You can’t control it. Life is not something you wield.
I think and I think and I think.
I thought of how infinity is not a large number. It is something else entirely. It is boundlessness. You cannot travel faster than the speed of light. You must and will die. You cannot escape these boundaries. But the miracle and hope of human consciousness is that we can still conceive of boundlessness.
You know that part of Yeats’s ‘The Second Coming’ where it’s, like, ‘The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity’?” “Yeah, we read it in AP.” “I think it’s actually worse to lack all conviction. Because then you just go along, you know? You’re just a bubble on the tide of empire.” “That’s a good line.” “Stole it from Robert Penn Warren,” he said. “My good lines are always stolen. I lack all conviction.
But the truth is that I had never wanted him to kiss me, not in the way you are supposed to want these things. I mean, he was gorgeous. I was attracted to him. I thought about him in that way, to borrow a phrase from the middle school vernacular. But the actual touch, the realized touch... it was all wrong.
The afternoon light brightening the green in her eyes, her tan skin the last memory of fall.
I thought, lying there, that I might love him for the rest of my life.
No one says goodbye unless they want to see you again.
I knew that my crazy was no longer a quirk, a simple matter of a cracked finger pad. Now, it was an irritation.
It’s all good, Hazel Grace. But just be clear, when I thought I saw Caroline Mathers’ ghost in support group, I was not entirely happy. I was staring, but I wasn’t yearning, if you know what I mean.
It spans the whole alphabet, because we wanted you to now you can be anything.
You’re just a really loud, awkward ninja, but we are both ninjas.
You of all people know it is possible to live with pain.
To be honest, I find the whole process of masticating plants and animals and then shoving them down my esophagus kind of disgusting, so I was trying not to think about the fact that I was eating, which is a form of thinking about it.
It never seemed like the right time. But of course, it never is the right time.
It’s not a value judgment. I’m not saying you’re good or generous or kind or whatever. I’m just saying you’re memorable.
That’s what my dad is like-he really disappeared a long time ago, which is maybe why it didn’t bother me much. I wish he were here, but I’ve wished that for a long time. Adults think they’re wielding power, but really power is wielding them.
I think the future deserves our faith. But it is hard to argue with Emily Dickinson.
Fights were recounted, battles won amid wars sure to be lost; hope was clung to; families were both celebrated and denounced; it was agreed that friends just didn’t get it; tears were shed; comfort proffered.
How you love your heroes when you are young and safe and the world has not ended.