John Green - Looking for Alaska (2005)

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

John Green
I realized it in waves and we held on to each other crying and I thought, God we must look so lame, but it doesn't matter much when you have just now realized, all the time later, that you are still alive.

John Green
Like the way the sun is right now, with the long shadows, and that kind of bright, soft light you get when the sun isn't quite setting? That's the light that makes everything better, everything prettier, and today, everything just seemed to be in that light.

John Green
I've always sort of preferred people who are not entirely likable.

John Green
I'm a bad boyfriend. She's a bad girlfriend. We deserve each other.

John Green
And then I screwed up and the Colonel screwed up and Takumi screwed up and she slipped through our fingers.

John Green
When adults say, "Teenagers think they are invincible" with that sly, stupid smile on their faces, they don't know how right they are. We need never be hopeless, because we can never be irreparably broken. We think that we are invincible because we are. We cannot be born, and we cannot die. Like all energy, we can only change shapes and sizes and manifestations. They forget that when they get old. They get scared of losing and failing. But that part of us greater than the sum of our parts cannot begin and cannot end, and so it cannot fail.

John Green
The Colonel's hand was so little, and I grabbed it tight, his cold seeping into me and my warmth into him. 'I memorized the populations,' he said.

John Green
She taught me everything I knew about crawfish and kissing and pink wine and poetry. She made me different.

John Green
It was not an eventful day. I should have done extraordinary things. I should have sucked the marrow out of life. But on that day, I slept eighteen hours out of a possible twenty-four.

John Green
I could try to pretend that I didn't care anymore, but it could never be true again. You can't just make yourself matter, and then die, Alaska, because now, I am irretrievably different, and I'm sorry I let you go, yes, but you made the choice.

John Green
The Colonel explained to me that 1. this was Alaska's room, and that 2. she had a single room because the girl who was supposed to be her roommate got kicked out at the end of last year, and that 3. Alaska had cigarettes, although the Colonel neglected to ask whether 4. I smoked, which 5. I didn't.

John Green
"And we'll call you... hmmm. Pudge."
"Huh?"
"Pudge," the Colonel said. "Because you're skinny. It's called irony, Pudge. Heard of it? Now, let's go get some cigarettes and start this year off right."

John Green
Hey Pudge," the Colonel said. "What do you think of a truce?" "It reminds me of when the Germans demanded that the U.S. surrender at the Battle of the Bulge," I said. "I guess I'd say to this truce offer what General McAuliffe said to that one: Nuts.

John Green
I'm really not up for answering any questions that start with how, when, where, why or what.

John Green
Did I help you toward a fate you didn't want, Alaska, or did I just assist in your willful self-destruction?

John Green
And I agreed, but still, she owed us an explanation. If she was up there, down there, out there, somewhere, maybe she would laugh.

John Green
I didn't know whether to trust Alaska, and I'd certainly had enough of her unpredictability - cold one day, sweet the next; irresistibly flirty one moment, resistibly obnoxious the next. I preferred the Colonel: At least when he was cranky, he had a reason.

John Green
There were so many of us who would have to live with things done and things left undone that day. Things that did not go right, things that seemed okay at the time because we could not see the future. If only we could see the endless string of consequences that result from our smallest actions. But we can't know better until knowing better is useless.

John Green
But a lot of times, people die how they live. And so last words tell me a lot about who people were, and why they became the sort of people biographies get written about.

John Green
I hated cranberry sauce, but for some reason my mom persisted in her lifelong belief that it was my very favorite food, even though every single Thanksgiving I politely declined to include it on my plate.

John Green
There is a part of her greater than the sum of her knowable parts. And that part has to go somewhere, because it cannot be destroyed.

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

John Green
I mean, it's stupid to miss someone you didn't even get along with. But I don't know, it was nice, you know, having someone you could always fight with.

John Green
That was part of her, and you used to know it. It's like now you only care about the Alaska you made up.

John Green
The nature of the labyrinth, I scribbled into my spiral notebook, and the way out of it. This teacher rocked. I hated discussion classes. 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, and I hated how it was all just a game of trying to figure out what the teacher wanted to hear and then saying it. I'm in class, so teach me.

John Green
I didn't know what to say to her - I was caught in a love triangle with one dead side.

John Green
You are helpful, and you are loved, and you are forgiven, and you are not alone.

John Green
It was not enough to be the last guy she kissed. i wanted to be the last one she loved.

John Green
She's just playing a trick on us. This is just an Alaska Young Prank Extraordinaire. It's Alaska being Alaska, funny and playful and not knowing when or how to put on the brakes.

John Green