1.
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
2.
Amsterdam is like the rings of a tree: It gets older as you get closer to the center.
John Green
Amsterdam is like the layers of an onion: It becomes more seasoned as you progress inward.
3.
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
4.
I feel like crying, so I must be crying, but it's impossible to tell because I'm underwater.
John Green
5.
...And in freedom, most people find sin.
John Green
6.
Her underwear, her jeans, the comforter, my corduroys and my boxers between us, I thought. Five layers, and yet I felt it, the nervous warmth of touching – a pale reflection of the fireworks of one mouth on another, but a reflection nonetheless. And in the almostness of the moment, I cared at least enough. I wasn’t sure whether I liked her, and doubted whether I could trust her, but I cared at least enough to try to find out. Her on my bed, wide green eyes staring down at me. The enduring mystery of her sly, almost smirking, smile. Five layers between us.
John Green
7.
So I walked back to my room and collapsed on the bottom bunk, thinking that if people were rain, I was drizzle and she was a hurricane.
John Green
8.
A taste so profound and complex that it can't even be compared to other tastes, only to emotions. Cheesy waffles, I was thinking, tastes like love without the fear of love's dissolution.
John Green
9.
My thoughts are stars I cannot fathom into constellations.
John Green
10.
The only way out of the labyrinth of suffering is to forgive.
John Green
11.
All those paper people living in their paper houses, burning the future to stay warm.
John Green
12.
Sometimes you lose a battle. But mischief always wins the war
John Green
13.
I would always love Alaska Young, my crooked neighbor, with all my crooked heart.
John Green
14.
At some point, you just pull off the Band-Aid, and it hurts, but then it's over and you're relieved.
John Green
15.
Waffles аrе јust awesome bread.
John Green
16.
The town was paper, but the memories were not.
John Green
17.
You can love someone so much...But you can never love people as much as you can miss them.
John Green
18.
It's not life or death, the labyrinth. Suffering. Doing wrong and having wrong things happen to you. That's the problem. Bolivar was talking about the pain, not about the living or dying. How do you get out of the labyrinth of suffering?
John Green
19.
I ran like a cheetah - well, like a cheetah that smoked too much.
John Green
20.
I liked that he was a tenured professor in the Department of Slightly Crooked Smiles with a dual appointments in the Department of Having a Voice that Made My Skin Feel More Like Skin.
John Green
21.
Oh, I wouldn't mind, Hazel Grace. It would be a privilege to have my heart broken by you.
John Green
22.
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
23.
Lonley, Vaguely pedophilic swing set seeks the butts of children.
John Green
24.
I'm in love with you," he said quietly. "Augustus," I said. "I am," he said. He was staring at me, and I could see the corners of his eyes crinkling. "I'm in love with you, and I'm not in the business of denying myself the simple pleasure of saying true things. I'm in love with you, and I know that love is just a shout into the void, and that oblivion is inevitable, and that we're all doomed and that there will come a day when all our labor has been returned to dust, and I know the sun will swallow the only earth we'll ever have, and I am in love with you.
John Green
25.
Great books help you understand, and they help you feel understood.
John Green
26.
If people could see me the way I see myself - if they could live in my memories - would anyone love me?
John Green
27.
I don’t know a perfect person. I only know flawed people who are still worth loving.
John Green
28.
the problem is not suffering itself or oblivion itself but the depraved meaninglessness of these things, the absolutely inhuman nihilism of suffering.
John Green
29.
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
30.
Getting you a date to prom is so hard that the hypothetical idea itself is used to cut diamonds.
John Green
31.
As long as we don't die, this is gonna be one hell of a story.
John Green
32.
This is so much fun, but I’m so sleepy. To be continued?
John Green
33.
I wanted so badly to lie down next to her on the couch, to wrap my arms around her and sleep... Just sleep together, in the most innocent sense of the phrase. But I lacked the courage and she had a boyfriend and I was gawky and she was gorgeous and I was boring and she was endlessly fascinating. So I walked back to my room and collapsed on the bottom bunk, thinking that if people were rain, I was drizzle and she was a hurricane.
John Green
34.
Without pain, how could we know joy?' This is an old argument in the field of thinking about suffering and its stupidity and lack of sophistication could be plumbed for centuries but suffice it to say that the existence of broccoli does not, in any way, affect the taste of chocolate.
John Green
35.
As he read, I fell in love the way you fall asleep: slowly, and then all at once.
John Green
36.
The Red Wheelbarrow" by William Carlos Williams. So much depends upom a red wheel barrow glazed with rain water beside the white chickens.
John Green
37.
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
38.
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets, / The muttering retreats / Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels / And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells: / Streets that follow like a tedious argument / Of insidious intent / To lead you to an overwhelming question.../ Oh, do not ask, 'What is it?' / Let us go and make our visit"' 'I'm in love with you,' he said quietly.
John Green
39.
What you must understand about me is that I’m a deeply unhappy person.
John Green
40.
The thing about That Guy Is a Gigolo,' Radar says, 'I mean, the thing about it as a game, is that in the end it reveals a lot more about the person doing the imagining than it does about the person being imagined.
John Green
41.
The human tongue is like wasabi: it's very powerful, and should be used sparingly.
John Green
42.
I want more numbers than I’m likely to get, and God, I want more numbers for Augustus Waters than he got. But, Gus, my love, I cannot tell you how thankful I am for our little infinity. I wouldn’t trade it for the world. You gave me a forever within the numbered days, and I’m grateful.
John Green
43.
That's always seemed so ridiculous to me, that people want to be around someone because they're pretty. It's like picking your breakfeast cereals based on color instead of taste.
John Green
44.
Let's make a deal: You figure out what the labyrinth is and how to get out of it, and i'll get you laid. -Alaska Young
John Green
45.
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
46.
Maybe there is something you're afraid to say, or someone you're afraid to love, or somewhere you're afraid to go. It's gonna hurt. It's gonna hurt because it matters.
John Green
47.
She has enough black eyeliner on to outline a corpse, and her skin's so pale she looks like she's just broken dawn.
John Green
48.
I'm a bad boyfriend. She's a bad girlfriend. We deserve each other.
John Green
49.
If you were to go, and hopefully someday you will, you would see a lot of paintings of dead people. You'd see Jesus on the cross, and you'd see a dude get stabbed in the neck, and you'd see people dying at sea and in battle and a parade of martyrs. But Not. One. Single. Cancer. Kid. Nobody biting it from the plague or smallpox or yellow fever or whatever, because there is no glory in illness. There is no meaning to it. There is no honor in dying of.
John Green
50.
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