Hazel Grace Lancaster Quotes

The thought of you being removed from the rotation is not funny to me. ~ John Green

Without pain, how could we know joy?' This is an old argument in the field of thinking about suffering and its stupidity and lack of sophistication could be plumbed for centuries but suffice it to say that the existence of broccoli does not, in any way, affect the taste of chocolate. ~ John Green

-so if the inevitability of oblivion worries you, than I suggest you ignore it. God knows that's what the rest of the world does. ~ John Green

I liked Augustus Waters. I really, really, really liked him. I liked the way his story ended with someone else. I liked his voice. I liked that he took existentially fraught free throws. I liked that he was a tenured professor in the Department of Slightly Crooked Smiles with a dual appointment in the Department of Having a Voice That Made My Skin Feel More Like Skin. And I liked that he had two names. I've always liked people with two names, because you get to make up your mind what you call them: Gus or Augustus? ~ John Green

Without Pain, How Could We Know Joy? ~ John Green

He flipped himself onto his side and kissed me. "You're so hot," I said, my hand still on his leg.
"I'm starting to think you have an amputee fetish," he answered, still kissing me. I laughed.
"I have an Augustus Waters fetish," I explained. ~ John Green

Dear Mr. Peter Van Houten
(c/o Lidewij Vliegenthart),

My name is Hazel Grace Lancaster. My friend Augustus Waters, who read An Imperial Affliction at my recommendationtion, just received an email from you at this address. I hope you will not mind that Augustus shared that email with me.

Mr. Van Houten, I understand from your email to Augustus that you are not planning to publish any more books. In a way, I am disappointed, but I'm also relieved: I never have to worry whether your next book will live up to the magnificent perfection of the original. As a three-year survivor of Stage IV cancer, I can tell you that you got everything right in An Imperial Affliction. Or at least you got me right. Your book has a way of telling me what I'm feeling before I even feel it, and I've reread it dozens of times.

I wonder, though, if you would mind answering a couple questions I have about what happens after the end of the novel. I understand the book ends because Anna dies or becomes too ill to continue writing it, but I would really like to mom-wether she married the Dutch Tulip Man, whether she ever has another child, and whether she stays at 917 W. Temple etc. Also, is the Dutch Tulip Man a fraud or does he really love them? What happens to Anna's friends-particularly Claire and Jake? Do they stay that this is the kind of deep and thoughtful question you always hoped your readers would ask-what becomes of Sisyphus the Hamster? These questio ~ John Green

I can't go to Amsterdam. One of my doctors thinks it's a bad idea."
He was quiet for a second. "God," he said. "I should've just paid for it myself. Should've just taken you straight from the Funky Bones to Amsterdam."
"But then I would've had a probably fatal episode of deoxygenation in Amsterdam, and my body would have been shipped home in the cargo hold of an airplane," I said.
"Well, yeah," he said. "But before that, my grand romantic gesture would have totally gotten me laid."
I laughed pretty hard, hard enought that I felt where the chest tube had been.
"You laugh because it's true," he said.
I laughed again.
"It's true, isn't it!"
"Probably not," I said, and then after a moment added, "although you never know. ~ John Green

She didn't understand why it was happening," he said. "I had to tell her she would die. Her social worker said I had to tell her. I had to tell her she would die, so I told her she was going to heaven. She asked if I would be there, and I said that I would not, not yet. But eventually, she said, and I promised that yes, of course, very soon. And I told her that in the meantime we had great family up there that would take care of her. And she asked me when I would be there, and I told her soon. Twenty-two years ago. ~ John Green

Whenever you read a cancer booklet or website or whatever, they always list depression among the side effects of cancer. But, in fact, depression is not a side effect of cancer. Depression is a side effect of dying. ~ John Green

There's a great quote in Gus's house, one that both he and I found very comforting: Without pain, we couldn't know joy. - Hazel Grace Lancaster ~ John Green

But, in fact, depression is not a side effect of cancer. Depression is a side effect of dying. - Hazel Grace Lancaster ~ John Green

Lonley, Vaguely pedophilic swing set seeks the butts of children. ~ John Green

Funerals, I decided, are for the living. - Hazel Grace Lancaster ~ John Green

I nodded. I liked Augustus Waters. I really, really, really liked him. I liked the way his story ended with someone else. I liked his voice. I liked that he took existentially fraught free throws. I liked that he was a tenured professor in the Department of Slightly Crooked Smiles with a dual appointment in the Department of Having a Voice That Made My Skin Feel More Like Skin. And I liked that he had two names. I've always liked people with two names, because you get to make up your mind what you call them: Gus or Augustus? Me, I was always just Hazel, univalent Hazel. ~ John Green

