The funny thing about writing is that whether you're doing well or doing it poorly, it looks the exact same. That's actually one of the main ways that writing is different from ballet dancing.
John Green
Related The main thing about writing is... writing. Sitting your butt down in the chair and doing the work. BEN FOUNTAIN Life is weird and wonderful like that, is it not. SONYA.E.WILLIAMS Integrity is not everything, but it is the only thing that matters. JEFFREY FRY When I die it will be game over,... but I know one life is short, to be selfish is not the best deci... DEYTH BANGER Planning to write is not writing. Outlining, researching, talking to people about what you're doing,... E. L. DOCTOROW They had actually been at Cornell the week before doing the exact same thing they were doing at our ... JASON KASSOY One of the better definitions of insanity - doing the exact same thing over and over and expecting t... ANTHONY KIEDIS Planning to write is not writing. Outlining, researching, talking to people about what you're do... E. L. DOCTOROW Keep writing. Keep doing it and doing it. Even in the moments when it's so hurtful to think about wr... HEATHER ARMSTRONG Reviewing music or reviewing anything is a writing job. It's nice if you are experienced in the ... VIRGIL THOMSON Writing is the only thing that, when I do it, I don't feel I should be doing something else. GLORIA STEINEM It's a different ballgame, ... It'll be funny, interesting. As actors, we're doing our own writing. LESLIE NIELSEN When you're recording to analog tape, it captures performance and you can't necessarily mani... DAVE GROHL Writing a TV show is totally different than writing features, or just, what I started doing is writi... DAVID LABRAVA The king may rule the kingdom, but it's the queen who moves the board. D.M. TIMNEY Write it. Just write it. Write it on receipts in the car while you wait for your kid to finish their... MELODIE RAMONE I'm writing, and just doing the same thing I always do. EDDIE VAN HALEN You know, there's nothing you can do about your public image. It is what it is. I just try to do... CHRISTOPHER WALKEN I want to be creative in as many different environments as possible, whether it's doing film sco... FLUME It was good to sit there and ask them questions about the stuff that they are doing and what we are ... DONNIE EDWARDS I always say that I'm an artist who works with pictures and words, so I think that the different... BARBARA KRUGER Writing is something you do alone. It’s a profession for introverts who want to tell you a story b... JOHN GREEN Success is all about persistence and doing the right thing for the long term. BRUCE RAUNER I think that's what fiction writing is actually all about. It's about trying to solve proble... ELEANOR CATTON Reviewing music or reviewing anything is a writing job. It's nice if you are experienced in the fiel... VIRGIL THOMSON It's been noted that writing about the production of art is a masquerade or metaphor for writing... SARAH HALL It is what it is, it is what you make it. JAMES DURBIN Fundamentally, all writing is about the same thing; it's about dying, about the brief flicker of... MORDECAI RICHLER Fundamentally, all writing is about the same thing; it's about dying, about the brief flicker of tim... MORDECAI RICHLER Fundamentally, all writing is about the same thing; it's about dying, about the brief flicker of tim... MORDECAI RICHLER Anything worth doing is worth doing poorly until you learn to do it well. STEVE BROWN One thing I like about jazz is that it emphasized doing things differently from what other people we... HERBIE HANCOCK I like writing about biology, not doing it. KARY MULLIS The premise of anything you do - whether it's writing a song or any business - is ultimately tha... ISAAC HANSON Digitization is certainly challenging the old ways of doing things, whether that's in publishing... HEATHER BROOKE Do not withhold good . . . when it is in your power to do it. RACHEL HAUCK Doing what's right is seldom easy. JANICE HARDY Doing whats right is never easy ... You think you're right, but you lose track of what you were tryi... JANICE HARDY You can't make other people do "right."
