John Green

Such is life. We grow up. Planets like Tiny get new moons. Moons like me get new planets. — John Green

Because personally I think mattering is a piss-poor idea. I just want to fly under the radar, because when you start to make yourself into a big deal, that's when you get shot down. The bigger a deal you are, the worse your life is. — John Green

You've got a lifetime to mull over the Buddhist understanding of interconnectedness." He spoke every sentence as if he'd written it down, memorized it, and was now reciting it. "But while you were looking out the window, you missed the chance to explore the equally interesting Buddhist belief in being present for every facet of your daily life, of being truly present. Be present in this class. And then, when it's over, be present out there," he said, nodding toward the lake and beyond.'
~Dr. Hyde, pg 50 — John Green

Life tries to crush her, but only succeeded in making a diamond. — John Green

I knew that I would know more dead people. The bodies pile up. Could there be a space in my memory for each of them, or would I forget a little of Alaska every day for the rest of my life? — John Green

For pretty much the entire history of the human species, the average life span was less than thirty years? You could count on ten years or so of real adulthood, right? There was no planning for retirement, There was no planning for a career. There was no planning. No time for planning. No time for a future. But then the life spans started getting longer, and people started having more and more future. And now life has become the future. — 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

I have seen oaks of many species in many kinds of exposure and soil, but those of Kentucky excel in grandeur all I had ever before beheld. They are broad and dense and bright green. In the leafy bowers and caves of their long branches dwell magnificent avenues of shade, and every tree seems to be blessed with a double portion of strong exulting life. — John Muir

But I believe in true love, you know? I don't believe that everybody gets to keep their eyes or not get sick or whatever, but everybody should have true love, and it should last at least as long as your life does. — 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

And I will trust that He who heeds
The life that hides in mead and wold,
Who hangs you alder's crimson beads,
And stains these mosses green and gold,
Will still, as He hath done, incline
His gracious care to me and mine. — John Greenleaf Whittier

Me: "I refuse to attend Support Group."
Mom: "One of the symptoms of depression is disinterest in activities."
Me: "Please just let me watch America's Next Top Model. It's an activity."
Mom: "Television is a passivity."
Me: "Ugh, Mom, please."
Mom: "Hazel, you're a teenager. You're not a little kid anymore. You need to make friends, get out of the house, and live your life."
Me: "If you want me to be a teenager, don't send me to Support Group. Buy me a fake ID so I can go to clubs, drink vodka, and take pot."
Mom: "You don't take pot, for starters."
Me: "See, that's the kind of thing I'd know if you got me a fake ID."
Mom: "You're going to Support Group."
Me: "UGGGGGGGGGGGGG."
Mom: "Hazel, you deserve a life. — John Green

Whatever. Great day. Today. Best day of my life. — John Green

Best day of my life hasn't happened yet. But I knot it. I see it everyday. — John Green

The oblivion fear is something else, fear that I won't be able to give anything in exchange for my life. If you don't live a
life in service of a greater good, you've gotta at least die a death in service of a greater good, you know? And I fear that I won't get either a
life or a death that means anything. — John Green

Because everybody who has ever lost their way in life has felt the nagging insistence of that question. At some point we all look up and realize we are lost in a maze, and I dont want us to forget Alaska, and I don't want to forget that even when the material we study seems boring, we're trying to und3erstand how people answered that question and the question each of you posed in your papers
how different traditions have come to terms with what Chip, in his final, called 'people's rotten lots in life. — 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

He did not drink or do drugs or smoke cigarettes or wear black eyeliner or stay out late or get bad grades or pierce his tongue or have the words "KATHERINE LUVA 4 LIFE" tattoed across his back. — John Green

Are you trying to be subtle? Because I know you're talking about the honeybunnyless prom tragedy that is my life. — John Green

The times that were the most fun seemed always to be followed by sadness now, because it was when life started to feel like it did when she was with us that we realized how utterly, totally gone she was. — John Green

It's a good life, Hazel Grace. — John Green

So grass is a metaphor for life, and for death, and for equality, and for connectedness, and for children, and for God, and for hope. — John Green

