Looking for Alaska

by John Green

‘I go to seek a Great Perhaps.’ That’s why I’m going. So I don’t have to wait until I die to start seeking a Great Perhaps.”

I hit the swan at a full run and felt it bite into my ass. And then I was running with a noticeable limp, because my ass was on fire, and I thought to myself, What the hell is in swan saliva that burns so badly?

This part made me laugh out loud for a good 5 minutes, and I read it over and over. 🤣

When you stopped wishing things wouldn’t fall apart, you’d stop suffering when they did.

This was powerful for me.

Things that did not go right, things that seemed okay at the time because we could not see the future. If only we could see the endless string of consequences that result from our smallest actions. But we can’t know better until knowing better is useless.

Small actions over time add up to so much, we don’t even realize it until it’s too late.

We need never be hopeless, because we can never be irreparably broken.

There is always a way out, a positive turn of events, a warm sunshine day just ahead.

But that part of us greater than the sum of our parts cannot begin and cannot end, and so it cannot fail.