All you can do is "right" yourself, and
sometimes even that'... BILLY C LEE You get to the point where you're like, 'I'm just doing me, and if people don't like... BEBE REXHA Try as we might, we write what we write BG THURSTON So that's why one of my rules of parody writing is that it's gotta be funny regardless of wh... AL YANKOVIC Though Valerie and Peter were dancing differently, their bodies moving in different ways, they were ... SARAH BLAKLEY-CARTWRIGHT You know, I don't think my music is important, I don't think it's changing the world, I ... SUFJAN STEVENS One of the ready advantages of writing a road or quest story is that it mirrors the experience of wr... CHANG-RAE LEE Writing is like having sex. The people who never shut up about doing it are usually the ones who don... GREG SISCO Discipline is just doing the same thing the right way whether anyone's watching or not. MICHAEL J. FOX Writing about music is like dancing about architecture. LAURIE ANDERSON Writing about music is like dancing about architecture. ELVIS COSTELLO Writing about music is like dancing about architecture. MARTIN MULL The main thing is to keep yourself awake [on writing] MARGARET ATWOOD I am Happy and satisfied with what I am.
10000 will take me wrong, 1000 will go against me, 100 will... NEHA KOTHARI If our mind was an ocean then every now and then we would have the perfect storm happening in it.Gar... GARY F EVANS... When I was in improv workshops or doing stand-up or writing comedy with others, or just doing comedy... MICHAEL KEATON Thats the thing about the Internet. You can put a lot of distance between yourself and the person yo... ELLEN WRIGHT What's the meaning of life? Other people. JOHN GREEN Writing for me is a kind of compulsion, so I don’t think anyone could have made me do it, or preve... J.K. ROWLING Writing about music is like dancing about architecture; it's a really stupid thing to want to do. ELVIS COSTELLO Writing about music is like dancing about architecture - it's a really stupid thing to want to do ELVIS COSTELLO Doing the right thing has power. LAURA LINNEY My mother always told me, “Anyone worth doing, is worth doing well.” Okay, she didn’t actually... EMMA CHASE Real integrity is doing the right thing, knowing that nobody’s going to know whether you did it or... OPRAH WINFREY Real integrity is doing the right thing, knowing that nobody's going to know whether you did it or n... OPRAH WINFREY Always Be Ready For Anything that Comes: Bananas, Chips, College, an Opportunity, so when it does yo... DANIEL OJEDA Your lack of commitment to being different is what kills you. It is the insanity of doing the same t... SHANNON L. ALDER The kind of stillness of being nothing, and doing things from that emptiness, make one strong. SHASHI Anyone who says writing is easy isn't doing it right. AMY JOY Re-writing is different from writing. Original writing is very difficult. DAVID CRONENBERG I get a fine warm feeling when I'm doing well, but that pleasure is pretty much negated by the pain ... WILLIAM STYRON One thing I'm doing on the new Titanic recording is actually bringing in different acoustic spac... GAVIN BRYARS I regret that I wasn't more successful with my marriages, but it is what it is. TED TURNER It is funny the two things most men are proudest of is the thing that any man can do and doing does ... GERTRUDE STEIN That's the wonderful thing about man; he never gets so discouraged or disgusted that he gives up doi... RAY BRADBURY I'm fucking the grave, I thought, I'm bringing the dead back to life... CHARLES BUKOWSKI That music and the lyrical aspects of Razorblade Romance is so personal to me that, now with me bein... VILLE VALO The No. 1 cause of burnout is doing the same thing over and over again and not seeing results. You n... STEVE KACZMARSKI Time is so important.'so spend time doing something that you love.' make the most of it and Let the ... NAPZ CHERUB PELLAZO If I were to try and find a unifying emotion that kept me calm and focused while I was dancing or wr... CATHERINE ASARO Craziness is doing the same thing and expecting a different result TOM DEMARCO Stupidity is doing the same thing and expecting a different result. ELIEZER YUDKOWSKY Pain has creative power, Let the magic unfold... HENNA SOHAIL The funny thing is, the music that I'm writing now is probably some of the most cutting edge we've e... CHARLIE DANIELS It’s not the fear of writing that