The Fault in Our Stars

by John Green

I nodded. 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. I liked that he was a tenured professor in the Department of Slightly Crooked Smiles with a dual appointment in the

Department of Having a Voice That Made My Skin Feel More Like Skin. And I liked that he had two names. I’ve always liked people with two names, because you get to make up your mind what you call them: Gus or Augustus? Me, I was always just Hazel, univalent Hazel.

the existence of broccoli does not in any way affect the taste of chocolate.)

“That’s the thing about pain,” Augustus said, and then glanced back at me. “It demands to be felt.”

“Some tourists think Amsterdam is a city of sin, but in truth it is a city of freedom. And in freedom, most people find sin.”

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

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