Islam and Christianity promise eternal paradise to the faithful. And that is a powerful opiate, certainly, the hope of a better life to come. But there's a Sufi story that challenges the notion that people believe only because they need an opiate. Rabe'a al-Adiwiyah, a great woman saint of Sufism, was seem running through the streets of her hometown, Basra, carrying a torch in one hand and a bucket of water in the other. When someone asked her what she was doing, she answered, 'I am going to take this bucket of water and pour it on the flames of hell, and then I am going to use this torch to burn down the gates of paradise so that people will not love God for want of heaven of fear of hell, but because He is God. — John Green

Suffering can bend & break us. But it can also break us open to become the persons God intended us to be. It depends on what we do with the pain. If we offer it back to God, He will use it to do great things in us & through us, because suffering is fertile ... it an grow new life. — John Green

You'll... you'll... live your best life today. — John Green

Imagine others complexly. — 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

As Alaska zipped through something obvious about linear equations, stoner/baller Hank Walsten said, "Wait, wait. I don't get it."
"That's because you have eight functioning brain cells."
"Studies show that Marijuana is better for your health than those cigarettes," Hank said.
Alaska swallowed a mouthful of fries, took a drag on her cigarette, and blew a smoke at Hank. "I may die young," she said. "But at least I'll die smart. Now, back to tangents. — John Green

Have you really read all those books in your room?"

Alaska laughing- "Oh God no. I've maybe read a third of 'em. But I'm going to read them all. I call it my Life's Library. Every summer since I was little, I've gone to garage sales and bought all the books that looked interesting. So I always have something to read. — John Green

I left the only way you can leave. You pull your life off all at once - like a Band-Aid. — John Green

But while you were looking out the window, you missed the chance to explore the equally interesting Buddhist belief in being present for every facet of your daily life, of being truly present. Be present in this class. And then, when it's over, be present out there, he said, — John Green

but somehow when it's real, when it's your life . . . that person can feel even farther off and more unobtainable than an actual celebrity. Proximity doesn't breed familiarity. — John Green

your life broke down. The last good kiss / You — John Green

I needed, I decided, to really know her, because I needed more to remember. Before I could begin the shameful process of forgetting the how and the why of her living and dying, I needed to learn it: How. Why. When. Where. What. — John Green

It is a good life, Hazel Grace. — John Green

Omnis cellula e cellula," he said again. "All cells come from cells. Every cell is born of a previous cell, which was born of a previous cell. Life comes from life. Life begets life begets life begets life begets life. — John Green

My name is Hazel. Augustus Waters was the great star-crossed love of my life. Ours was an epic love story, and I won't be able to get more than a sentence into it without disappearing into a puddle of tears. Gus knew. Gus knows. I will not tell you our love story, because - like all real love stories - it will die with us, as it should. I'd hoped that he'd be eulogizing me, because there's no one I'd rather have ... " I started crying. "Okay, how not to cry. How am I - okay. Okay. — John Green

This is unbearable ... God. These books she'll never read. Her Life's Library. — John Green

Nothing (at least that can be done by humans) immortalizes anyone. The Fault in Our Stars will hopefully have a long and wonderful life, but it will eventually go out of print, and eventually the last person ever to read it will die, and then the characters will no longer live in any consciousness.Also, that is okay. That is good, actually. That is how it should be. One of the things the characters in this novel have to grapple with is the reality of temporaryness. What Gus in particular must reconcile himself to is that being temporary does not mean being unimportant or meaningless. — John Green

And I wanted to know whether it is possible to live a hopeful life in a world riddled with ambiguity, whether we can find a way to go on even when we don't get answers to questions that haunt us — John Green

You do not immortalize the lost by writing about them. Language buries, but does not resurrect. — John Green

Getting a life' is something only a complete idiot could believe. Like you can just drive to a store and get a life. See it in its shiny box and look inside the plastic window and catch a glimpse of yourself in a new life and say, 'Wow, I look much happier - I think this is the life I need to get!', take it to the counter, ring it up, put it on your credit card. If getting a life was that easy, we'd be one blissed-out race. — John Green

Some people have lives; some people have music. — John Green

I always had this idea that you should never give up a happy middle in the hopes of a happy ending, because there is no such thing as a happy ending. Do you know what I mean? There is so much to lose. — John Green