blocks people, it’s the fear of not writing well; something qu... SCOTT BERKUN To stand on the brink of what is coming, feeling eager, optimistic anticipation—with no feeli... ASK AND IT IS GIVEN The Internet is a limitless library at your fingertips. It's a great place to start with the acq... BARRY EISLER The cool thing about music is no one can take music away from you, writing wise. DARREN CRISS That element of surprise is what I look for when I am writing. It is my way of judging what I am doi... V. S. NAIPAUL Insanity is doing the same thing in the same way and expecting a different outcome. CHINESE PROVERB Insanity is doing the same thing in the same way and expecting a different outcome. CHINESE PROVERB Real integrity is doing the right thing, knowing that nobody's going to know whether you did it ... OPRAH WINFREY Saying all that I need to do or should be doing is easy and it takes the spotlight away from what I ... MALTI BHOJWANI Words are the bones. Writing is the lungs. Reading is like breathing. T.L. CRAIN Self-knowledge is essential not only to writing, but to doing almost anything really well. It allows... MEG ROSOFF That's the most amazing thing about writing, whether it's in prose or comics: that you can c... ADAM CHRISTOPHER Well, we're not really doing anything at the moment except writing songs. BARRY GIBB Writing is harder than acting. I enjoy acting for just the brevity with which you can be in the expe... JUSTIN THEROUX When I first started writing songs and being very explicit, it was hard, but one of the main things ... ANI DIFRANCO The process of creating is related to the process of dreaming although when you are writing you're d... ROBERT STONE I started writing it in 2002 and kept writing and kept writing and kept writing. This is a different... DANIEL POUND Writing is powerful. Whether it's a little girl hiding from the Nazis in an attic, or Amnesty In... ERIN GRUWELL
More John Green
Words are not static.Language shape our memories, and it is also shaped by our memories. JOHN GREEN The thing about chameleoning your way through life is that it gets to where nothing is real. JOHN GREEN That smile could end wars and cure cancer. JOHN GREEN You don't remember what happened. What you remember becomes what happened. JOHN GREEN Well, while you were in the bathroom, I sat down at this picnic table here in Bumblefug, Kentucky, a... JOHN GREEN you can never love someone as much as you miss them. JOHN GREEN There's some people in this world who you can just love and love and love no matter what. JOHN GREEN He liked the mere act of reading, the magic of turning scratches on a page into words inside his hea... JOHN GREEN Here's to all the places we went. And all the places we'll go. And here's to me, whispering again an... JOHN GREEN I think it's crazy, crazy that book tours lose so much money. They shouldn't. Book tours sho... JOHN GREEN I realize that humans lack good mirrors. It’s so hard for anyone to show us how we look, and so ha... JOHN GREEN True love will triumph in the end—which may or may not be a lie, but if it is a lie, it's the most... JOHN GREEN I'm sitting her thinking, -God, I swear I will take a vow of silence and move to a monastery and wor... JOHN GREEN Headline?" he asked. "'Swing Set Needs Home,'" I said. "'Desperately Lonely Swing Set Need... JOHN GREEN He called out to his fellow monks,'Come quickly I am tasting stars. JOHN GREEN Is it still cool to go to the mall?' she asked. 'I take quite a lot of pride in not knowing what's c... JOHN GREEN Van Houten, I’m a good person but a shitty writer. You’re a shitty person but a good writer... JOHN GREEN Do you have a Wish?' he asked, referring to this organization, The Genie Foundation, which is in the... JOHN GREEN Sometimes people don’t understand the promises they’re making when they make them,” I sai... JOHN GREEN I'm on a roller coaster that only goes up," he said. "And it is my privilege and my resp... JOHN GREEN You don't get to choose if you get hurt in this world, old man, but you do have some say in who hurt... JOHN GREEN Tell me my copy is missing the last twenty pages or something. Hazel Grace, tell me I hav... JOHN GREEN What else? She is so beautiful. You don’t get tired of looking at her. You never worry if she is s... JOHN GREEN I'm starting to think you have an amputee fetish" he answered, still kissing me. I laughed. "I... JOHN GREEN I have an Augustus Waters fetish," I