John Green · 352 pages
Rating: (84.9K votes)
“We just did an awesome job of not dying.”
“Once you think a thought, it is extremely difficult to unthink it.”
“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.”
“I responded to this development with the kind of sophisticated language for which I am famous. "Crap crap crap crap crap crap crap stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid crap.”
“Debbie had to get up and slice me a thick piece of cake before she could answer. And I do mean thick. Harry Potter volume seven thick. I could have knocked out a burglar with this piece of cake. Once I tasted it, though, it seemed just the right size.”
“I may have been a complete lunatic, but I was a complete lunatic with manners.”
“Christmas is never over,unless you want it to be... Christmas is a state of mind.”
“One person's crazy is another person's sane, I guess.”
“Lady and gentleman, when my parents left Korea with nothing but the clothes on their backs and the considerable wealth they had amassed in the shipping business, they had a dream. They had a dream that one day amid the snowy hilltops of western North Carolina, their son would lose his virginity to a cheerleader in the woman's bathroom of a Waffle House just off the interstate. My parents have sacrificed so much for this dream! And that is why we must journey on, despite all trials and tribulations! Not for me and least of all for the poor cheerleader in question, but for my parents and indeed for all immigrants who came to his great nation in what they themselves could never have: CHEERLEADER SEX.”
“Maybe you've never fallen into a frozen stream. Here's what happens.
1. It is cold. So cold that the Department of Temperature Acknowledgment and Regulation in you brain gets the readings and says, "I can't deal with this. I'm out of here." It puts up the OUT TO LUNCH sign and passes all responsibility to the...
2. Department of Pain and the Processing Thereof, which gets all this gobbledygook from the temperature department that it can't understand. "This is so not our job," it says. So it just starts hitting random buttons, filling you with strange and unpleasant sensations, and calls the...
3. Office of Confusion and Panic, where there is always someone ready to hop on the phone the moment it rings. This office is at least willing to take some action. The Office of Confusion and Panic loves hitting buttons.”
“Sometimes when we forget to do things for others, it's because we're too wrapped up in our own problems.”
“Something about me has always liked the drama and inconvience of bad weather. The worse the better, really.”
“There is always the risk: something is good and good and good and good, then all at once it gets awkward.”
“If by that you mean that I dislike celebrity magazines, prefer food to anorexia, refuse to watch TV shows about models, and hate the color pink, then yes. I am proud to be not really a girl.”
“Tired, but not the kind of tired that sleep fixes.”
“Stuart must have sensed my despair from the way I began lightly banging my forehead on the table.”
“There is nothing about a bad situation that fourteen hyper cheerleaders can't worsen.”
“There is always the risk: something is good and good and good and good, and then all at once it gets awkward. All at once, she sees you looking at her, and then she doesn't want to joke around with you anymore, because she doesn't want to seem flirty, because she doesn't want you to think she likes you. It’s such a disaster, whenever, in the course of human relationships, someone begins to chisel away at the wall of separation between friendship and kissing. Breaking down that wall is the kind of story that might have a happy middle— oh, look, we broke down this wall, I’m going to look at you like a girl and you’re going to look at me like a boy and we’re going to play a fun game called Can I Put My Hand There What About There What About There. And sometimes that happy middle looks so great that you can convince yourself that it’s not the middle but will last forever.”
“I knew it was beautiful, but knowing something is beautiful and caring about it are two very different things, and I didn't care.”
“We study there a lot because... what other choice does society give us, right? It's Starbucks or death, sometimes.”
“It's always awkward when someone doesn't realize you're joking and devotes thought time to what you've said. Double that when the person is wearing tinfoil.”
“I followed your footsteps," he said, in answer to the unspoken question. "Snow makes it easy."
I had been tracked, like a bear.
"Sorry to make you go to all that trouble," I said.
"I didn't have to go that far, really. You're about three streets over. You just kept going in loops."
A really inept bear.”
“Just then, my phone started ringing. The ring must have been damaged by the water as well, so now it had a high, keening note - kind of the sound I imagine a mermaid might make if you punched her in the face.”
“Don't make fun of her," the Duke said. "She needs gentle encouragement. Carla, baby, we love you. You are such a good car. And we believe in you one hundred percent."
...
"Don't listen to him, Carla. You're gonna do this."
...
"I love you, Carla. You know that, don't you? I wake up every morning and the first thing I think is that I love Tobin's mom's car. I know that's weird, baby, but I do. I love you. And I know you can do this."
...
"Carla," the Duke said, "it's time to tell you the truth. I'm in love with you. I want to be with you, Carla. I've never felt this way about a c-”
“I laughed and pointed out that "Hash Browns Mean Nothing Without You" was a pretty good name for a band.
"Or a song," the Duke said, and then she started singing all glam rock, a glove up to her face holding an imaginary mic as she rocked out an a cappella power ballad. "Oh, I deep fried for you / But now I weep 'n' cry for you / Oh, babe, this meal was made for two / And these hash browns mean nothing, oh these hash browns mean nothing, yeah these HASH BROWNS MEAN NOTHIN' without you.”
“I stood under the awning for a moment, but finally I decided that being in a bad mood with your friends beats being in a bad mood without them.”
“I can sleep like a champion. I once slept through a smoke alarm going off. For three hours. In my bedroom.”
“Were you playing with Stuart?" she asked.
The question was loaded. I was a filthy, filthy woman, and even the five-year-old knew it.”
“Tobin," Mom said disapprovingly. She wasn't a particularly funny person. It suited her professionally - I mean, you don't want your cancer surgeon to walk into the examination room and be like, "Guy walks into a bar. Bartender says, 'What'll ya have?' And the guy says, 'Whaddya got?' And the bartender says, 'I don't know what I got, but I know what you got: Stage IV melanoma.”
“...being in a bad mood with your friends beats being in a bad mood without them.”
“I'm magnetic," she whispered, half awed and half horrified.
"I hope you don't start sticking to fridges and stuff," I said in disbelief.
Fang dropped down next to me, and the Gasman joined us, squishing in next to Nudge.
"What's going on?" Fang asked.
"I'm Magnet Girl!" Nudge said, already coming to terms with her new skill.”
“Writing and reading decrease our sense of isolation. They deepen and widen and expand our sense of life: they feed the soul.”
“We are none of us perfect, and...we learn to take these imperfections and make them only a small part of who we are”
“And like many a Christian before them, they completely forgot that the only sword-shaped weapon Jesus ever actually used was the one He died on.”
“I heard some interesting things about your performance up here."
"I hear interesting things about your 'performance' all the time Doug, but you don't hear me making jokes about it.”
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