Quotes from Turtles All the Way Down

“Your now is not your forever.”
― John Green, quote from Turtles All the Way Down

“We never really talked much or even looked at each other, but it didn't matter because we were looking at the same sky together, which is maybe even more intimate than eye contact anyway. I mean, anybody can look at you. It's quite rare to find someone who sees the same world you see.”
― John Green, quote from Turtles All the Way Down

“Anybody can look at you. It's quite rare to find someone who sees the same world you see.”
― John Green, quote from Turtles All the Way Down

“...no one ever says good-bye unless they want to see you again.”
― John Green, quote from Turtles All the Way Down

“You're both the fire and the water that extinguishes it. You're the narrator, the protagonist, and the sidekick. You're the storyteller and the story told. You are somebody's something, but you are also your you.”
― John Green, quote from Turtles All the Way Down

“True terror isn’t being scared; it’s not having a choice on the matter.”
― John Green, quote from Turtles All the Way Down

“The problem with happy endings is that they're either not really happy, or not really endings, you know? In real life, some things get better and some things get worse. And then eventually you die.”
― John Green, quote from Turtles All the Way Down

“The worst part of being truly alone is you think about all the times you wished that everyone would just leave you be. Then they do, and you are left being, and you turn out to be terrible company.”
― John Green, quote from Turtles All the Way Down

“The thing about a spiral is, if you follow it inward, it never actually ends. It just keeps tightening, infinitely.”
― John Green, quote from Turtles All the Way Down

“I was beginning to learn that your life is a story told about you, not one that you tell.”
― John Green, quote from Turtles All the Way Down

“You remember your first love because they show you, prove to you, that you can love and be loved, that nothing in this world is deserved except for love, that love is both how and you become a person and why.”
― John Green, quote from Turtles All the Way Down

“You are as real as anyone, and your doubts make you more real, not less.”
― John Green, quote from Turtles All the Way Down

“Actually, the problem is that I can't lose my mind," I said. "It's inescapable.”
― John Green, quote from Turtles All the Way Down

“What I love about science is that as you learn, you don't really get answers. You just get better questions.”
― John Green, quote from Turtles All the Way Down

“To be alive is to be missing.”
― John Green, quote from Turtles All the Way Down

“I was so good at being a kid, and so terrible at being whatever I was now.”
― John Green, quote from Turtles All the Way Down

“No, it's not, Holmesy. You pick your endings, and your beginnings. You get to pick the frame, you know? Maybe you don't choose what's in the picture, but you decide the frame.”
― John Green, quote from Turtles All the Way Down

“Spirals grow infinitely small the farther you follow them inward, but they also grow infinitely large the farther you follow them out.”
― John Green, quote from Turtles All the Way Down

“It’s a weird phrase in English, in love, like it’s a sea you drown in or a town you live in. You don’t get to be in anything else—in friendship or in anger or in hope. All you can be in is love.”
― John Green, quote from Turtles All the Way Down

“One of the challenges with pain--physical or psychic--is that we can really only approach it through metaphor. It can't be represented the way table or a body can. In some ways, pain is the opposite of language.”
― John Green, quote from Turtles All the Way Down

“If only I were as good at life as I am at the internet.”
― John Green, quote from Turtles All the Way Down

“I is the hardest word to define.”
― John Green, quote from Turtles All the Way Down

“Our hearts were broken in the same places. That's something like love, but maybe not quite the thing itself.”
― John Green, quote from Turtles All the Way Down

“Whether it hurts is kind of irrelevant.”
― John Green, quote from Turtles All the Way Down

“Everyone wanted me to feed them that story—darkness to light, weakness to strength, broken to whole. I wanted it, too.”
― John Green, quote from Turtles All the Way Down

“And we're such language-based creatures that to some extent we cannot know what we cannot name. And so we assume it isn't real. We refer to it with catch-all terms, like crazy or chronic pain, terms that both ostracise and minimise. The term chronic pain captures nothing of the grinding, constant, ceaseless, inescapable hurt. And the term crazy arrives at us with none of the terror and worry you live with.”
― John Green, quote from Turtles All the Way Down

“Most adults are just hollowed out. You watch them try to fill themselves up with booze or money or God or fame or whatever they worship, and it all rots them from the inside until nothing is left but the money or the booze or God they though would save them. Adults think they are wielding power, but really power is wielding them.”
― John Green, quote from Turtles All the Way Down

“We always say we are beneath the stars. We aren't, of course—there is no up or down, and anyway the stars surround us. But we say we are beneath them, which is nice. So often English glorifies the human—we are whos, other animals are that—but English puts us beneath the stars, at least.”
― John Green, quote from Turtles All the Way Down

“There is hope, even when your brain tells you there isn't.”
― John Green, quote from Turtles All the Way Down

About the author

Popular quotes

“He has to find more and better ways of occupying his time. His time, what a bankrupt idea, as if he's been given a box of time belonging to him alone, stuffed to the brim with hours and minutes that he can spend like money. Trouble is, the box has holes in it and the time is running out, no matter what he does with it.”
― Margaret Atwood, quote from Oryx and Crake

“2 Lift ye up a banner upon the high mountain, exalt the voice unto them, shake the hand, that they may go into the gates of the nobles. 3 I have commanded my sanctified ones, I have also called my mighty ones, for mine anger is not upon them that rejoice in my highness.”
― quote from The Book of Mormon: Another Testament of Jesus Christ

“Living, now, had become not simple existence that one took for granted, but a bonus, a gift, with every day that lay ahead an experience to be savoured. Time did not last forever. I shall not waste a single moment, she promised herself. She had never felt so strong, so optimistic. As though she was young once more, starting out, and something marvellous was just about to happen.”
― Rosamunde Pilcher, quote from The Shell Seekers

“You are about to begin reading Italo Calvino's new novel, If on a winter's night a traveler. Relax. Concentrate. Dispel every other thought. Let the world around you fade. Best to close the door; the TV is always on in the next room. Tell the others right away, "No, I don't want to watch TV!" Raise your voice -- they won't hear you otherwise -- "I'm reading! I don't want to be disturbed!" Maybe they haven't heard you, with all that racket; speak louder, yell: "I'm beginning to read Italo Calvino's new novel!" Or if you prefer, don't say anything: just hope they'll leave you alone.”
― Italo Calvino, quote from If on a Winter's Night a Traveler

“You two were meant to be together. It's like some wicked fucking fairytale love story that you just can't make up, y'know?”
― J.A. Redmerski, quote from The Edge of Never

Interesting books

About BookQuoters

BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.