"Have you really read all those books in your room?Alaska laughing- "Oh God no. I've maybe read a third of 'em. But I'm going to read them all. I call it my Life's Library. Every summer since I was little, I've gone to garage sales and bought all the books that looked interesting. So I always have something to read."

"In my opinion, actual heroism, like actual love, is a messy, painful, vulnerable business-and I wanted to try to reflect that."

"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."

"The world," he said, "is not a wish-granting factory," and then he broke down, just for one moment, his sob roaring impotent like a clap of thunder unaccompanied by lightning, the terrible ferocity that amateurs in the field of suffering might mistake for weakness."

"You are a side effect," Van Houten continued, "of an evolutionary process that cares little for individual lives. You are a failed experiment in mutation."

"I felt the unfairness of it, the inarguable injustice of loving someone who might have loved you back but can't due to deadness."

"I went on spouting bullshit Encouragements as Gus's parents, arm in arm, hugged each other and nodded at every word. Funerals, I had decided, are for the living."

"You just gotta tell her, man,' I said. 'You just gotta say, "Angela, I really like you, but there's something you need to know: when we go to my house and hook up, we'll be watched by the twenty-four hundred eyes of twelve hundred black Santas."

"But I believe in true love, you know? Idon'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."

"Y'all smoke to enjoy it. I smoke to die."

"If the inevitably of human oblivion worries you, I encourage you to ignore it. God knows that's what everyone else does."

"Books so special and rare and yours that advertising your affection feels like a betrayal."

"Big, ugly homes for big, ugly people,' I told Margo as we pulled into Casavilla.'No shit. If I ever end up being the kind of person who has one kid and seven bedrooms, do me a favor and shoot me."

"As he read, I fell in love the way you fall asleep: slowly, and then all at once."

"I was so good at being a kid, and so terrible at being whatever I was now."

"I do my precalc homework, and then when I'm done I actually sit with the textbook for like three hours and try to understand what I just did. That's the kind of weekend it is--the kind where you have so much time you go past the answers and start looking into the ideas."

"I don't understand why you're so obsessed with figuring out everything that happens here, like we have to unravel every mystery."

"It's so weird, to know you're crazy and not be able to do anything about it, you know? It's not like you believe yourself to be normal. You know there is a problem. But you can't figure a way through to fixing it. Because you can't be sure, you know?"

"I thought of the one thing about home that I missed, my dad's study with its built-in, floor-to-ceiling shelves sagging with thick biographies and the black leather chair that kept me just uncomfortable enough to keep from feeling sleepy as I read."

"It lit up like a Christmas Tree Hazel Grace..."

"Don't make stuff because you want to make money - it will never make you enough money. And don't make stuff because you want to get famous - because you will never feel famous enough. Make gifts for people - and work hard on making those gifts in the hope that those people will notice and like the gifts.Maybe they will notice how hard you worked, and maybe they won't - and if they don't notice, I know it's frustrating. But, ultimately, that doesn't change anything - because your responsibility is not to the people you're making the gift for, but to the gift itself."

"Inside the building, the sun lights up segments of the rotting wooden floor through the many holes in the roof. As I look for her, I register things: the soggy floorboards. The smell of almonds, like her. An old claw-footed bathtub in a corner. So many holes everywhere that this place is simultaneously inside and outside."

"Augustus," I said. "Really. You don't have to do this.""Sure I do," he said. "I found my Wish.""God, you're the best," I told him."I bet you say that to all the boys who finance your international travel," he answered."

"I am constantly torn between killing myself and killing everyone around me. Those seem to be the two choices. Everything else is just killing time."

"I realized that all my life, my values were based upon typical middle-class American values: hard work, doing good, living well, owning things, following the rules & being the best I can be... but God clearly says, "those are not MY values. I value justice, mercy & humility."

"Maybe life is not about accomplishing some bullshit markers."

"Getting you a date to prom is so hard that the hypothetical idea itself is actually used to cut diamonds," I added. Radar tapped a locker twice with his fist to show his approval, and then came back with another. "Ben, getting you a date to prom is so hard that the American government believes the problem cannot be solved with diplomacy, but will instead require force."

"He was nearsighted. The future lay before him, inevitable but invisible."

"It argues that true love will triumph in the end (which may or may not be true) but if it's a lie, it's the most beautiful lie we have!"

"There comes a time when we realize that our parents cannot save themselves or save us, that everyone who wades through time eventually gets dragged out to sea by the undertow - that, in short, we are all going."

"The gray paint peels off the wall in odd and beautiful patterns, each cracked polygon of paint a snowflake of decay."

"All right. The snow may be falling in the winter of my discontent, but at least I've got sarcastic company."

"What's that?""The laundry basket?""No, next to it.""I don't see anything next to it.""It's my last shred of dignity. It's very small."

"She raised one leg and gave me all her weight as I dipped her. She either trusted me or wanted to fall."

"Why don't we break up? I guess I stay with her because she stays with me. And that's not an easy thing to do."

"Reading a good book helps us to feel un-alone."

"You gave me a forever within the numbered days and I'm grateful."

"When you say nasty things about people, you should never say the true ones, because you can't really fully and honestly take those back, you know? I mean, there are highlights. And there are streaks. And then there are skunk stripes."

"Books are the ultimate Dumpees: put them down and they'll wait for you forever pay attention to them and they always love you back."

"Oh shit did you just dis the feminine genderI'll pummel your ass then stick you in a blenderYou think I like Tori and Ani so I can't rhymeBut I got flow like Ghostbusters got slimeObjectify women and it's fuckin' onYou'll be dead and gone like ancient Babylon."

"Because personally I think mattering is a piss-poor idea. I just want to fly under the radar, because when you start to make yourself into a big deal, that's when you get shot down. The bigger a deal you are, the worse your life is."

"All hurt is brain hurt."

"Because you're my friend, wingnut."

"I wondered if hurdlers ever thought, you know, "This would go faster if we just got rid of the hurdles."

"I'll give you my strength if I can have your remission."

"I mean, he was something that happened to me, you know? But before he was this minor figure in the drama of my life he was - you know, the central figure in the drama of his own life."

"It's funny how they thought we were dating," Colin said, glancing over at her."How's that funny?" she asked, holding his gaze."Um," he said. Distracted from the road, Colin watched as she gave him the slightest version of her inimitable smile."

"In our hyper-secular world, worship is still inevitable. But it is vital to remember that our gods don't choose us, we choose them."

"I'm so proud of you that it makes me proud of me. I hope you know that."

"We don't suffer from a shortage of metaphors, is what I mean. But you have to be careful which metaphor you choose, because it matters."