Best Quotes from The Fault In Our Stars by John Green with Page Numbers

Depression is a side effect of dying.

I fear oblivion. I fear it like the proverbial blind man who’s afraid of the dark.

There will come a time when all of us are dead.

Everything that we did and built and wrote and thought and discovered will be forgotten.

God knows that’s what everyone else does.

I decided a while ago not to deny myself the simpler pleasures of existence.

You’re beautiful. I enjoy looking at beautiful people.

You put the killing thing right between your teeth, but you don’t give it the power to do its killing.

I’m a big believer in metaphor.

You deserve a life.

You know they’ve got hand controls for people who can’t use their legs.

The fact that Augustus made me feel special did not necessarily indicate that I was special.

In the darkest days, the Lord puts the best people into your life.

I want to minimize the number of deaths I am responsible for.

It’s disheartening. Like, cancer is in the growth business, right?

I reject that out of hand.

Think of something you like. The first thing that comes to mind.

Sometimes, you read a book and it fills you with this weird evangelical zeal.

Without Pain, How Could We Know Joy?

It has been a real pleasure to make your acquaintance.

Sleep fights cancer.

It must be some book.

I told you Support Group would be worth your while.

Well, Happy thirty-third Half Birthday to me.

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

Health is good?

Phalanxifor! So you could just live forever, right?

Do you like these?

It always hurt not to breathe like a normal person.

I liked Staff Sergeant Max Mayhem, even though he didn’t have much in the way of a technical personality, but mostly I liked that his adventures kept happening.

"Pain demands to be felt."

"All salvation is temporary."

"I bought them a minute. Maybe that’s the minute that buys them an hour, which is the hour that buys them a year. No one’s gonna buy them forever, Hazel Grace, but my life bought them a minute. And that’s not nothing."

"Sometimes people don’t understand the promises they’re making when they make them."

"Love is keeping the promise anyway."

"If true love did exist, that was a pretty good definition of it."

"And yet, Isaac won’t so much as glance over at me. Too in love with Monica, I suppose."

"I’ve been looking for a way to tell my father that I actually sort of hate basketball, and I think we’ve found it."

"There is something to recommend a story that ends."

"It seemed unfair that I would never find out what happened to them."

Worry is yet another side effect of dying.

You die in the middle of your life, in the middle of a sentence.

We’re all just side effects, right?

I like being liked. Is that crazy?

You’ve gotta give yourself time to heal.

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

What becomes of Sisyphus the Hamster?

I can’t believe I have a crush on a girl with such cliché wishes.

Maybe okay will be our always.

I found my Wish.

You’ll come. The Genies will pay for it. The Genies are loaded.

Why are you in such a hurry to leave?

I’m like a grenade, Mom. I’m a grenade and at some point I’m going to blow up and I would like to minimize the casualties.

You can’t know, sweetie, because you’ve never had a baby become a brilliant young reader with a side interest in horrible television shows, but the joy you bring us is so much greater than the sadness we feel about your illness.

If you were more trouble than you’re worth, we’d just toss you out on the streets.

I just want to stay away from people and read books and think and be with you guys.

You’re amazing. You’re not a grenade, not to us.

I realized while listening to Kaitlyn that I didn’t have a premonition of hurting him. I had a postmonition.

You’re being very teenagery today.

We’re not sentimental people. We’d leave you at an orphanage with a note pinned to your pajamas.

But make no mistake: In that moment, I would have been very, very happy to die.

This is just a thing, Hazel. It’s a thing we can live with.

I guess, I said after a minute. I stood up and shuffled over to one of the molded plastic chairs against the wall.

You can't go disappearing on everybody like this, Hazel. You miss too much.

Turns out that is not the case.

Your Hazel is alive, Waters, and you mustn’t impose your will upon another’s decision.

It felt like getting stabbed in reverse.

Sleep fights cancer.

Praise God for good nurses.

I am in receipt of your electronic mail... and duly impressed by the Shakespearean complexity of your tragedy.

"But it’s your life."

"Your cancer is not going away, Hazel. But we’ve seen people live with your level of tumor penetration for a long time."

"I mustn’t let it kill me before it kills me."

"All efforts to save me from you will fail."

"That’s why I like you. Do you realize how rare it is to come across a hot girl who creates an adjectival version of the word pedophile?"

"It’s all fragile and fleeting, dear reader, but with this swing set, your child(ren) will be introduced to the ups and downs of human life gently and safely."

"You are so busy being you that you have no idea how utterly unprecedented you are."

"I want to go to Amsterdam, and I want him to tell me what happens after the book is over, and I just don’t want my particular life."

