John Green Ask Quotations

Did I help you toward a fate you didn't want, Alaska, or did I just assist in your willful self-destruction?

No," I said. And maybe it was only because Alaska couldn't hit the brakes and I couldn't hit the accelerator.

She's just playing a trick on us. This is just an Alaska Young Prank Extraordinaire. It's Alaska being Alaska, funny and playful and not knowing when or how to put on the brakes.

Can I ask you about Caroline Mathers?" "And you say there's no afterlife.

What can we do?" Mom asked again. I shrugged. But she kept asking, as if there were something she could do, until I just kind of crawled across the couch into her lap and my dad came over and held my legs really tight and I wrapped my arms all the way around my mom's middle and they held on to me for hours while the tide rolled in.

All at once, I couldn’t figure out why I was methodically tossing a spherical object through a toroidal object. It seemed like the stupidest thing I could possibly be doing.

We cannot be born, and we cannot die. Like all energy, we can only change shapes and sizes and manifestations.

Because no one can catch the motherfucking fox.

And then I screwed up and the Colonel screwed up and Takumi screwed up and she slipped through our fingers.

But why Alaska?' I asked her. 'Well, later, I found out what it means. It's from an Aleut word, Alyeska. It means 'that which the sea breaks against,' and I love that. But at the time, I just saw Alaska up there. And it was big, just like I wanted to be.

Imagining the future is a kind of nostalgia.

She has great breasts," the Colonel said without looking up from the whale. "DO NOT OBJECTIFY WOMEN'S BODIES!" Alaska shouted. Now he looked up. "Sorry. Perky breasts." "That's not any better!

The Colonel explained to me that 1. this was Alaska's room, and that 2. she had a single room because the girl who was supposed to be her roommate got kicked out at the end of last year, and that 3. Alaska had cigarettes, although the Colonel neglected to ask whether 4. I smoked, which 5. I didn't.

I'm a bad boyfriend. She's a bad girlfriend. We deserve each other.

You can't just make yourself matter and then die, Alaska, because now I am irretrievably different..

I'm really not up for answering any questions that start with how, when, where, why or what.

At some point we all look up and realize we are lost in a maze.

Suffering is universal. it’s the one thing Buddhists, Christians, and Muslims are all worried about.

There is a part of her greater than the sum of her knowable parts. And that part has to go somewhere, because it cannot be destroyed.

But ultimately I do not believe that she was only matter. The rest of her must be recycled, too. I believe now that we are greater than the sum of our parts. If you take Alaska's genetic code and you add her life experiences and the relationships she had with people, and then you take the size and shape of her body, you do not get her. There is something else entirely. There is a part of her greater than the sum of her knowable parts. And that part has to go somewhere, because it cannot be destroyed

Let's make a deal: You figure out what the labyrinth is and how to get out of it, and i'll get you laid. -Alaska Young

People, I thought, wanted security. They couldn't bear the idea of death being a big black nothing, couldn't bear the thought of their loved ones not existing, and couldn't even imagine themselves not existing. I finally decided that people believed in an afterlife because they couldn't bear not to.

I could try to pretend that I didn't care anymore, but it could never be true again. You can't just make yourself matter, and then die, Alaska, because now, I am irretrievably different, and I'm sorry I let you go, yes, but you made the choice.

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.

There were so many of us who would have to live with things done and things left undone that day. 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.

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

I came here looking for a Great Perhaps, for real friends and a more-than-minor life..

Because everybody who has ever lost their way in life has felt the nagging insistence of that question. At some point we all look up and realize we are lost in a maze, and I dont want us to forget Alaska, and I don't want to forget that even when the material we study seems boring, we're trying to und3erstand how people answered that question and the question each of you posed in your papers--how different traditions have come to terms with what Chip, in his final, called 'people's rotten lots in life.

I didn't know whether to trust Alaska, and I'd certainly had enough of her unpredictability - cold one day, sweet the next; irresistibly flirty one moment, resistibly obnoxious the next. I preferred the Colonel: At least when he was cranky, he had a reason.

I knew that I would know more dead people. The bodies pile up. Could there be a space in my memory for each of them, or would I forget a little of Alaska every day for the rest of my life?

We are greater than the sum of our parts.

And imagining that future keeps you going, but you never do it. You just use the future to escape the present.

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

This is so much fun, but I’m so sleepy. To be continued?

But we can't know better until knowing better is useless.

We all use the future to escape the present.

You can't just make me different, and then leave. Because I was fine before, Alaska. I was just fine with me and last words and school friends, and you can't just make me different and then die.

It always shocked me when I realized that I wasn’t the only person in the world who thought and felt such strange and awful things.

Y'all smoke to enjoy it. I smoke to die.

At some point, you just pull off the Band-Aid, and it hurts, but then it's over and you're relieved.

Alaska decided to go help Dolores with dinner. She said that it was sexist to leave the cooking to the women, but better to have good sexist food than crappy boy-prepared food.

Not to ask the obvious question, but why Alaska?

Francois Rabelais. He was a poet. And his last words were "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.

You spend your whole life stuck in the labyrinth...

What the hell is instant? Nothing is instant.

They couldn't bear the idea of death being a big black nothing.

This one's for Alaska Young!

It's not life or death, the labyrinth. Suffering. Doing wrong and having wrong things happen to you.

Have you really read all those books in your room?” Alaska laughing- “Oh God no. I’ve maybe read a third of ‘em. But I’m going to read them all. I call it my Life’s Library. Every summer since I was little, I’ve gone to garage sales and bought all the books that looked interesting. So I always have something to read.

We need never be hopeless because we can never be irreperably broken.

How will I ever get out of this labyrinth!" In reality, "How will I ever get out of this labyrinth!" were probably not Simon Bolivar's last words (although he did, historically, say them). His last words may have been "Jose! Bring the luggage. They do not want us here." The significant source for "How will I ever get out of this labyrinth!" is also Alaska's source, Gabriel Garcia Marquez's The General in his Labyrinth.

She smiled with all the delight of a kid on Christmas morning and said, "Y'all smoke to enjoy it. I smoke to die." - Alaska

I would always love Alaska Young, my crooked neighbor, with all my crooked heart.

The act of leaning in to kiss someone, or asking them, is fraught with the possibility of rejection, so the person least likely to get rejected should do the leaning in or the asking.

That was part of her, and you used to know it. It's like now you only care about the Alaska you made up.

People believed in an afterlife because they couldn't bear not to.