I hate that. I hate kids like that so fugging much. — John Green

Books are a weird collaboration between author and reader: You trust me to tell a good story, and I trust you to bring it to good life in your mind. — John Green

Did you know that for pretty much the entire history of the human species, the average life span was less than thirty years? You could count on ten years or so of real adulthood, right? There was no planning for retirement, There was no planning for a career. There was no planning. No time for plannning. No time for a future. But then the life spans started getting longer, and people started having more and more future. And now life has become the future. Every moment of your life is lived for the future
you go to high school so you can go to college so you can get a good job so you can get a nice house so you can afford to send your kids to college so they can get a good job so they can get a nice house so they can afford to send their kids to college. — John Green

Colin had always preferred baths; one of his general policies in life was never to do anything standing up that could just as easily be done lying down — John Green

You know, we could just keep going. We don't have to stop. — John Green

In the purifying sweep of atheism human beings lost all special value. The numb misery of the horse was matched by that of the farmer; the once-green ferny lives crushed into coal's fossiliferous strata were no more anonymous and obliterated than Clarence's own life would soon be, in a wink of earth's tremendous time. Without Biblical blessing the physical universe became sherry horrible and disgusting. All fleshy acts became vile, rather than merely some. The reality of men slaying lambs and cattle, fish and fowl to sustain their own bodies took on an aspect of grisly comedy
the blood-soaked selfishness of a cosmic mayhem. — John Updike

Was there time for her life to flash before her eyes? Was I there? — John Green

I don't know how I look, but I know how I feel: Young. Goofy. Infinite. — John Green

Just before you went into the ICU, I started to feel this ache in my hip." "No," I said. Panic rolled in, pulled me under. He nodded. "So I went in for a PET scan." He stopped. He yanked the cigarette out of his mouth and clenched his teeth. 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. He flashed his crooked smile, then said, "I lit up like a Christmas tree, Hazel Grace. The lining of my chest, my left hip, my liver, everywhere. — John Green

The poor Sufi dressed in rags walked into a jewelry store owned by a rich merchant and asked him, "Do you know how you're going to die." And the Sufi said, "I do.""How?" asked the merchant.
And the Sufi lay down, crossed his arms, said, "Like this," and died, whereupon the merchant promptly gave up his store to live a life of poverty in pursuit of the kind of spiritual wealth the dead Sufi had acquired. — John Green

Cancer kids are essentially side effects of the relentless mutation that made the diversity of life on earth possible. t — John Green

Who am I to say that these things might not be forever? Who is Peter Van Houten to assert as fact the conjecture that our labor is temporary? All I know of heaven and all I know of death is in this park; an elegant universe in ceaseless motion, teeming with ruined ruins and screaming children. — John Green

Desperately Lonely Swing Set Needs Loving Home
"One swing set, well worn but structually sound, seeks new home. Make memories with your kid or kids so that someday he or she or they will look into the backyard and feel the ache of sentimentality as desperately as I did this afternoon. It's all fragile and fleeting, dear reader, but with this swing set, your child(ren) will be introduced to the ups and downs of human life gently and safely, and may alos learn the most important lesson of all: No matter how hard how you kick, no matter how high you get, you can't go all the way around."
Swing set currently resides near 83rd and Spring Mill. — John Green

But it's your life. — John Green

Youth is counted sweetest by those who are no longer young. — John Green

He wanted her to call; he wanted her to miss him; but as it turned out, he was okay. He'd never found single life so interesting before. — John Green

We never be hopeless, because we can never be irreparably broken. We think think that we are invincible because we are as indestructible as we believe ourselves to be. We cannot be born, and we cannot die. Like all energy, we can only change shapes and sizes and manifestation. — John Green

Augustus Waters was the Mayor of the Secret City of Cancervania, and he is not replaceable", Isaac began.
"Other people will be able to tell you funny stories about Gus, because he was a funny guy, but let me tell you a serious one: A day after I got my eye cut out, Gus showed up at the hospital. I was blind and heartbroken and dind'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're going to live a good and long life filled with great and terrible moments that you cannot even imagine yet!'"
Isaac couldn't go on, or maybe that was all he had written. — John Green

