John Green
John Green
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionAuthor
Date of Birth24 August 1977
CountryUnited States of America
ideas people feelings
The idea is that for ten minutes, we forget that we have feelings. And we forget about protecting ourselves or other people and we just say the truth. For ten minutes. And then we can go back to being lame.
regret useless permanent
My regret was immediate and permanent and useless.
men comfort cold
I told him they built a statue of Schultz, and then he said that a monument is cold comfort to a dead man, and then I said that the statue was built not for Schultz, but for us--to remind us how to be human.
said they-said
The Romans knew it: quod me alit me extinguit, they said: That which nourishes me, extinguishes me.
fall together care
By saying you don’t care if the world falls apart, in some small way you’re saying you want it to stay together, on your own terms.
girl kids home
This is what happens: somebody—girl usually—got a free spirit, doesn't get on too good with her parents. These kids, they're like tied-down helium balloons. They strain against the string and strain against it, and then something happens, and that string gets cut, and they just float away. And maybe you never see the balloon again . . . Or maybe three or four years from now, or three or four days from now, the prevailing winds take the balloon back home . . . But listen, kid, that string gets cut all the time.
imagine wells i-can
I can't be you. You can't be me. You can imagine another well—but never quite perfectly, you know?
suffering matter towns
We don't suffer from a shortage of metaphors . . . But you have to be careful which metaphor you choose, because it matters.
roots long alive
Maybe we're grass—our roots so interdependent that no one is dead as long as someone is still alive.
We are now as I wished we could be then.
hurt men wounded
But as for me: I must ask the wounded man where he is hurt, because I cannot become the wounded man. The only wounded man I can be is me.
When you leave a place, it's best to leave.
people listening trying
In the end the listening exposes you even more than it exposes the people you're trying to listen to.
towns heard make-sense
Before any of it could make sense, it had to be heard.