explained. JOHN GREEN Finally, I decided that the proper strategy was to stare back. Boys do not have a monopoly on the St... JOHN GREEN Sure, anyone can name fourteen dead people. But we're disorganized mourners, so a lot of people end ... JOHN GREEN Lonley, Vaguely pedophilic swing set seeks the butts of children. JOHN GREEN There are infinite numbers between 0 and 1. There's .1 and .12 and .112 and an infinite collection o... JOHN GREEN He’s not that smart.” “She’s right,” Augustus says. “It’s just that most re... JOHN GREEN All at once, I couldn’t figure out why I was methodically tossing a spherical object through a tor... JOHN GREEN A day after I got my eye cut out, Gus showed up at the hospital. I was blind and heart-broken and di... JOHN GREEN I enjoy looking at beautiful people, and I decided a while ago not to deny myself the simpler pleasu... JOHN GREEN Support Group featured a rotating cast of characters in various states of tumor-driven unwellness. W... JOHN GREEN Maybe 'Okay' will be our 'always'... JOHN GREEN I was a bit of a Victorian Lady, fainting-wise. JOHN GREEN While I did not fancy myself a particularly good person, I never thought my first real sexual action... JOHN GREEN the world wasn't made for us, we were made for the world JOHN GREEN Mom sobbed something into Dad's chest that I wish I hadn't heard, and that I hope she never finds ou... JOHN GREEN I fell in love like you would fall asleep: slowly and then all at once. JOHN GREEN I missed the future. Obviously I knew even before his recurrence that I'd never grow old with August... JOHN GREEN Come over here so I can examine your face with my hands and see deeper into your soul than a sighted... JOHN GREEN Gus: "It tastes like..." Me: "Food." Gus: "Yes, precisely. It tastes like food, excellentl... JOHN GREEN But it is the nature of stars to cross, and never was Shakespeare more wrong than when he has Cassiu... JOHN GREEN I imagined the Augustus Waters analysis of that comment: If I am playing basketball in heaven, does ... JOHN GREEN I love you present tense. JOHN GREEN She loved mysteries so much, that she became one. JOHN GREEN It's just that I learned a while ago that the best way to get people to like you is not to like them... JOHN GREEN There was time before organisms experienced consciousness, and there will be time after. And if the ... JOHN GREEN As the tide washed in, the Dutch Tulip Man faced the Ocean: "Conjoiner rejoinder poisoner conce... JOHN GREEN And then the line was quite but not dead. I almost felt like he was there in my room with me, but in... JOHN GREEN All salvation is temporary," Augustus shot back. "I bought them a minute. Maybe that's the minute th... JOHN GREEN There were five others before they got to him. He smiled a little when his turn came. His voice was ... JOHN GREEN I know so many last words. But I will never know hers. JOHN GREEN And I wanted to tell her that the pleasure for me wasn't planning or doing or leaving; the pleasure ... JOHN GREEN Thank you for explaining that my eye cancer isn't going to make me deaf. I feel so fortunate that an... JOHN GREEN That's why I like you. Do you realize how rare it is to come across a hot girl who creates a adjecti... JOHN GREEN I’m in love with you, and I know that love is just a shout into the void, and that oblivion is ine... JOHN GREEN I wanted to know that he would be okay if I died. I wanted to not be a grenade, to not be a malevole... JOHN GREEN Before I got here, I thought for a long time that the way out of the labyrinth was to pretend that i... JOHN GREEN If people could see me the way I see myself - if they could live in my memories - would anyone love ... JOHN GREEN We’re as likely to hurt the universe as we are to help it, and we’re not likely to do either. JOHN GREEN I told Augustus the broad outline of my miracle: diagnosed with Stage IV thyroid cancer when I was t... JOHN GREEN there is no shortage of fault to be found amid our stars JOHN GREEN I dislike the phrase 'Internet friends,' because it implies that people you know online aren't reall... JOHN GREEN I wish I knew how to quit you, Tumblr. JOHN GREEN Just move to the Internet, its great here. We get to live inside where the weather is always awesome... JOHN GREEN Oh, Wikipedia, with your tension between those who would share knowledge and those who would destroy... JOHN GREEN It's not because I want to make out with her." Hold on." He