An Absolutely Remarkable Thing (The Carls, #1)

by Hank Green

Look, I am aware that you’re here for an epic tale of intrigue and mystery and adventure and near death and actual death, but in order to get to that (unless you want to skip to chapter 13—I’m not your boss), you’re going to have to deal with the fact that I, April May, in addition to being one of the most important things that has ever happened to the human race, am also a woman in her twenties who has made some mistakes.

It is also the city of “Behold the field in which I grow my fucks. Lay thine eyes upon it and see that it is barren.”

Being annoyed by carefully crafted internet personas was part of my carefully crafted internet persona.

The power that each of us has over complete strangers to make them feel terrible and frightened and weak is amazing.

Much of the best art is about balancing between reflecting culture while simultaneously being removed from it and commenting on it.

“Have you ever seen the way I look at cheesecake?”

“When you’re faced with something you don’t understand, I think the most natural thing but also the least interesting thing you can be is afraid,”

We had to think realistically about the role I would play. I wasn’t going to be the president. I wasn’t going to be a national security or science expert. But how we defined me would be informed by how we imagined Carl. We decided that Carl represented power and the future and the “other.” I would represent humanity and weakness and the world Before Carl. I would balance Carl.

You can only do so much pretending before you become the thing you’re pretending to be.

Knowing something is a bad idea does not always decrease the odds that you will do it. If I had examined my motivations on this one, I probably wouldn’t have liked what I found, so I didn’t.

You keep forgetting that life is never going to be the same again.

“I weigh a hundred twenty pounds, and I’m the scariest thing you’ve ever seen. Call me when you grow a pair.”

Once life gets a certain amount of weird, more weird just doesn’t really matter.”

I was exhausted both physically and emotionally. My life had been turned inside out and upside down and then blended, spiced, spliced, and rebranded.

“This is America. We have never been scared away from a fight. When we are pressured, that is when we are greatest. That is when we accomplish the most.”

What is reality except for the things that people universally experience the same way? The Dream, in that sense, was very, very real.

We are irrational beings, easy to manipulate if you’re willing to do whatever it takes. That’s exactly how terrorists convince themselves that murder is worthwhile. And the wound it left, it was larger than those lives lost; it was a wound we would all have to live with forever. The purity of my feelings for Carl was gone and I would never get it back.

Sometimes, weird things happen that change the course of history . . . and apparently they happen to me.

“All those people out there, they’re defying the police and the terrorists to stand with Carl. To stand with us. To simply say, ‘The world is not awful,’ that’s what we need to go down there and do.”

“Remember when I called you in the middle of the night to go look at a weird sculpture? I did that because I thought you wanted something and I could help give it to you. But, Andy, you are so much more than I thought you were then, and I’m so much less. I don’t need you to help make me famous, I need you to help keep me sane. There’s nothing more dangerous outside that door than a Halsey concert.”

“As I was saying, even on this most terrible of days, even when the worst of us are all we can think of, I am proud to be a human.”

“Your story just started, April May,” Carl replied. And then the dream ended.

We are each individuals, but the far greater thing is what we are together, and if that isn’t protected and cherished, we are headed to a bad place.