John Green famous quotes

Great books help you understand, and they help you feel understood.
-- John Green

#Book #Helping #Feels

The challenge is the same whether or not I'm collaborating: to empathize with your reader and to tell a story that will matter to him or her. But the mechanics of going about that challenge change when you're collaborating, because you have someone to help refine your thinking and expand your vision of what might happen.
-- John Green

#Thinking #Challenges #Vision

I don’t know a perfect person. I only know flawed people who are still worth loving.
-- John Green

#Life #People #Perfect

I'm not from Indianapolis, but I like living in Indianapolis. If I were to explain it, I'd tell someone to imagine a city that perfectly captures the best and the worst of America. Imagine the truly American city, because that's what it is.
-- John Green

#Cities #America #Imagine

It is so hard to leave—until you leave. And then it is the easiest ***** thing in the world.
-- John Green

#Inspirational #Life #Hipster

The ideas of directing attention outward, trying to imagine other people complexly, trying not to see myself as the center of the universe - these concepts have become important to me, and I hope they're at work in my life on a minute-by-minute basis.
-- John Green

#Ideas #People #Important

You can love someone so much...But you can never love people as much as you can miss them.
-- John Green

#Moving On #Break Up #I Miss You

I don't see a future where we're all taught by robots. The real life, physical experience of being in a classroom and having conversations with knowledgeable people is immeasurably valuable and irreplaceable.
-- John Green

#Real #People #Robots

The world may be broken, but hope is not crazy.
-- John Green

#Hipster #Crazy #Broken

The internet is necessarily public. It can be filtered-public or censored-public, but it necessarily has to be open and available.
-- John Green

#Internet

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

#Stars #Cassius #Brutus

Don't lie to anyone, but particularly don't lie to millennials. They just know. They can smell it. Be yourself: if you're old, be old. If you don't know anything about pop culture, don't pretend to know anything about pop culture. When you credit teenagers with intelligence and emotional sophistication, they respond intelligently and with emotional sophistication.
-- John Green

#Being Yourself #Teenager #Lying

The only way out of the labyrinth of suffering is to forgive.
-- John Green

#Inspirational #Life #Inspiring

It's bad for your brain not to unplug.
-- John Green

#Brain

Maybe our favorite quotations say more about us than about the stories and people we're quoting.
-- John Green

#Inspirational #Real #People

The way we still essentializ, we're constantly essentializing people as merely poor, or merely other, and in the end you can't have a relationship with people. I think the biggest job of adulthood is to learn to imagine other people complexly.
-- John Green

#Jobs #Thinking #People

It hurts because it mattered.
-- John Green

#Hurt #It Hurts

Teenagers are extremely funny, and extremely clever and intellectually curious. But they're also willing to ask questions about the meaning of life without disguising them around irony, and ask questions about what are our responsibilities to other people without having to couch it in irony.
-- John Green

#Clever #Teenager #Responsibility

Every year, many, many stupid people graduate from college. And if they can do it, so can you.
-- John Green

#Stupid #College #Years

There's not a lot of room for un-ironic emotion in contemporary culture. I think that irony is an important tool in dealing with the world as we find it. It's a tool of protection, but it can also be a tool of incision to get to some truth. But along the way maybe we've lost some of what I think of as the power of straightforward emotion and earnestness and seriousness.
-- John Green

#Thinking #Ironic #Important

I wouldn’t have a career if it weren’t for independent bookstores.
-- John Green

#Independent #Careers #Bookstores

One of the things I like about making stuff in the age of the Internet, is that people make stuff in response to it. You can see people respond to your work visually or musically or with writing.
-- John Green

#Writing #People #Age

Colin's skin was alive with the feeling of connection to everyone in that car and everyone not in it. And he was feeling not-unique in the very best possible way.
-- John Green

#Unique #Car #Feelings

On the morning in question, she wore white shorts and a pink T-shirt that featured a green dragon breathing a fire of orange glitter. It is difficult to explain how awesome I found this T-shirt at the time.
-- John Green

#Morning #Breathing #White

You don't remember what happened. What you remember becomes what happened.
-- John Green

#Real #Remember #Abundance

What is the point of being alive if you don't at least try to do something remarkable?
-- John Green

#Inspirational #Motivational #Failure

I think teenagers bring a lot of intellectual sophistication. They're wrestling with big questions. It's just that, a lot of times they do that separately from adults.
-- John Green

#Teenager #Wrestling #Thinking

I was born into Bolívar's labyrinth, and so I must believe in the hope of Rabelais' Great Perhaps.
-- John Green

#Believe #Labyrinth #Born

All the characters are made out of words. With reading, I understand that the people aren't real but the fact that they are made out of language and are made out of words is extremely powerful to me. It becomes transformative for me. Different people have different ways of trying to make stories using language.
-- John Green

#Powerful #Real #Reading

The town was paper, but the memories were not.
-- John Green

#Memories #Hipster #Paper

When I look at my room, I see a girl who loves books.
-- John Green

#Girl #Hipster #Book

What a treacherous thing to believe that a person is more than a person.
-- John Green

