Well, but you can eat Grandma's cookies. They're not bad for you. They were made by Grandma. Grandma wouldn't hurt you.

Come over here so I can examine your face with my hands and see deeper into your soul than a sighted person ever could.

Different authors write different ways, have different relationships with their audiences, and those are all legitimate.

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

Because it's kind of great, being an idea that everybody likes. But I could never be the idea to myself, not all the way.

At least for tonight. In sickness and in health. In good times and in bad. For richer, for poorer. 'Till dawn do us part.

You like someone who can't like you back because unrequited love can be survived in a way that once-requited love cannot.

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 beautiful lie we have.

You either have a great social life and shitty taste in music, or a fantastic taste in music with barely any social life.

That was the worst part about having cancer, sometimes: The physical evidence of disease separates you from other people.

The truth hurts because it's real. It hurts because it mattered. And that's an important thing to acknowledge to yourself.

Colin thought about the dork mantra: sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me. What a dirty lie.

Observation: It would be awesome to fly in a superfast airplane that could chase the sunrise around the world for a while.

That's the mystery, isn't it? Is the labyrinth living or dying? Which is he trying to escape---the world or the end of it?

Were she better or you sicker, then the stars would not be so terribly crossed, but it is the nature of the stars to cross.

I just want to fly under the radar, because when you start to make yourself into a big deal, that's when you get shot down.

She smiled with all the delight of a kid on Christmas morning and said, "Y'all smoke to enjoy it. I smoke to die." - Alaska

You can trust that caring, as a rule, ends poorly,” which is true. Caring doesn’t sometimes lead to misery. It always does.

You can say a lot of bad things about Alabama, but you can't say that Alabamans as a people are duly afraid of deep fryers.

weltschmerz: its the depression you feel when the world as it is does not line up with the world as you think it should be.

Just spend a few more months playing video games. That hand-eye coordination will come in handy when you get to third base.

The world went on, as it does, without my full participation, and I only woke up from the reverie when someone said my name.

We don't suffer from a shortage of metaphors . . . But you have to be careful which metaphor you choose, because it matters.

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

It's a metaphor, see: You put the killing thing right between your teeth, but you don't give it the power to do its killing.

Like all sick children,' he answered dispassionately, 'you say you don't want pity, but your very existence depends upon it.

Dumpers may not always be the heartbreakers, and the Dumpees may not always be the heartbroken. But everyone has a tendency.

I’ve stopped thinking about it. I don’t have time to have a girlfriend. I have like a full-time job Learning How to Be Blind.

I've lived here for eighteen years and I have never once in my life come across anyone who cares about anything that matters.

For a moment, she was quiet. Then she grabbed my hand, whispered, “Run run run run run,” and took off, pulling me behind her.

While I did not fancy myself a particularly good person, I never thought my first real sexual action would be prostitutional.

This is what I love about novels - both reading them and writing them. They jump into the abyss to be with you where you are.

In my opinion, actual heroism, like actual love, is a messy, painful, vulnerable business—and I wanted to try to reflect that.

I've read a lot of bad books. I used to review books for a living, and when you're a reviewer you read tons of terrible books.

Witness also that when we talk about literature, we do so in the present tense. When we speak of the dead, we are not so kind.

Becoming a father made me much more interested in the parent character in my novels. I've never found parents that interesting.

Jesus, I'm not going to be one of those people who sits around talking about what they're going to do. I'm just going to do it.

In retrospect Hank I don't know why I spent four years writing this book when I could have just made a hit sing-a-ma-jig album.

Bro, it's dark. You can't go to a strange building with a mysterious address in the dark. Haven't you ever seen a horror movie?

but there was nothing I could do to dim the supernovae exploding inside my brain, an endless chain of intra cranial firecrackers

My responsibility is to try to tell true stories. To me a true story is always hopeful, but never simply, uncomplicatedly happy.

We have this habit of romanticizing the lives of writers. I remember when I was a kid, I was like, 'I want to be Kurt Vonnegut.'

That's how writing works, at least for me: even the stuff that doesn't work out gets funneled into the stuff that does work out.

The Degree to which I am blessed staggers me... the degree to which I take that for granted shames me. -Streetwalking with Jesus

We all miss you so much. It just never ends. It feels like we were all wounded in your battle, Caroline. I miss you. I love you.

I felt the unfairness of it, the inarguable injustice of loving someone who might have loved you back but can't due to deadness.

That's the great thing about being in the third grade. If you've got one polysyllabic adjective, everyone thinks you're a genius.

I was surprised. I'd always associated belief in heaven with, frankly, a kind of intellectual disengagement. But Gus wasn't dumb.

Agustus asked if I wanted to go with him to Support Group, but I was really tired from my busy day of Having Cancer, so I passed.

It is easy to forget how full the world is of people, full to bursting, and each of them imaginable and consistently misimagined.

Share This Page