Inborn Intelligence

Among other things, I spent this summer introducing several people to John Green's excellent novel, The Fault in Our Stars. (Currently available for Kindle for just $3.99.) After Les Miserables, which is fantastic but a hard slog, it's the best book I've read in the last 12 months.

I had reason tonight to return to one of my favorite quotes of John Green, shared below. Given how much I've written about gifted kids and CTYI, I appreciate somebody condensing most of my sentiments on the subject into just one or two lines. He's asked to respond to claims that he views smart people as being better than others. (Emphasis mine.)

John Green: "I don’t think smart people are better than other people. More importantly, I view intelligence (at least the kind of intelligence that most of the characters in my novel display) as something learned not inborn. I don’t think Hazel or Gus necessarily have particularly high IQs (Gus in particular is constantly misusing words). I just think they’re intellectually curious."