The Fault in Our Stars

by John Green

Me: “It does not taste like God Himself cooked heaven into a series of five dishes which were then served to you accompanied by several luminous balls of fermented, bubbly plasma while actual and literal flower petals floated down all around your canal-side dinner table.” Gus: “Nicely phrased.” Gus’s father: “Our children are weird.” My dad: “Nicely phrased.”

Gus ended up in the ER with chest pain,

Face dropped immediately

“I slept quite a lot. I want to write you a sequel, Hazel Grace, but I’m just so damned tired all the time.”

Fuckinh balling.

“Sometimes I dream that I’m writing a memoir. A memoir would be just the thing to keep me in the hearts and memories of my adoring public.”

Shut up you cant die Im in love with you

nostalgia is a side effect of dying,”

When I got his face nose-touchingly close so that I could only see his eyes, I couldn’t tell he was sick. We kissed for a while and then lay together listening to The Hectic Glow’s eponymous album, and eventually we fell asleep like that, a quantum entanglement of tubes and bodies.

It’s hard as hell to hold on to your dignity when the risen sun is too bright in your losing eyes, and that’s what I was thinking about as we hunted for bad guys through the ruins of a city that didn’t exist.

“You say you’re not special because the world doesn’t know about you, but that’s an insult to me. I know about you.”

“I don’t think I’m gonna make it to write your obituary,” he said, instead of apologizing.

“Gus, I think something’s infected. I can’t fix this. Why are you here? Why aren’t you at home?” He puked, without even the energy to turn his mouth away from his lap. “Oh, sweetie,” I said.

He's forgetting. Fuck this.

He moved upstairs permanently, into a hospital bed near the living room window.

Broken

Anyway, that was the last good day I had with Gus until the Last Good Day.

“My name is Hazel. Augustus Waters was the great star-crossed love of my life. Ours was an epic love story, and I won’t be able to get more than a sentence into it without disappearing into a puddle of tears. 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, because there’s no one I’d rather have…” I started crying. “Okay, how not to cry. How am I—okay. Okay.”

But, Gus, my love, I cannot tell you how thankful I am for our little infinity. I wouldn’t trade it for the world. You gave me a forever within the numbered days, and I’m grateful.”

Augustus Waters died eight days after his prefuneral, at Memorial, in the ICU, when the cancer, which was made of him, finally stopped his heart, which was also made of him.

Stop.

The pleasure of remembering had been taken from me, because there was no longer anyone to remember with.

Finally I did call him. His phone rang five times and then went to voice mail. “You’ve reached the voice mail of Augustus Waters,” he said, the clarion voice I’d fallen for. “Leave a message.” It beeped. The dead air on the line was so eerie. I just wanted to go back to that secret post-terrestrial third space with him that we visited when we talked on the phone. I waited for that feeling, but it never came: The dead air on the line was no comfort, and finally I hung up.

Peter Van Houten wore a white linen suit, tailored to account for his rotundity,

Tf

“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.”

Sad

DANIEL DO NOT CALL YOUR BROTHER A DUMB BUTT

I never quite caught his scent again.

Depressing

p.s. I am bringing my boyfriend in case we have to physically restrain Peter.

imagining Lidewij Vliegenthart and her boyfriend bicycling around town on this crazy mission to find a dead kid’s last correspondence.

occurred to me that the voracious ambition of humans is never sated by dreams coming true, because there is always the thought that everything might be done better and again.

“Do you know what today is?” “It’s not my birthday, is it?” She laughed. “Not just yet. It’s July fourteenth, Hazel.” “Is it your birthday?” “No…” “Is it Harry Houdini’s birthday?” “No…” “I am really tired of guessing.” “IT IS BASTILLE DAY!” She pulled her arms from behind her back, producing two small plastic French flags and waving them enthusiastically.

Lmao

I’m a good person but a shitty writer. You’re a shitty person but a good writer. We’d make a good team.

I was wondering if you could write a eulogy for Hazel.

Omg I love this man

My thoughts are stars I can’t fathom into constellations.) We are like a bunch of dogs squirting on fire hydrants. We poison the groundwater with our toxic piss, marking everything MINE in a ridiculous attempt to survive our deaths. I can’t stop pissing on fire hydrants. I know it’s silly and useless—epically useless in my current state—but I am an animal like any other.

We’re as likely to hurt the universe as we are to help it, and we’re not likely to do either.

The guy who invented the smallpox vaccine didn’t actually invent anything. He just noticed that people with cowpox didn’t get smallpox.

What else? She is so beautiful. You don’t get tired of looking at her. You never worry if she is smarter than you: You know she is. She is funny without ever being mean. I love her. I am so lucky to love her, Van Houten. You don’t get to choose if you get hurt in this world, old man, but you do have some say in who hurts you. I like my choices. I hope she likes hers.