“The worst part of being truly alone is you think about all the times you wished that everyone would just leave you be. Then they do, and you are left being, and you turn out to be terrible company.”

I loved this, a lot actually. I just have this thing with John Green’s books; they engulf me. He has this way of creating a world so real that I give it thought and care as if it were a memory of something tangible and true. I love his writing so much, the amount of information and knowledge that overflow with every novel really blows me away. His characters are exceptional and awkward and relatable and real. They’re so real and loved as though they are.


“No one ever says good-bye unless they want to see you again.”

Aza is one of a kind, really. I loved her and all her complicated thoughts and spirals. Same with Davis, he was really sweet and such a nice character. And I loved that the whole story wasn’t really about them both ending up together or about the romance or finding Davis’s father, but it was always about their thoughts; their spiraling dwindling thoughts of being and existing and dying. I was in awe because I wouldn’t know how anyone could shape these thoughts into words. Especially how this book dealt with Aza’s mental illnesses.


“And we’re such language-based creatures that to some extent we cannot know what we cannot name. And so we assume it isn’t real. We refer to it with catch-all terms, like crazy or chronic pain, terms that both ostracize and minimize. The term chronic pain captures nothing of the grinding, constant, ceaseless, inescapable hurt. And the term crazy arrives at us with none of the terror and worry you live with. Nor do either of those terms connote the courage people in such pains exemplify, which is why I’d ask you to frame your mental health around a word other than crazy.”

speechless. also,


“Maybe we invented metaphor as a response to pain. Maybe we needed to give shape to the opaque, deep-down pain that evades both sense and senses.”

like, how? I’m grateful for this book and it’s existence. I always end up learning something when I read for John Green, I guess that’s the biggest enjoyment of all.

BONUS EXCERPT:

“Most adults are just hollowed out. You watch them try to fill themselves up with booze or money or God or fame or whatever they worship, and it all rots them from the inside until nothing is left but the money or booze or God they thought would save them.”