#Life #Hipster #Believe

There is no Them. There are only facets of Us.
-- John Green

#Hipster #Poverty #Facets

I try to live life so that I can live with myself.
-- John Green

#Hipster #Live Life #Trying

We are all going, I thought, and it applies to turtles and turtlenecks, Alaska the girl and Alaska the place, because nothing can last, not even the earth itself. The Buddha said that suffering was caused by desire, we'd learned, and that the cessation of desire meant the cessation of suffering. When you stopped wishing things wouldn't fall apart, you'd stop suffering when they did.
-- John Green

#Girl #Fall #Book

I may die young, but at least I'll die smart.
-- John Green

#Hipster #Smart #May

But a lot of times, people die how they live. And so last words tell me a lot about who people were, and why they became the sort of people biographies get written about.
-- John Green

#People #Biographies #Lasts

That is the fear: I have lost something important, and I cannot find it, and I need it. It is fear like if someone lost his glasses and went to the glasses store and they told him that the world had run out of glasses and he would just have to do without.
-- John Green

#Running #Fear #Glasses

There's some people in this world who you can just love and love and love no matter what.
-- John Green

#Real #People #And Love

The thing about chameleoning your way through life is that it gets to where nothing is real.
-- John Green

#Real #Way #Life Is

What matters to you defines your mattering.
-- John Green

#Hipster #What Matters #Matter

Poetry is just so emo." he said. "Oh, the pain. The pain. It always rains. In my soul.
-- John Green

#Emo #Pain #Rain

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

#Real #Book #Simile

The pleasure isn't in doing the thing, the pleasure is in planning it.
-- John Green

#Planning #Anticipation #Pleasure

Maybe all the strings inside him broke.
-- John Green

#Broke #Strings

Not that smart. Not that hot. Not that nice. Not that funny. That's me: I'm not that.
-- John Green

#Nice #Smart #Hot

He liked the mere act of reading, the magic of turning scratches on a page into words inside his head.
-- John Green

#Inspirational #Book #Reading

If people could see me the way I see myself - if they could live in my memories - would anyone love me?
-- John Green

#Memories #I Hate You #People

dating you would be like a series of unnecessary root canals interspersed with occasional makeout sessions.
-- John Green

#Roots #Dating #Would Be

One of the Great Rules of Economics According to John Green If you are rich, you have to be an idiot not to stay rich. And if you are poor, you have to be really smart to get rich.
-- John Green

#Smart #Green #Idiot

It's hard to believe in coincidence, but it's even harder to believe in anything else.
-- John Green

#Real #Believe #Chaos

If people were like rain, I was like drizzle and she was a hurricane.
-- John Green

#Rain #People #Hurricanes

And, since they are theater people, they are all talking. All of them. Simultaneously. They do not need to be heard; they only need to be speaking.
-- John Green

#Talking #People #Needs

That's who you really like. The people you can think out loud in front of.
-- John Green

#I Hate You #Thinking #People

As a child I was an inveterate liar. As opposed to now, I am a Novelist.
-- John Green

#Children #Liars #Novelists

I feel like my life is so scattered right now. Like it's all the small pieces of paper and someone's turned on the fan. But, talking to you makes me feel like the fan's been turned off for a little bit. Like things could actually make sense. You completely unscatter me, and I appreciate that so much.
-- John Green

#Life #Talking #Appreciate

Leaving feels good and pure only when you leave something important, something that mattered to you. Pulling life out by the roots. But you can't do that until your life has grown roots.
-- John Green

#Real #Roots #Feel Good

As much as life can suck, it always beats the alternative.
-- John Green

#Alternatives #Beats

It's more impressive," I said out loud. "From a distance, I mean. You can't see the wear on things, you know? You can't see the rust or the weeds or the paint cracking. You see the place as someone once imagined it.
-- John Green

#Weed #Distance #Mean

You can't just make me different, and then leave. Because I was fine before, Alaska. I was just fine with me and last words and school friends, and you can't just make me different and then die.
-- John Green

#School #Alaska #Different

We all want to do something to mitigate the pain of loss or to turn grief into something positive, to find a silver lining in the clouds. But I believe there is real value in just standing there, being still, being sad.
-- John Green

#Sad #Pain #Real

I'm so proud of you that it makes me proud of me. I hope you know that.
-- John Green

#Fathers Day #Pride #Proud

The rules of capitalization are so unfair to words in the middle of a sentence.
-- John Green

#Hipster #Unfair #Middle

You can pick your friends, and you can pick your nose, but you can’t pick your friend’s nose.
-- John Green

#Inspiring #Friends #Noses

Also, I feel that crying is almost--like, aside from deaths of relatives or whatever-- totally avoidable if you follow two very simple rules: 1.Don't care too much. 2. Shut up. Everything unfortunate that has ever happened to me has stemmed from failure to follow one of the rules.
-- John Green

