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I know that books seem like the ultimate thing that's made by one person, but that's not true. Every reading of a book is a collaboration between the reader and the writer who are making the story up together.

John Green

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John Green
Age: 47
Born: 1977
Born: August 24
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Indianapolis
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John Michael Green
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More quotes by John Green

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I find it really offensive when people say that the emotional experiences of teenagers are less real or less important than those of adults. I am an adult, and I used to be a teenager, and so I can tell you with some authority that my feelings then were as real as my feelings are now.
John Green
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Augustus, I said. Really. You don't have to do this. Sure I do, he said. I found my Wish. God, you're the best, I told him. I bet you say that to all the boys who finance your international travel, he answered.
John Green
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There's not even real *popularity* at my school. That, Coli said emphatically, is a sentence that has only ever been spoken by popular people.
John Green
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I like to know the places I write about. I feel like it helps me ground the novel. My novels are 'realistic novels,' but they can also be fantastical, so it's nice to have a setting that grounds them a little bit.
John Green
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I liked that he was a tenured professor in the Department of Slightly Crooked Smiles with a dual appointments in the Department of Having a Voice that Made My Skin Feel More Like Skin.
John Green
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The real heroes anyway aren't the people doing things the real heroes are the people NOTICING things, paying attention. The guy who invented the smallpox vaccine didn't actually invent anything. He just noticed that people with cowpox didn't get smallpox.
John Green
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And how are you feeling? asked Patrick.Oh, I'm grand. Augustus Waters smiled with a corner of his mouth. I'm on a roller coaster that only goes up, my friend.
John Green
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The labyrinth blows, but I choose it.
John Green
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I know it's impossible for you to see your peers this way, but when you're older, you start to see them--the bad kids and the good kids and all kids--as people. They're just people, who deserve to be cared for.
John Green
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Patients are almost always preceded by their parents, because no matter how fast an ambulance can drive, terrified parents can drive faster.
John Green
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Why don’t we break up? I guess I stay with her because she stays with me. And that’s not an easy thing to do.
John Green
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You can’t know, sweetie, because you’ve never had a baby become a brilliant young reader with a side interest in horrible television shows, but the joy you bring us is so much greater than the sadness we feel about your illness.
John Green
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Some people don't understand the promises they're making when they make them, I said. Right, of course. But you keep the promise anyway. That's what love is. Love is keeping the promise anyway.
John Green
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Nothing really ever happens like you imagine it will.
John Green
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Meriwether Lewis's last words were, 'I am not a coward, but I am so strong. So hard to die.' I don't doubt that it is, but it cannot be much harder than being left behind.
John Green
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Colin had always preferred baths one of his general policies in life was never to do anything standing up that could just as easily be done lying down
John Green
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The funny thing about writing is that whether you're doing well or doing it poorly, it looks the exact same. That's actually one of the main ways that writing is different from ballet dancing.
John Green
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Even then, it hurt. The pain was always there, pulling me inside of myself, demanding to be felt. It always felt like I was waking up from the pain when something in the world outside of me suddenly required my comment or attention.
John Green
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That's why people grow weary of listening to Dumpees obsess over their troubles: getting dumped is predictable, repetitive, and boring. They want to stay friends they feel smothered it's always them and it's never you and afterward, you're devastated and their relieved it's over for them and just starting for you.
John Green
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Different authors write different ways, have different relationships with their audiences, and those are all legitimate.
John Green