Looking for Alaska

by John Green

The air outside sat as still and oppressive as the air inside.

That didn’t happen, of course. Things never happened like I imagined them.

(but God, curvy) girl and partly by the gigantic stacks of books that lined her walls. Her library filled her bookshelves and then overflowed into waist-high stacks of books everywhere, piled haphazardly against the walls. If just one of them moved, I thought, the domino effect could engulf the three of us in an asphyxiating mass of literature.

He blew a thin stream of smoke forcefully toward the lake. I had to admit: He looked cool doing it. Taller, somehow.

And now is as good a time as any to say that she was beautiful.

I must talk, and you must listen, for we are engaged here in the most important pursuit in history: the search for meaning. What is the nature of being a person? What is the best way to go about being a person? How did we come to be, and what will become of us when we are no longer? In short: What are the rules of this game, and how might we best play it?”

I hated sports. I hated sports, and I hated people who played them, and I hated people who watched them, and I hated people who didn’t hate people who watched or played them.

“God will punish the wicked. And before He does, we will.”