grabbed a pencil and scrawled excit... JOHN GREEN I'm in love with you, and I'm not in the business of denying myself the simple pleasure of saying tr... JOHN GREEN They love their hair because they're not smart enough to love something more interesting. JOHN GREEN Principled hate is a hell of a lot stronger than "Boy, I wish you hadn't mummified me and thrown me ... JOHN GREEN Some people don't understand the promises they're making when they make them," I said. "R... JOHN GREEN So I walked back to my room and collapsed on the bottom bunk, thinking that if people were rain, I w... JOHN GREEN Thomas Edison's last words were "It's very beautiful over there ". I don't know where there is... JOHN GREEN Oh, I wouldn't mind, Hazel Grace. It would be a privilege to have my heart broken by you. JOHN GREEN When adults say, "Teenagers think they are invincible" with that sly, stupid smile on their faces, t... JOHN GREEN What a slut time is. She screws everybody. JOHN GREEN The only way out of the labyrinth of suffering is to forgive. JOHN GREEN Saying 'I notice you're a nerd' is like saying, 'Hey, I notice that you'd rather be intelligent than... JOHN GREEN You don't get to choose if you get hurt in this world...but you do have some say in who hurts you. I... JOHN GREEN Some people have lives; some people have music. JOHN GREEN You do not immortalize the lost by writing about them. Language buries, but does not resurrect. JOHN GREEN As Alaska zipped through something obvious about linear equations, stoner/baller Hank Walsten said, ... JOHN GREEN Books are the ultimate Dumpees: put them down and they’ll wait for you forever; pay attention to t... JOHN GREEN Sometimes, you read a book and it fills you with this weird evangelical zeal, and you become convinc... JOHN GREEN Some infinities are bigger than other infinities... JOHN GREEN It seemed like forever ago, like we've had this brief but still infinite forever. Some infinities ar... JOHN GREEN There are infinite numbers between 0 and 1. There's .1 and .12 and .112 and an infinite collection o... JOHN GREEN Some infinities are bigger than other infinities. JOHN GREEN What you must understand about me is that I’m a deeply unhappy person. JOHN GREEN Without pain, how could we know joy?' This is an old argument in the field of thinking about sufferi... JOHN GREEN You could hold me and I could hold you. And it would be so peaceful. Completely peaceful. Like the f... JOHN GREEN That's always seemed so ridiculous to me, that people want to be around someone because they're pret... JOHN GREEN The pleasure of remembering had been taken from me, because there was no longer anyone to remember w... JOHN GREEN Apparently, the world is not a wish-granting factory. JOHN GREEN Augustus," I said. "Really. You don't have to do this." "Sure I do," he said. "I found my Wish.... JOHN GREEN Peeing is like a good book in that it is very, very hard to stop once you start. JOHN GREEN You are so busy being YOU that you have no idea how utterly unprecedented you are. JOHN GREEN We are all going, I thought, and it applies to turtles and turtlenecks, Alaska the girl and Alaska t... JOHN GREEN Harry Potter isn’t real? Oh no! Wait, wait, what do you mean by real? Is this video blog real? Am ... JOHN GREEN The marks humans leave are too often scars. JOHN GREEN As he read, I fell in love the way you fall asleep: slowly, and then all at once. JOHN GREEN Much of my life had been devoted to trying not to cry in front of people who loved me, so I knew wha... JOHN GREEN It's just that most really good-looking people are stupid, so I exceed expectations.' 'Right, i... JOHN GREEN Sometimes, you read a book and it fills you with this weird evangelical zeal, and you become convinc... JOHN GREEN Because you are beautiful. I enjoy looking at beautiful people, and I decided a while ago not to den... JOHN GREEN I'm a grenade and at some point I'm going to blow up and I would like to minimize the casualties, ok... JOHN GREEN You realize that trying to keep your distance from me will not lessen my affection for you. All effo... JOHN GREEN That’s part of what I like about the book in some ways. It portrays death truthfully. You die in t... JOHN GREEN I believe the universe wants to be noticed. I think the universe is inprobably biased toward the con... JOHN GREEN Maybe 'okay' will be our 'always JOHN GREEN It's a metaphor, see: You put the killing thing right between your