and I told myself — as I’ve told myself before — that the body shuts down then the pain gets too bad, that consciousness is temporary, that this will pass. But just like always, I...

She’s still taking on water.” A desert blessing, an ocean curse.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...

Algunas veces lees un libro, sientes un extraño afán evangelizador y estás convencido de que este desastrado mundo no se recuperará hasta que todos los seres humanos lo lean. Luego están los libros de los...

Sure, anyone can name fourteen dead people. But we’re disorganized mourners, so a lot of people end up remembering Shakespeare, and no one ends up remembering the person he wrote Sonnet Fifty-five about.

I nodded. I liked Augustus Waters. I really, really, really liked him. I liked the way his story ended with someone else. I liked his voice. I liked that he took existentially fraught free throws....

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...

I could imagine it. I could remember it. But I couldn’t see it again, and it occured to me that the voracious ambition of humans is never sated by dreams coming true, because there is...

I’m just very, very fond of you.

the world wasn’t made for us, we were made for the world

Don’t worry. Worry is useless. I worried anyway

As I recall, you promised to CALL when you finished the book, not text.

I fell in love with you the same way you fall asleep. Slowly then all at once,

The thought of you being removed from the rotation is not funny to me.

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.

I walked to his bedside table next. Infinite Mayhem. the ninth sequel to The Prince of Dawn, lay atop the table next to his reading lamp, the corner of page 138 turned down. He’d never...

Hi, I’m at the Speedway at Eighty-sixth and Ditch, and I need an ambulance. The great love of my life has a malfunctioning G-tube.

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...

There are infinite numbers between 0 and 1. There’s .1 and .12 and .112 and an infinite collection of others. Of course, there is a bigger infinite set of numbers between 0 and 2, or...

I want more numbers that I’m likely to get, and God, I want more numbers for Augustus Waters than he got. But, Gus, my love, I can not tell you thankful I am for our...

The food was so good that with each passing course, our conversation devolved further into fragmented celebrations of its deliciousness:’I want this dragon carrot risotto to become a person so I can take it to...

Maybe ‘okay’ will be our ‘always

Augustus Waters was sitting on the front step as we pulled into the driveway. He was holding a bouquet of bright orange tulips just beginning to bloom.

He specialized in the murder of dreams, Hazel Grace…

Thank you for letting me hijack your wish’, I said.’Thank you for wearing that dress which is like whoa,” he said.

Idiotically, it occurred to me that my pink underwear didn’t match my purple bra, as if boys even notice such things.

And then I crawled into his unmade bed, wrapping myself in his comforter like a cocoon, surrounding myself with his smell. I took out my cannula so I could smell better, breathing him and out,...

Thank you for explaining that my eye cancer isn’t going to make me deaf. I feel so fortunate that an intellectual giant like yourself would deign to operate on me.

When was the last good kiss you had?

I enjoy looking at beautiful people, and I decided a while ago not to deny myself the simpler pleasures of existence.

I love you present tense.

If I could just stay alive for a week, I’d know the unwritten secrets of Anna’s mom and the Dutch Tulip Guy.