Everybody was so kind. Strong, too. In the darkest days, the Lord puts the best people into your life."
"Quick, give me a throw pillow and some thread because that needs to be an Encouragement, — 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

What's the point in being alive if you don't at least try to do something remarkable? How very odd, to believe God gave you life, and yet not think that life asks more of you than watching TV. — John Green

And for the first time in his life, he smiled thinking about the always-coming infinite future stretching out before him. — John Green

In the contemporary world where things fall apart, and the centre cannot hold, you have to imagine a community where there is no centre. Hank, at the end of this year I started thinking that a lot of life is about doing things that don't suck with people who don't suck. — John Green

So how's it going?"
"Okay. Glad to be home, I guess. Gus told me you were in the ICU?"
"Yeah," I said.
"Sucks," he said.
"I'm a lot better now," I said. "I'm going to Amsterdam tomorrow with Gus."
"I know. I'm pretty well up-to-date on your life, because Gus never. Talks. About. Anything. Else. — John Green

I don't want to hear another negative word about cheerleaders. If it weren't for cheerleaders, who would tell us when and how to be happy during athletic events? If it weren't for cheerleaders, how would America's prettiest girls get the exercise that's so vital to a healthy life? — John Green

God designs that we should enjoy ourselves. I do not believe in a religion that makes people gloomy, melancholy, miserable and ascetic. . . . I should
not think there was anything great or good associated with that, while everything around, the trees, birds, flowers and green fields, were so pleasing, the insects and bees buzzing and fluttering, the lambs frolicking and playing. While everything else enjoyed life, why should not we? But we want to do it correctly
and not pervert any of these principles that God has planted in
the human family. — John Taylor

I told myself that imagining a met in my brain or my shoulder would not affect the invisible reality going on inside of me, and that therefore all such thoughts were wasted moments in a life composed of a definitionally finite set of such moments. — John Green

Since the only thing i can really count on in life is that whenever i turn on the tv there will be a law & order episode. this — John Green

It's not like we stop needing the comfort and help that a good story can bring when we graduate from high school. I am still looking for answers to questions about the meaning of life. I am still trying to fathom the wondrous strangeness of love. I am still trying to make my way through life despite heartache and loss. — 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

It just goes to show, if you try to ruin someone's life, it only gets better. You just don't get to be a part of it. — John Green

You can't live with the idea that someone might leave. So instead of being happy for me, like any normal person, you're pissed off because ooh, oh no, Hassan doesn't like me anymore. You're such a sitzpinkler. You're so goddamned scared of the idea that someone might dump you that your whole fugging life is built around not gettting left behind. Well, it doesn't work, kafir. I just - it's not just dumb, it's ineffective. Because then you're not being a good friend or a good boyfriend or whatever, because you're only thinking they-might-not-like-me-they-might-not-like-me, and guess what? When you act like that, no one likes you. There's your goddamned Theorem. — John Green

The kind of weather that reminds you after a long winter that while the world wasn't built for humans, we were built for the world. t — John Green

Public education does not exist for the benefit of students or the benefit of their parents. It exists for the benefit of the social order.
We have discovered as a species that it is useful to have an educated population. You do not need to be a student or have a child who is a student to benefit from public education. Every second of every day of your life, you benefit from public education.
So let me explain why I like to pay taxes for schools, even though I don't personally have a kid in school: It's because I don't like living in a country with a bunch of stupid people. — John Green

You're so busy being you, you don't realise how unprecedented you are — John Green

I liked being a person. I wanted to keep at it. — John Green

I thought of my dad telling me that the universe wants to be noticed but what we want is to be noticed by the universe, to have the universe give a shit what happens to us- not the collective idea of sentient life but each of us as individuals. — John Green

I think she and I were talking about how much I adored skateboarding on the computer but how it would never even occur to me to try and step on a skateboard in real life, and then she said, 'Let's play Truth or Dare' and then you fucked her."
"Wait, you fucked her? In front of the Colonel?" Takumi cried.
"I didn't fuck her. — John Green

I always felt like you had to be important to have enemies. — John Green

There's nothing bigger in life than the little things. — John Green