teeth, but you don't give it the ... JOHN GREEN Some tourists think Amsterdam is a city of sin, but in truth it is a city of freedom. And in freedom... JOHN GREEN Books so special and rare and yours that advertising your affection feels like a betrayal. JOHN GREEN Augustus Waters was a self-aggrandizing bastard. But we forgive him. We forgive him not because he h... JOHN GREEN May I see you again?" he asked. There was an endearing nervousness in his voice. I smile... JOHN GREEN There will come a time when all of us are dead. All of us. There will come a time when there are no ... JOHN GREEN Grief does not change you, Hazel. It reveals you. JOHN GREEN The world is not a wish-granting factory. JOHN GREEN My thoughts are stars I cannot fathom into constellations. JOHN GREEN Everything that comes together falls apart. Everything. The chair I’m sitting on. It was built, an... JOHN GREEN Writing is something you do alone. Its a profession for introverts who want to tell you a story but ... JOHN GREEN You will not kill my girlfriend today, International Terrorists of Ambiguous Nationality! JOHN GREEN I mean, we're ninjas." "Well maybe you're a ninja," I said "You're just... JOHN GREEN There are times when it is appropriate, even preferable, to get an erection when someone's face is i... JOHN GREEN We were kissing. I thought: This is good. I thought: I am not bad at this kissing. Not bad... JOHN GREEN What the hell is that?" I laughed. "It's my fox hat." "Your fox hat?" "Yeah, Pudge. M... JOHN GREEN I wanted to be one of those people who have streaks to maintain, who scorch the ground with their in... JOHN GREEN Y'all smoke to enjoy it. I smoke to die. JOHN GREEN We need never be hopeless because we can never be irreperably broken. JOHN GREEN It's not life or death, the labyrinth. Suffering. Doing wrong and having wrong things happen to you.... JOHN GREEN Sometimes I don't get you,' I said. She didn't even glance at me. She just smiled toward the t... JOHN GREEN That didn’t happen, of course. Things never happened the way I imagined them. JOHN GREEN I found myself thinking about President William McKinley, the third American president to be assassi... JOHN GREEN I just did some calculations and I've been able to determine that you're full of shit. JOHN GREEN I am going to take this bucket of water and pour it on the flames of hell, and then I am going to us... JOHN GREEN Sometimes you lose a battle. But mischief always wins the war JOHN GREEN And then something invisible snapped insider her, and that which had come together commenced to fall... JOHN GREEN Have you really read all those books in your room?” Alaska laughing- “Oh God no. I’... JOHN GREEN He was gone, and I did not have time to tell him what I had just now realized: that I forgave him, a... JOHN GREEN Francois Rabelais. He was a poet. And his last words were "I go to seek a Great Perhaps." That's why... JOHN GREEN It always shocked me when I realized that I wasn’t the only person in the world who thought and fe... JOHN GREEN I may die young, but at least I'll die smart. JOHN GREEN What is an "instant" death anyway? How long is an instant? Is it one second? Ten? The pain of those ... JOHN GREEN I wanted so badly to lie down next to her on the couch, to wrap my arms around her and sleep. Not fu... JOHN GREEN When I look at my room, I see a girl who loves books. JOHN GREEN pg. 231-232: They'd given me a minivan. They could have picked any car and they picked a minivan. A ... JOHN GREEN Islam and Christianity promise eternal paradise to the faithful. And that is a powerful opiate, cert... JOHN GREEN I figured something out. The future is unpredictable. JOHN GREEN When things break, it's not the actual breaking that prevents them from getting back together again.... JOHN GREEN It is so hard to leave—until you leave. And then it is the easiest goddamned thing in the world. JOHN GREEN Imagining the future is a kind of nostalgia. (...) You spend your whole life stuck in the labyrinth,... JOHN GREEN [I]t occurred to me that the voracious ambition of humans is never sated by dreams coming true, beca... JOHN GREEN Nothing ever happens like you imagine it will… but then again, if you don’t imagine, nothing eve... JOHN GREEN What the hell is instant ? Nothing is instant. Instant rice takes five minutes, instant puddin... JOHN GREEN 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 w... JOHN GREEN You spend your whole life