"I want to give up all the sick days I had left for a few healthy ones."

"Keep your shit together."

I don’t think that’s what Lida meant.

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

Living our best life today!

He’s, like, way too aggressive about saving civilians and whatnot.

To be fair to Monica, what you did to her wasn’t very nice either.

You don’t want to give him something he can’t handle.

The truth was, I didn’t want to Isaac him.

He’s great.

Are you sure you—...No, Isaac said.

It’s complicated.

"I know that love is just a shout into the void, and that oblivion is inevitable, and that we’re all doomed."

"I am in love with you, and I know that... there will come a day when all our labor has been returned to dust."

"You’ve gotta pick your battles in this world..."

"It’s my privilege and my responsibility."

"Observation: Standing in line is a form of oppression."

"The only thing worse than being sad is for others to see that you’re sad."

"Walking through the X-ray machine marked the first time I’d taken a step without oxygen in some months, and it felt pretty amazing to walk unencumbered like that."

"I want to talk about this more... But I am starving. I’ll be right back."

"This is what it feels like to drive in a car with you."

"I’m just saying: Maybe scrambled eggs are ghettoized, but they’re also special. They have a place and a time, like church does."

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.

In the city of freedom, I was among the most liberated of its residents.

Everyone wants to lead an extraordinary life.

It’s really mean of you to say that the only lives that matter are the ones that are lived for something or die for something.

But you fear oblivion.

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

If you don’t live a life in service of a greater good, you’ve gotta at least die a death in service of a greater good, you know?

But, I mean, not to sound like my parents, but I believe in that line from An Imperial Affliction. 'The risen sun too bright in her losing eyes.' That’s God, I think.

It took almost a year, and it was a year of me hanging out with this girl who would, like, just start laughing out of nowhere and point at my prosthetic and call me Stumpy.

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

"All representations of a thing are inherently abstract. It’s very clever."

"The world is not a wish-granting factory."

"You spent it on us."

"I will write you an epilogue."

"We are speaking of a novel, dear child, not some historical enterprise."

"What happened to them? They all ceased to exist the moment the novel ended."

"It's impossible not to imagine a future for them."

"I need one and only one thing from you before I walk out of your life forever: WHAT HAPPENS TO ANNA’S MOTHER?"

"The only way through was up."

"Our fearlessness shall be our secret weapon."

You have a choice in this world, I believe, about how to tell sad stories, and we made the funny choice.

The world is not a wish-granting factory.

I couldn't unlove Augustus Waters.

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.

It’s just bullshit, the whole thing.

You’ll live your best life today. This is your war now.

What am I at war with? My cancer. And what is my cancer? My cancer is me.

There is no glory in illness. There is no meaning to it.

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

It is my privilege and my responsibility to ride all the way up with you.

"Ignorance is bliss."

"It was like it was personal," Gus said quietly. "Like he was mad at us for some reason."

"I don’t know what I believe, Hazel. I thought being an adult meant knowing what you believe, but that has not been my experience."

"I believe the universe wants to be noticed. I think the universe is improbably biased toward consciousness, that it rewards intelligence in part because the universe enjoys its elegance being observed."

"You can’t just not contact your former boyfriend after his eyes get cut out of his freaking head."

"So I can like send you a porn story and you can have an old German man read it to you?"

"Total radio silence."

"Ridiculous."

"I’m taken," Gus said.

"See, Isaac, if you just take—we’re coming to the curb now—the feeling of legitimacy away from them, if you turn it around so they feel like they are committing a crime by watching..."

Some infinities are bigger than other infinities.

Hazel, this risotto . . .

It tastes like food, excellently prepared.

It does not taste like God Himself cooked heaven into a series of five dishes.

You know we love you, Hazel, but right now we just need to be a family.

I still thought maybe I was missing my last chance to see him.

I had this brief but still infinite forever.

Gus being the kind of person who inspires doctors to give their best bottles.

Last time, I imagined myself as the kid. This time, the skeleton.

We drank from paper Winnie-the-Pooh cups.

"It is a good life, Hazel Grace."

"Nostalgia is a side effect of dying."

"A memoir would be just the thing to keep me in the hearts and memories of my adoring public."

"Why do you need an adoring public when you’ve got me?"

"Sometimes I dream that I’m writing a memoir."

"When you’re as charming and physically attractive as myself, it’s easy enough to win over people you meet."

"It’s hard as hell to hold on to your dignity when the risen sun is too bright in your losing eyes."

"He shouted, 'You will not kill my girlfriend today, International Terrorist of Ambiguous Nationality!'"

"I wish we had that swing set sometimes."

"My nostalgia is so extreme that I am capable of missing a swing my butt never actually touched."