#Simple #Two #Too Much

We all use the future to escape the present.
-- John Green

#Life #Use

What's the meaning of life? Other people.
-- John Green

#People #Meaning Of Life

Whenever I'm asked what advice I have for young writers, I always say that the first thing is to read, and to read a lot. The second thing is to write. And the third thing, which I think is absolutely vital, is to tell stories and listen closely to the stories you're being told.
-- John Green

#Writing #Thinking #Advice

Harry Potter isn’t real? Oh no! Wait, wait, what do you mean by real? Is this video blog real? Am I real if you can see me and hear me, but only through the internet? Are you real if I can read your comment but I don’t know who you are or what your name is or where you’re from or what you look like or how old you are? I know all of those things about Harry Potter. Maybe Harry Potter’s real and you’re not.
-- John Green

#Life #Real #Mean

There were five others before they got to him. He smiled a little when his turn came. His voice was low, smoky, and dead sexy. “My name is Augustus Waters,” he said. “I’m seventeen. I had a little touch of osteosarcoma a year and a half ago, but I’m just here today at Isaac’s request.” “And how are you feeling?” asked Patrick. “Oh, I’m grand.” Augustus Waters smiled with a corner of his mouth. “I’m on a roller coaster that only goes up, my friend.
-- John Green

#Sexy #Names #Voice

There's a stark difference between the words 'prodigy' and 'genius.' Prodigies can very quickly learn what other people have already figured out; geniuses discover that which no one has ever previously discovered. Prodigies learn; geniuses do.
-- John Green

#Differences #People #Genius

Books so special and rare and yours that advertising your affection feels like a betrayal.
-- John Green

#Inspirational #Funny #Life

There are always answers. We just have to be smart enough.
-- John Green

#Smart #Answers #Enough

The way I figure it, everyone gets a miracle.
-- John Green

#Miracle #Way #Figures

Grief does not change you, Hazel. It reveals you.
-- John Green

#Change #Grief #Loss

The human tongue is like wasabi: it's very powerful, and should be used sparingly.
-- John Green

#Powerful #Tongue #Used

We are as indestructible as we believe ourselves to be.
-- John Green

#Believe

Some people don't understand the promises they're making when they make them," I said. "Right, of course. But you keep the promise anyway. That's what love is. Love is keeping the promise anyway.
-- John Green

#Love #Real #People

My thoughts are stars I cannot fathom into constellations.
-- John Green

#Stars #I Hate You #My Thoughts

The pleasure of remembering had been taken from me, because there was no longer anyone to remember with. It felt like losing your co-rememberer meant losing the memory itself, as if the things we'd done were less real and important than they had been hours before.
-- John Green

#Memories #Real #Taken

You have a choice in this world, I believe, about how to tell sad stories, and we made the funny choice.
-- John Green

#Believe #Choices #World

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

#Romantic #Hurt #Determination

Because you are beautiful. I enjoy looking at beautiful people, and I decided a while ago not to deny myself the simpler pleasures of existence
-- John Green

#Romantic #Beautiful #People

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

#Hurt #Love You #Sadness

I believe in that line from An Imperial Affliction. 'The risen sun too bright in her losing eyes.' That's God, I think, the rising sun, and the light is too bright and her eyes are losing but they aren't lost.
-- John Green

#Believe #Eye #Thinking

The real heroes anyway aren't the people doing things; the real heroes are the people NOTICING things, paying attention.
-- John Green

#Inspirational #Real #Hero

I told myself – as I’ve told myself before – that the body shuts down when the pain gets too bad, that consciousness is temporary, that this will pass. But just like always, I didn’t slip away. I was left on the shore with the waves washing over me, unable to drown.
-- John Green

#Pain #Body #Consciousness

standing in line is a form of oppression
-- John Green

#Lines #Oppression #Form

Some tourists think Amsterdam is a city of sin, but in truth it is a city of freedom. And in freedom, most people find sin.
-- John Green

#Freedom #Thinking #Cities

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

#Real #Hands #Soul

Waffles are just awesome bread.
-- John Green

#Waffles #Bread

Neither novels or their readers benefit from any 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.
-- John Green

#Real #Ideas #Effort

Because there is no glory in illness. There is no meaning to it. There is no honor in dying of.
-- John Green

#Death #Cancer #Honor

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

#Romantic #Real #Love You

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

#Mean #Augustus #Greater Good

Oh, I wouldn't mind, Hazel Grace. It would be a privilege to have my heart broken by you.
-- John Green

#Romantic #Heart #Broken

It seemed like forever ago, like we've had this brief but still infinite forever. Some infinities are bigger than other infinities.
-- John Green

#Time #Forever #Infinity

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.
-- John Green

#Real #Stories #Gus

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.
-- John Green

#Eye #House #Trying

She had this dark cancer water dripping out of her chest. Eyes closed. Intubated. But her hand was still her hand, still warm and the nails painted this almost black dark blue and I just held her hand and tried to imagine the world without us and for about one second I was a good enough person to hope she died so she would never know that I was going, too. But then I wanted more time so we could fall in love. I got my wish, I suppose. I left my scar.
-- John Green

#Falling In Love #Cancer #Eye