stuck in the labyrinth, thinking about how you'll escape one day, and how ... JOHN GREEN You used," he said, and then took a sharp breath, "to call me Augustus. JOHN GREEN The way I figure it, everyone gets a miracle. Like, I will probably never be struck by lightening, o... JOHN GREEN It's hard to believe in coincidence, but it's even harder to believe in anything else. JOHN GREEN I'm in love with you," he said quietly. "Augustus," I said. "I am," he said. H... JOHN GREEN I looked over at Augustus Waters, who looked back at me. You could almost see through his eyes they ... JOHN GREEN And if the inevitability of human oblivion worries you, I encourage you to ignore it. JOHN GREEN -so if the inevitability of oblivion worries you, than I suggest you ignore it. God knows that's wha... JOHN GREEN Maybe our favorite quotations say more about us than about the stories and people we're quoting. JOHN GREEN You can love someone so much...But you can never love people as much as you can miss them. JOHN GREEN What is the point of being alive if you don't at least try to do something remarkable? JOHN GREEN Whenever you read a cancer booklet or website or whatever, they always list depression among the sid... JOHN GREEN What's that?" "The laundry basket?" "No, next to it." "I don't see anything next to i... JOHN GREEN Do the thing you're good at. Not many people are lucky enough to be so good at something. JOHN GREEN For a moment, she was quiet. Then she grabbed my hand, whispered, “Run run run run run,” and too... JOHN GREEN We don't tend to write about disease in fiction - not just teen novels but all American novels -... JOHN GREEN I know that books seem like the ultimate thing that's made by one person, but that's not tru... JOHN GREEN Chuck Parson did not participate in organized sports, because to do so would distract from his large... JOHN GREEN The thing about a spiral is, if you follow it inward, it never actually ends. It just keeps tighteni... JOHN GREEN Anybody can look at you. It's quite rare to find someone who sees the same world you see. JOHN GREEN You see how fake it all is. It's not even hard enough to be made out of plastic. It's a paper town. JOHN GREEN But there was so much todo: cigarettes to smoke, sex to have, swings to swing on. I'll have more tim... JOHN GREEN How wil we ever get out of this labyrinth of suffering? JOHN GREEN AHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!' he screamed. 'So that's Sara,' I said. 'Yes.' 'She seems nice. JOHN GREEN The pigs can't stop the fox; I'm too quick,' Takumi said to himself. "I can rhyme while I run; I'm t... JOHN GREEN I’m just scared of ghosts, Pudge. And home is full of them. JOHN GREEN You can't just make me different and then leave JOHN GREEN She has great breasts," the Colonel said without looking up from the whale. "DO NOT OBJECTIFY W... JOHN GREEN But why Alaska?' I asked her. 'Well, later, I found out what it means. It's from an Aleut... JOHN GREEN Right, well, he'd been sick for a while and his nurse said to him, 'You seem to be feeling better th... JOHN GREEN I'm really not up for answering any questions that start with how, when, where, why or what. JOHN GREEN You're funny, and you're smart, and you may show up late, but you always show up eventually. JOHN GREEN I have a great affection for people who are intellectually engaged with the world, and who don’t t... JOHN GREEN I've never known before what it feels like to want someone - not to want to hook up with them or wha... JOHN GREEN There's a stark difference between the words 'prodigy' and 'genius.' Prodigies can very quickly lear... JOHN GREEN Why is being a nerd bad? Saying I notice you’re a nerd is like saying, ‘Hey, I notice that you�... JOHN GREEN I wanted us to have an adventure. Because I love that crap. Because I'm not whatever-her-name-is. I ... JOHN GREEN If my public existence does anything worthwhile, hopefully it at least demystifies the author a bit,... JOHN GREEN If people were like rain, I was like drizzle and she was a hurricane. JOHN GREEN I do not say goodbye. I believe that's one of the bullshitiest words ever invented. It's not like yo... JOHN GREEN Do you know what your problem is? You can't live with the idea that someone might leave. JOHN GREEN Nothing ever happens like you imagine it will JOHN GREEN I responded to this development with the kind of sophisticated language for which I am famous. "Crap... JOHN GREEN