Aparna > Aparna's Quotes

“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

“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

“It's a metaphor, see: You put the killing thing right between your teeth, but you don't give it the power to do its killing.”
― 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

“Headline?" he asked.
"'Swing Set Needs Home,'" I said.
"'Desperately Lonely Swing Set Needs Loving Home,'" he said.
"'Lonely, Vaguely Pedophilic Swing Set Seeks the Butts of Children,'" I said.”
― 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

“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

“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, The Fault in Our Stars

“I'll fight it. I'll fight it for you. Don't you worry about me, Hazel Grace. I'm okay. I'll find a way to hang around and annoy you for a long time.”
― John Green, The Fault in Our Stars

“Come over here so I can examine your face with my hands and see deeper into your soul than a sighted person ever could.”
― 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

“That's why I like you. Do you realize how rare it is to come across a hot girl who creates a adjectival version of the word pedophile? You are so busy being you that you have no idea how utterly unprecedented you are.”
― John Green, The Fault in Our Stars

“Thank you for explaining that my eye cancer isn't going to make me deaf. I feel so fortunate that an intellectual giant like yourself would deign to operate on me.”
― 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

“As the tide washed in, the Dutch Tulip Man faced the Ocean:
"Conjoiner rejoinder poisoner concealer revelator. Look at it, rising up and rising down, taking everything with it."

"What’s that?" Anna asked.

"Water," the Dutchman said. "Well, and time.”
― John Green, The Fault in Our Stars

“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

“You used," he said, and then took a sharp breath, "to call me Augustus.”
― John Green, The Fault in Our Stars

“Sometimes people don’t 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?”
― John Green, The Fault in Our Stars

“I imagined the Augustus Waters analysis of that comment: If I am playing basketball in heaven, does that imply a physical location of a heaven containing physical basketballs? Who makes the basketballs in question? Are there less fortunate souls in heaven who work in a celestial basketball factory so that I can play? Or did an omnipotent God create the basketballs out of the vacuum of space? Is this heaven in some kind of unobservable universe where the laws of physics don't apply, and if so, why in the hell would I be playing basketball when I could be flying or reading or looking at beautiful people or something else I actually enjoy? It's almost as if the way you imagine my dead self says more about you than either the person I was or whatever I am now.”
― John Green, The Fault in Our Stars

“Do you have a Wish?' he asked, referring to this organization, The Genie Foundation, which is in the business of granting sick kids one wish.
'No' I said. 'I used my Wish pre-Miracle.'
'What'd you do?'
I sighed loudly. 'I was thirteen,' I said.
'Not Disney,' he said.
I said nothing.
'You did not go to Disney World.'
I said nothing.
'HAZEL GRACE!' he shouted. 'You did not use your one dying Wish to go to Disney World with your parents.'
'Also Epcot Center,' I mumbled.
'Oh, my God,' Augustus said. 'I can't believe I had a crush on a girl with such cliché wishes.”
― John Green, The Fault in Our Stars

“We are like a bunch of dogs squirting on fire hydrants. We poison the groundwater with our toxic piss, marking everything MINE in a ridiculous attempt to survive our deaths. I can't stop pissing on fire hydrants...I am an animal like any other. Hazel is different. she walks lightly, old man. She walks lightly upon the earth. She knows the truth: We're as likely to hurt the universe as we are to help it, and we're not likely to do either.

People will say it's sad that she leaves a lesser scar, that fewer remember her, that she was loved deeply but not widely. But it's not sad. It's triumphant. It's heroic. Isn't that the real heroism?

The real heroes anyway aren't the people doing things; the real heroes are the people NOTICING things, paying attention.”
― John Green, The Fault in Our Stars

“I love you present tense.”
― John Green, The Fault in Our Stars

“Mom sobbed something into Dad's chest that I wish I hadn't heard, and that I hope she never finds out that I did hear. She said, "I won't be a mom anymore." It gutted me pretty badly.”
― John Green, The Fault in Our Stars

“Where is my chance to be somebody's Peter Van Houten?' He hit the steering wheel weakly, the car honking as he cried. He leaned his head back, looking up. 'I hate myself I hate myself I hate this I hate this I disgust myself I hate it I hate it I hate it just let me fucking die.”
― John Green, The Fault in Our Stars

“I am in the midst of a soliloquy! I wrote this out and memorized it and if you interrupt me I will completely screw it up,' Augustus interrupted. 'Please to be eating your sandwich and listening.”
― John Green, The Fault in Our Stars

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

“It's just that most really good-looking people are stupid, so I exceed expectations.'
'Right, it's primarily his hotness,' I said.
'It can be sort of blinding,' he said.
'It actually did blind our friend Isaac,' I said.
'Terrible tragedy, that. But can I help my own deadly beauty?'
'You cannot.'
'It is my burden, this beautiful face.'
'Not to mention your body.'
'Seriously, don't even get me started on my hot bod. You don't want to see me naked, Dave. Seeing me naked actually took Hazel Grace's breath away,' he said, nodding toward the oxygen tank.”
― 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