Nothing ever happens like you imagine it will

But I was not in the band, because I suffer from the kind of tone deafness that is generally associated with actual deafness

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

I was caught in a love triangle with one dead side.

I’m telling you, Augustus Waters talked so much that he’d interrupt you at his own funeral.

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...

Reading with an eye towards metaphor allows us to become the person we’re reading about, while reading about them. That’s why there is symbols in books and why your English teacher deserves your attention. Ultimately,...

You know your problem, Quentin? You keep expecting people not to be themselves.

Words are not static.Language shape our memories, and it is also shaped by our memories.

You get all these friends when just when you don’t need friends anymore.

We have a bad habit of seeing books as sort of cheaply made movies where the words do nothing but create visual narratives in our heads.So too often what passes for literary criticism is “I...

We bring the fucking rain Q, not the scattered showers.

The town was paper, but the memories were not.

It’s hard as hell to hold onto your dignity when the risen sun is too bright in your losing eyes, and that’s what I was thinking about as we hunted for bad guys through the...

She’d obviously read the book many times before, and so she read flawlessly and confidently, and I could hear her smile in the reading of it, and the sound of that smile made me think...

Hey, I notice you look like you’re coming down off a meth binge and smell vaguely of algae. Were you perchance dancing with a snakebit Margo Roth Spiegelman a couple of hours ago?

What is an “instant” death anyway? How long is an instant? Is it one second? Ten? The pain of those seconds must have been awful as her heart burst and her lungs collapsed and there...

I believe humans have souls, and I believe in the conservation of souls.

All at once, I couldn’t figure out why I was methodically tossing a spherical object through a toroidal object. It seemed like the stupidest thing I could possibly be doing.

And even though he felt pitiful and ridiculous, he didn’t want it to end, because he knew the absence of her would hurt more than any breakup ever could.

Oh, the pain. The pain. It always rains. In my soul.

Leaving feels too good, once you leave.

We had to forgive to survive the labyrinth

I hated talking, and I hated listening to everyone else stumble on their words and try to phrase things in the vaguest possible way so they wouldn’t sound dumb.

I take quite a lot of pride in not knowing what´s cool.

Everything’s uglier up close.Not you.

You gave me forever within the numbered days.

Some people have lives; some people have music.

I’m on a roller coaster that only goes up, my friend.

I found myself thinking about President William McKinley, the third American president to be assassinated. He lived for several days after he was shot, and towards the end, his wife started crying and screaming, “I...

We need never be without hope because we can never be irreparably broken.

okay?okay.

I think how much depends upon a best friend. When you wake up in the morning you swing your legs out of bed and you put your feet on the ground and you stand up....

Suffering is universal. It’s the one thing Buddhists, Christians, and Muslims are all worried about.

is not a wishgrantingfactory,

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

The silence broke:”Sometimes I liked it”, I said “Sometimes I liked it that she was dead.””You mean it felt good?””No. I don’t know. It felt … pure.

Like, in general I think people have very complicated reasons for wanting things, and we often have no idea whether we’re actually motivated by altruism or a desire to hook up or a search for...

I leave, and the leaving is so exhilarating I know I can never go back. But then what? Do I just keep leaving places, and leaving them, and leaving them, tramping a perpetual journey?

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

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...

…everybody should have true love, and it should last at least as long as your life does.

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

It’s just that most really good-looking people are stupid, so I exceed expectations.”Right, it’s primarily his hotness,’ I said.’It can be sort of blinding,’ he said.’It actually did blind our friend Isaac,’ I said.’Terrible tragedy,...

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

What’s the meaning of life? Other people.

You listen to people so that you can imagine them, and your hear all the terrible and woderful things people do to themselves and to one another, but in the end the listening exposes you...

I had to tell her she would die. Her social worker said I had to tell her. I had to tell her she would die, so I told her she was going to heaven. She...

And even though it was ridiculously childish, in the end I had to call myself a faggot, which really annoyed me, because 1. I don’t think that word should ever be used by anyone, let...

What am I at war with? My cancer. And what is my cancer? My cancer is me. The tumors are made of me. They’re made of me as surely as my brain and my heart...