Jay W. > Jay's Quotes

“Writers don't write from experience, although many are hesitant to admit that they don't. ...If you wrote from experience, you'd get maybe one book, maybe three poems. Writers write from empathy.”
― Nikki Giovanni

“Augustus Waters was a self-aggrandizing bastard. But we forgive him. We forgive him not because he had a heart as figuratively good as his literal one sucked, or because he knew more about how to hold a cigarette than any nonsmoker in history, or because he got eighteen years when he should've gotten more.'
'Seventeen,' Gus corrected.
'I'm assuming you've got some time, you interupting bastard.
'I'm telling you,' Isaac continued, 'Augustus Waters talked so much that he'd interupt you at his own funeral. And he was pretentious: Sweet Jesus Christ, that kid never took a piss without pondering the abundant metaphorical resonances of human waste production. And he was vain: I do not believe I have ever met a more physically attractive person who was more acutely aware of his own physical attractiveness.
'But I will say this: When the scientists of the future show up at my house with robot eyes and they tell me to try them on, I will tell the scientists to screw off, because I do not want to see a world without him.'
I was kind of crying by then.”
― John Green, The Fault in Our Stars

“Some infinities are bigger than other infinities.”
― John Green, The Fault in Our Stars

“I believe the universe wants to be noticed. I think the universe is inprobably biased toward the consciousness, that it rewards intelligence in part because the universe enjoys its elegance being observed. And who am I, living in the middle of history, to tell the universe that it-or my observation of it-is temporary?”
― John Green, The Fault in Our Stars

“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. 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 betrayal”
― John Green, The Fault in Our Stars

“But it is the nature of stars to cross, and never was Shakespeare more wrong than when he has Cassius note, ‘The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars / But in ourselves.”
― John Green, The Fault in Our Stars

“We’re as likely to hurt the universe as we are to help it, and we’re not likely to do either.”
― John Green, The Fault in Our Stars

“there is no shortage of fault to be found amid our stars”
― John Green, The Fault in Our Stars

“I wanted to know that he would be okay if I died. I wanted to not be a grenade, to not be a malevolent force in the lives of people I loved.”
― John Green, The Fault in Our Stars

“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, The Fault in Our Stars

“What else? She is so beautiful. You don’t get tired of looking at her. You never worry if she is smarter than you: You know she is. She is funny without ever being mean. I love her. I am so lucky to love her, Van Houten. You don’t get to choose if you get hurt in this world, old man, but you do have some say in who hurts you. I like my choices. I hope she likes hers.”
― John Green, The Fault in Our Stars

“And then the line was quite but not dead. I almost felt like he was there in my room with me, but in a way it was better, like I was not in my room and he was not in his, but instead we were together in some invisible and tenuous third space that could only be visited on the phone.”
― John Green, The Fault in Our Stars

“He called out to his fellow monks,'Come quickly I am tasting stars.”
― John Green, The Fault in Our Stars

“You’re arguing that the fragile, rare thing is beautiful simply because it is fragile and rare. But that’s a lie, and you know it.”
― John Green

“You don't get to choose if you get hurt in this world...but you do have some say in who hurts you. I like my choices.”
― John Green, The Fault in Our Stars

“My cancer is me. The tumors are made of me. They’re made of me as surely as my brain and my heart are made of me. It is a civil war with a predetermined winner”
― John Green, The Fault in Our Stars

“the world wasn't made for us, we were made for the world”
― John Green, The Fault in Our Stars

“I fear oblivion' he said. "I fear it like a proverbial blind man fears the dark”
― Augustus Waters The Fault in Our Stars

“A day after I got my eye cut out, Gus showed up at the hospital. 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 long life filled with great and terrible moments you cannot even imagine yet!”
― John Green, The Fault in Our Stars

“Are you currently at your house?" he asked.
"Um, no," I said.
"That was a trick question. I knew the answer, because I am currently at your house.”
― John Green, The Fault in Our Stars

“Observation: It would be awesome to fly in a superfast airplane that could chase the sunrise around the world for a while.”
― John Green, The Fault in Our Stars

“There is a sacredness in tears. They are not a mark of weakness, but of power. They speak more eloquently than ten thousand tongues. They are the messengers of overwhelming grief, of deep contrition and of unspeakable love.”
― Washington Irving

“We've got to live, no matter how many skies have fallen.”
― D.H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley's Lover

“The road to hell is paved with adverbs.”
― Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

“Nobody looks good in their darkest hours. But it's those hours that make us what we are.”
― Karen Marie Moning, Faefever

“Its our actions that define us. What we choose. What we resist. What we're willing to die for.”
― Karen Marie Moning

“I hate fate. I don’t believe in her. Unfortunately, I think the bitch believes in me.”
― Karen Marie Moning, Shadowfever

“Time heals.

No, it doesn't. At best, time is the great leveler, sweeping us all into coffins. We find ways to distract ourselves from the pain. Time is neither scalpel nor bandage. It is indifferent. Scar tissue is not a good thing. It is merely the wound's other face.”
― Karen Marie Moning, Shadowfever

“Hope strengthens. Fear kills.”
― Karen Marie Moning, Shadowfever

“I see God in a sunrise, not in repetitious ritual.”
― Karen Marie Moning, Bloodfever