There will come a time', I said, 'when all of us are dead. All of us. There will come a time when there are no human beings remaining to remember that anyone ever existed or that our species ever did anything. There will be no one left to remember Aristotle or Cleopatra, let alone you. Everything that we did and built and wrote and thought and discovered will be forgotten and all of this.'
I gestured encompassingly
'will have been for naught. Maybe that time is coming soon and maybe it is millions of years away, but even if we survive the collapse of our sun, we will not survive forever. There was time before organis,s experienced consciousness, and there will be time after. And if the inevitability of human oblivion worries you, I encourage you to ignore it. God knows that's what everyone else does.' -Hazel Grace Lancaster ~ John Green

You're always such a disappointment, Augustus. Couldn't you have at least gotten orange tomatoes? ~ Hazel Grace Lancaster

I am pretty unextraordinary, ~ Hazel Grace Lancaster. ~ John Green

He specialized in the murder of dreams, Hazel Grace ... ~ John Green

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. ~ John Green

And as the smart ship grew In stature, grace, and hue In shadowy silent distance grew the Iceberg too. - THOMAS HARDY, FROM "THE CONVERGENCE OF THE TWAIN"(LINES ON THE LOSS OF TITANIC), 1912 ~ Hazel Gaynor

No!" Leo yelled.
"Uhhh," Nico groaned from the floor.
"Piper!" Jason cried.
"Monkey!" Frank yelled.
"Not monkeys," Hazel grumbled. "I think those are dwarfs."
"Stealing my stuff!" Leo yelled, and ran for the stairs. ~ Rick Riordan

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. ~ John Green

All salvation is temporary," Augustus shot back. "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. ~ John Green

It must be some book," she said as she knelt down next to the bed ... "Did that boy give it to you?" She asked out of nowhere.
"By 'it' do you mean herpes?"
"You are too much," Mom said, "The book, Hazel. I mean the book. ~ John Green

Sometimes it seems the universe just wants to be noticed. ~ John Green

Gus knew. Gus knows. I will not tell you our love story, because - like all real love stories - it will die with us, as it should. I'd hoped that he'd be eulogizing me. ~ John Green

It lit up like a Christmas Tree Hazel Grace... ~ John Green

The whole affair was the precise opposite of what I figured it would be: slow and patient and quiet and neither particularly painful nor particularly ecstatic. There were a lot of condomy problems that I did not get a particularly good look at. No headboards were broken. No screaming. Honestly, it was probably the longest time we'd ever spent together without talking. Only one thing followed type: Afterward, when I had my face resting against Augustus's chest, listening to his heart pound, Augustus said, "Hazel Grace, I literally cannot keep my eyes open." "Misuse of literality," I said. "No," he said. "So. Tired." His face turned away from me, my ear pressed to his chest, listening to his lungs settle into the rhythm of sleep. After a while, I got up, dressed, found the Hotel Filosoof stationery, and wrote him a love letter: ~ John Green

I spent your Wish on that doucheface," I said into his chest.
"Hazel Grace. No. I will grant you that you did spend my one and only Wish, but you did not spend it on him. You spent it on us. ~ John Green

Life is fragile Grace – it is no more than a petal of cherry blossom; thriving and in full bloom one minute and blown to the ground by a sudden gust of wind the next. We shouldn't take our life for granted and we should do whatever we can to make ourselves happy. ~ Hazel Gaynor

But in AIA, Anna decides that being a person with cancer who starts a cancer charity is a bit narcissistic, so she starts a charity called The Anna Foundation for People with cancer Who Want to Cure Cholera. ~ John Green

After I finished, there was quite a long period of silence as I watched a smile spread all the way across Augustus's face - not the little crooked smile of the boy trying to be sexy while he stared at me, but his real smile, too big for his face. "Goddamn," Augustus said quietly. "Aren't you something else. ~ John Green

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

Some wars," he said dismissively. "What am I at war with? My cancer. And what is my cancer? My cancer is me. The tumors are made of me. They're made of me as surely as my brain and my heart is made of me. It is a civil war, Hazel Grace, with a predetermined winner. ~ John Green

Are there any Nazis left that I could hunt down and bring to justice?" Augustus asked while we leaned over the vitrines reading Otto's letters and the gutting replies that no, no one had seen his children after the liberation.

"I think they're all dead. But it's not like the Nazis had a monopoly on evil."

"True," he said. "That's what we should do, Hazel Grace: We should team up and be this disabled vigilante duo roaring through the world, righting wrongs, defending the weak, protecting the endangered."

Although it was his dream and not mine, I indulged it. He'd indulged mine, after all. "Our fearlessness shall be our secret weapon," I said.

"The tales of our exploits will survive as long as the human voice itself," he said.

"And even after that, when the robots recall the human absurdities of sacrifice and compassion, they will remember us."

