The Anthropocene Reviewed

by John Green

We all know how loving ends. But I want to fall in love with the world anyway, to let it crack me open. I want to feel what there is to feel while I am here.

But mostly, I think I’m just scared that if I show the world my belly, it will devour me.

And I think about the many broad seas that have roared between me and the past—seas of neglect, seas of time, seas of death.

“The end of man is knowledge, but there is one thing he can’t know. He can’t know whether knowledge will save him or kill him.”

One of the strange things about adulthood is that you are your current self, but you are also all the selves you used to be, the ones you grew out of but can’t ever quite get rid of.

“The ward was the only true community of equals I have ever lived in. What I mean is that we all knew we had already lived through hell, that our lives were already over, and all we had was the final descent. The only thing to do on the way down was to radiate mercy.”