Quotes from The Fault in Our Stars

A few weeks ago after fellowship I cornered Depreena and Jonathan and explained to them that I was in dire need of books.  They fully recognized what a serious problem was and quickly lent me some books.

I have great teammates.

Anyway, one of the books that Depreena lent me was The Fault in Our Stars by John Green.  I hadn't been super eager to read it before -- I think I'm kind of snobby when it comes to reading young adult fiction kind of stuff -- but it was good.  It was also very sad.  

Here are the quotes that I really liked.  Some because I agreed, some because I disagreed, and some because they made me smile.

"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.  (Cancer is also a side effect of dying.  Almost everything is, really.)

And I wondered if hurdlers ever thought, you know, This would go faster if we just got rid of the hurdles.

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.

"Pretty great," I agreed, although it wasn't, really.  It was kind of a boy movie.  I don't know why boys expect us to like boy movies.  We don't expect them to like girl movies.  [Funny sidenote:  this was referring to V for Vendetta.  This past week, one of my (male) students asked me if I had watched it and told me it's a great movie.]

I felt a certain unbridgeable distance between us.  I think my school friends wanted to help me through my cancer, but they eventually found out that they couldn't.  For one thing, there was no through.

I stopped when I heard violent sobbing on the other end of the line.  "Are you okay?" I asked.

"I'm grand," Augustus answered.  "I am, however, with Isaac, who seems to be decompensating."

"Well, to be fair," I said, "I mean, she probably can't handle it.  Neither can you, but she doesn't have to handle it.  And you do."

"Sometimes people don't understand the promises they're making when they make them," I said.

Isaac shot me a look.  "Right, of course.  But you keep the promise anyway.  That's what love is."

As he read, I fell in love the way you fall asleep: slowly, and then all at once.

"I want to have scrambled eggs for dinner without this ridiculous construction that a scrambled egg-inclusive meal is breakfast even when it occurs at dinnertime."

"You've gotta pick your battles in this world, Hazel," my mom said.  "But if this is the issue you want to champion, we will stand behind you."

"Quite a bit behind you," my dad added.

The weird thing about houses is that they almost always look like nothing is happening inside of them, even though they contain most of our lives.

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

The urge to make art or contemplate philosophy does not go away when you are sick.  Those urges just become transfigured by illness.

Much of my life had been devoted to trying not to cry in front of people who loved me, so I knew what Augustus was doing.  You clench your teeth.  You look up.  You tell yourself that if they see you cry, it will hurt them, and you will be nothing but A Sadness in their lives, and you must not become a mere sadness, so you will not cry, and you say all of this to yourself while looking up at the ceiling, and then you swallow even though your throat does not want to close, and you look at the person who loves you and smile.

"You are fairly smart," I said after a while.

"You are fairly good at compliments," he answered.

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