"They will robot-laugh at our courageous folly," he said. "But something in their iron robot hearts will yearn to have lived and died as we did: on the hero's errand. ~ John Green

Tell me my copy is missing the last twenty pages or something.
Hazel Grace, tell me I have not reached the end of this book.
OH MY GOD DO THEY GET MARRIED OR NOT OH MY GOD WHAT IS THIS?! ~ John Green

Do you have a Wish?' he asked, referring to this organization, The Genie Foundation, which is in the business of granting sick kids one wish.
'No' I said. 'I used my Wish pre-Miracle.'
'What'd you do?'
I sighed loudly. 'I was thirteen,' I said.
'Not Disney,' he said.
I said nothing.
'You did not go to Disney World.'
I said nothing.
'HAZEL GRACE!' he shouted. 'You did not use your one dying Wish to go to Disney World with your parents.'
'Also Epcot Center,' I mumbled.
'Oh, my God,' Augustus said. 'I can't believe I had a crush on a girl with such cliché wishes. ~ John Green

What a slut time is. She screws with everybody. ~ John Green

Some infinities are bigger than other infinities. ~ John Green

Hazel Grace," he said.
"Hi," I said. "How are you?"
"Grand," he said. "I have been wanting to call you on a nearly minutely basis, but I have been waiting until I could form a coherent thought in re An Imperial Affliction."
(He said "in re." He really did. That boy.) ~ John Green

Late in the winter of my seventeenth year, my mother decided I was depressed, presumably because I rarely left the house, spent quite a lot of time in bed, read the same book over and over, ate infrequently, and devoted quite a bit of my abundant free time to thinking about death. ~ John Green

Sentiments of your parents' throw pillows. You're arguing that the fragile, rare thing is beautiful simply because it is fragile and rare. But that's a lie, and you know it." "You're a hard person to comfort," Augustus said. "Easy comfort isn't comforting," I said. "You were a rare and fragile flower once. You remember." For a moment, he said nothing. "You do know how to shut me up, Hazel Grace." "It's my privilege and my responsibility," I answered. ~ John Green

It's a good life, Hazel Grace. ~ John Green

We were surrounded by thirty-foot-tall giants who were about to kill us. Then the sky opened up, and the gods descended."
"Grandad," the kids said, "you are full of schist."
"I'm not kidding!" he protested. ~ Rick Riordan

I know that oblivion is inevitable, and the sun will swallow the earth and I am in love with you Hazel grace. ~ John Green

You should see it. V for Vendetta I mean.
"I'll look it up."
No. With Me. At my house. Now ~ John Green

I even tried to tell myself to live my best life today. ~ John Green

But then in middle school science, Mr. Martinez asked who among us had ever fantasized about living in the clouds, and everyone raised their hand. Then Mr. Martinez told us that up in the clouds the wind blew one hundred and fifty miles an hour and the temperature was thirty below zero and there was no oxygen and we'd all die within seconds."
"Sounds like a nice guy."
"He specialized in the murder of dreams, Hazel Grace.let me tell you. You think volcanoes are awesome? Tell that to the ten thousand screaming corpses at Pompeii. You still secretly believe that there is an element of magic to this world? It's all just soulless molecules bouncing against each other randomly. Do you worry about who will take care of you if your parents die? As well you should, because they will be worm food in the fullness of time. ~ 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 way to hang around and annoy you for a long time. ~ John Green

It would be an honour to have my heart broken by you, Hazel Grace. ~ John Green

According to Maslow, I was stuck on the second level of the pyramid, unable to feel secure in my health and therefore unable to reach for love and respect and art and whatever else, which is, utter horseshit: The urge to make art or contemplate philosophy does not go away when you are sick. Those urges just become transfigured by illness.
Maslow's pyramid seemed to imply I was less human than other people, and most people seemed to agree with him. ~ John Green

I walked to his bedside table next. Infinite Mayhem. the ninth sequel to The Prince of Dawn, lay atop the table next to his reading lamp, the corner of page 138 turned down. He'd never made it to the end of the book. 'Spoiler alert: Mayhem survives,' I said out loud to him, just in case he could hear me. ~ John Green

Okay, he said after forever. Maybe okay will be our always.
Okay, I said. ~ John Green

Above us, the wind blew and the branching shadows rearranged themselves on our skin. Gus squeezed my hand. It is a good life, Hazel Grace. ~ John Green

It felt like everything was rising up in me, like I was drowning in this weirdly painful joy, but I couldn't say it back. I just looked at him and let him look at me until he nodded, lips pursed and turned away, placing the side of his head against the window. ~ John Green

The food was so good that with each passing course, our conversation devolved further into fragmented celebrations of its deliciousness:
'I want this dragon carrot risotto to become a person so I can take it to Las Vegas and marry it. ~ John Green

When I got out of the movie, I had four text messages from Augustus.
Tell me my copy is missing the last twenty pages or something.
Hazel Grace, tell me I have not reached the end of this book.
OH MY GOD DO THEY GET MARRIED OR NOT OH MY GOD WHAT IS THIS
I guess Anna died and so it just ends? CRUEL. Call me when you can. Hope all's okay. ~ John Green

Our infinity is bigger than other infinities. ~ John Green