With each passing minute, I’m developing a deeper appreciation of the word mortified.

I always had this secret suspicion that I was special.

I don’t care if the New York Times writes an obituary for me. I just want you to write one.

You say you’re not special because the world doesn’t know about you, but that’s an insult to me. I know about you.

I just want to be enough for you, but I never can be.

But this is all you get. You get me, and your family, and this world. This is your life.

I’m sorry if it sucks.

You’re not going to be the first man on Mars, and you’re not going to be an NBA star, and you’re not going to hunt Nazis.

Let’s just play.

"I’m sorry, I wish it was like that movie, with the Persians and the Spartans."

"But it isn’t."

"Even cancer isn’t a bad guy really: Cancer just wants to be alive."

"You’re okay," I told him.

"Gus, you have to promise not to try this again. I’ll get you cigarettes, okay?"

"So much depends upon a red wheelbarrow glazed with rainwater beside the white chickens."

"So much depends, I told Augustus, upon a blue sky cut open by the branches of the trees above."

"So much depends upon the transparent G-tube erupting from the gut of the blue-lipped boy."

"So much depends upon this observer of the universe."

"And you say you don’t write poetry."

It’s my last shred of dignity. It’s very small.

Can we go?

How’s that fresh air feel?

I can only hope they grow into the kind of thoughtful, intelligent young men you’ve become.

It’s just that most really good-looking people are stupid, so I exceed expectations.

It can be sort of blinding.

Terrible tragedy, that. But can I help my own deadly beauty?

You cannot.

Seriously, don’t even get me started on my hot bod.

I thank God for you every day, kid.

I’m grateful.

You gave me a forever within the numbered days.

Some infinities are bigger than other infinities.

I will not tell you our love story, because—like all real love stories—it will die with us, as it should.

I am not a mathematician, but I know this: There are infinite numbers between 0 and 1.

I want more numbers than I’m likely to get.

I can’t talk about our love story.

Ours was an epic love story.

Gus, my love, I cannot tell you how thankful I am for our little infinity.

There are days, many of them, when I resent the size of my unbounded set.

Augustus Waters died eight days after his prefuneral.

It felt like losing your co-rememberer meant losing the memory itself.

But that wasn’t quite right. I called it a nine because I was saving my ten.

The great and terrible ten, slamming me again and again as I lay still and alone.

You will live forever in my memory, because I will live forever!

It’s almost as if the way you imagine my dead self says more about you than it says about either the person I was or the whatever I am now.

I was mad at the universe.

Writing does not resurrect. It buries.

I just kind of crawled across the couch into her lap.

They held on to me for hours while the tide rolled in.

He loved you so much.

I love you present tense.

Without pain, we couldn’t know joy.

It’s total bullshit.

It was sure a privilege to love him, huh?

Life comes from life. Life begets life.

It’s hard to explain, but talking to them felt like stabbing and being stabbed.

I already knew too many dead people.

I think you’re a pathetic alcoholic who says fancy things to get attention.

Gives you an idea how I feel about you.

Dying sucks.

The problem is not suffering itself or oblivion itself but the depraved meaninglessness of these things.

What we want is to be noticed by the universe, to have the universe give a shit what happens to us.

Grief does not change you, Hazel. It reveals you.

Not many people are lucky enough to be so good at something.

Pain is like fabric: The stronger it is, the more it’s worth.

You’re still looking for your sequel, you little rat.

I guess a lot of people had brought them food or whatever.

Heaven needed an angel.

The messages he leaves for us now are coming from above, Hazel.

I felt that I owed a debt to the universe that only my attention could repay.

As long as either of us is alive, I will be your mother.

Even when you die, I will still be your mom.

How could I stop loving you?

I worry that you won’t have a life, that you’ll sit around here all day... with no me to look after and stare at the walls.

I don’t want you to think I’m imagining a world without you.

We will always be here for you, Hazel.

I was really smiling. 'Mom is going to become a Patrick. She’ll be a great Patrick!' ”

If I’m dead, I want you to know I will be sighing at you from heaven.

You of all people know it is possible to live with pain.

The marks humans leave are too often scars.

We all want to be remembered.

But it’s not sad, Van Houten. It’s triumphant. It’s heroic.

Isn’t that the real heroism?

The real heroes anyway aren’t the people doing things; the real heroes are the people NOTICING things, paying attention.

Who am I to say that these things might not be forever?

What else? She is so beautiful. You don’t get tired of looking at her.

You don’t get to choose if you get hurt in this world... but you do have some say in who hurts you.

I like my choices. I hope she likes hers.

She walks lightly upon the earth.