The Fault in Our Stars

by John Green

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

That's actually a good line.

“They don’t kill you unless you light them,” he said as Mom arrived at the curb. “And I’ve never lit one. It’s a metaphor, see: You put the killing thing right between your teeth, but you don’t give it the power to do its killing.” “It’s a metaphor,” I said, dubious. Mom was just idling. “It’s a metaphor,” he said. “You choose your behaviors based on their metaphorical resonances…” I said. “Oh, yes.” He smiled. The big, goofy, real smile. “I’m a big believer in metaphor, Hazel Grace.”

What a stupid metaphor. And he's wasting so much money on this.

(I didn’t tell him that the diagnosis came three months after I got my first period. Like: Congratulations! You’re a woman. Now die.)

That was funny!

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.

This is Hazel admitting her love for Augustus. This is a LOT better than when Gus does it.

“Don’t tell me you’re one of those people who becomes their disease. I know so many people like that. It’s disheartening. Like, cancer is in the growth business, right? The taking-people-over business. But surely you haven’t let it succeed prematurely.”

My favorite book, by a wide margin, was An Imperial Affliction, but I didn’t like to tell people about it. Sometimes, you read a book and it fills you with this weird evangelical zeal, and you become convinced that the shattered world will never be put back together unless and until all living humans read the book. And then there are books like An Imperial Affliction, which you can’t tell people about, books so special and rare and yours that advertising your affection feels like a betrayal.

I agree with that. We all have special books that we wanna keep to ourselves.

“Hazel Grace,” he said, my name new and better in his voice. “It has been a real pleasure to make your acquaintance.” “Ditto, Mr. Waters,” I said. I felt shy looking at him. I could not match the intensity of his waterblue eyes. “May I see you again?” he asked. There was an endearing nervousness in his voice. I smiled. “Sure.” “Tomorrow?” he asked. “Patience, grasshopper,” I counseled. “You don’t want to seem overeager.” “Right, that’s why I said tomorrow,” he said. “I want to see you again tonight. But I’m willing to wait all night and much of tomorrow.” I rolled my eyes. “I’m serious,” he said. “You don’t even know me,” I said. I grabbed the book from the center console. “How about I call you when I finish this?” “But you don’t even have my phone number,” he said. “I strongly suspect you wrote it in the book.” He broke out into that goofy smile. “And you say we don’t know each other.”

Her name is better in his voice. Really? This is so stupid. The message is: Hazel's life is better only with a boy in it, which is SO wrong.

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

Can something be more stupider?

You do not immortalize the lost by writing about them. Language buries, but does not resurrect.

You are so busy being you that you have no idea how utterly unprecedented you are.”

“I know what you’re trying to do. You don’t want to give him something he can’t handle. You don’t want him to Monica you,” he said. “Kinda,” I said. But it wasn’t that. The truth was, I didn’t want to Isaac him. “To be fair to Monica,” I said, “what you did to her wasn’t very nice either.” “What’d I do to her?” he asked, defensive. “You know, going blind and everything.” “But that’s not my fault,” Isaac said. “I’m not saying it was your fault. I’m saying it wasn’t nice.”

That was the worst part about having cancer, sometimes: The physical evidence of disease separates you from other people.

“Contemporaneity,” to quote AIA, “specializes in the kind of battles wherein no one loses anything of any value, except arguably their lives.”

“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.”

Ugh, Ugh,Ugh. Which 17 year old says that?

“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.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t mind, Hazel Grace. It would be a privilege to have my heart broken by you.”

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.”

“There’s a great quote in Gus’s house, one that both he and I found very comforting: Without pain, we couldn’t know joy.”

So dawn goes down to day, the poet wrote. Nothing gold can stay.

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.