The Fault in Our Stars

by John Green

“The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars / But in ourselves.”

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

“I’m in love with you, and I’m not in the business of denying myself the simple pleasure of saying true things. I’m in love with you, and I know that love is just a shout into the void, and that oblivion is inevitable, and that we’re all doomed and that there will come a day when all our labor has been returned to dust, and I know the sun will swallow the only earth we’ll ever have, and I am in love with you.”

“The thing about dead people,” he said, and then stopped himself. “The thing is you sound like a bastard if you don’t romanticize them, but the truth is…complicated, I guess. Like, you are familiar with the trope of the stoic and determined cancer victim who heroically fights her cancer with inhuman strength and never complains or stops smiling even at the very end, etcetera?”

“IT IS BASTILLE DAY!”

My thoughts are stars I can’t fathom into constellations.)

The real heroes anyway aren’t the people doing things; the real heroes are the people NOTICING things, paying attention.

She is so beautiful. You don’t get tired of looking at her.