Looking For Alaska Book Quotes - Page 2

• What is an "instant" death anyway? How long is an instant? Is it one second? Ten? The pain of those seconds must have been awful as her heart burst and her lungs collapsed and there was no air and no blood to her brain and only raw panic. What the hell is instant? Nothing is instant. Instant rice takes five minutes, instant pudding an hour. I doubt that an instant of blinding pain feels particularly instantaneous.

  John Green

  Pain, Real, Heart

  John Green (2008). “Looking for Alaska”, p.110, Penguin

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• 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.

  John Green

  Alaska, Ideas, Afterlife

  John Green (2008). “Looking for Alaska”, p.79, Penguin

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• When I look at my room, I see a girl who loves books.

  John Green

  Girl, Hipster, Book

  John Green (2008). “Looking for Alaska”, p.68, Penguin

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• That is the fear: I have lost something important, and I cannot find it, and I need it. It is fear like if someone lost his glasses and went to the glasses store and they told him that the world had run out of glasses and he would just have to do without.

  John Green

  Running, Fear, Glasses

  John Green (2008). “Looking for Alaska”, p.109, Penguin

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• After all this time, it seems to me like straight and fast is the only way out- but I choose the labyrinth. The labyrinth blows, but I choose it.

  John Green

  Blow, Labyrinth, Way

  John Green (2008). “Looking for Alaska”, p.158, Penguin

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• Entropy increases. Things fall apart.

  John Green

  Hipster, Fall, Increase

  John Green (2015). “Looking For Alaska Special 10th Anniversary Edition”, p.149, Penguin

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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

  Relationship, Easy, Break

  John Green (2008). “Looking for Alaska”, p.36, Penguin

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• We are all going, I thought, and it applies to turtles and turtlenecks, Alaska the girl and Alaska the place, because nothing can last, not even the earth itself. The Buddha said that suffering was caused by desire, we'd learned, and that the cessation of desire meant the cessation of suffering. When you stopped wishing things wouldn't fall apart, you'd stop suffering when they did.

  John Green

  Girl, Book, Fall

  John Green (2015). “Looking For Alaska Special 10th Anniversary Edition”, p.149, Penguin

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

  John Green

  Real, Labyrinth Looking For Alaska, Live By

  John Green (2015). “Looking For Alaska Special 10th Anniversary Edition”, p.169, Penguin

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• And then something invisible snapped insider her, and that which had come together commenced to fall apart.

  John Green

  Wise, Hipster, Fall

  John Green (2008). “Looking for Alaska”, p.145, Penguin

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

  John Green

  Alaska, Knowing Better, Useless

  John Green (2015). “Looking For Alaska Special 10th Anniversary Edition”, p.169, Penguin

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

  John Green

  Letting Go, Hurt, Alaska

  John Green (2008). “Looking for Alaska”, p.15, Penguin

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

  John Green

  Alaska, Suffering, Labyrinth

  John Green (2015). “Looking For Alaska Special 10th Anniversary Edition”, p.68, Penguin

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• You spend your whole life stuck in the labyrinth.

  John Green

  Alaska, Imagining The Future, Labyrinth

  John Green (2015). “Looking For Alaska Special 10th Anniversary Edition”, p.46, Penguin

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• I wanted so badly to lie down next to her on the couch, to wrap my arms around her and sleep... Just sleep together, in the most innocent sense of the phrase. But I lacked the courage and she had a boyfriend and I was gawky and she was gorgeous and I was boring and she was endlessly fascinating. So I walked back to my room and collapsed on the bottom bunk, thinking that if people were rain, I was drizzle and she was a hurricane.

  John Green

  Love, Dream, Lying

  "Looking for Alaska". Book by John Green, 2005.

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• So I walked back to my room and collapsed on the bottom bunk, thinking that if people were rain, I was drizzle and she was a hurricane.

  John Green

  Rain, Unrequited Love, Thinking

  John Green (2008). “Looking for Alaska”, p.71, Penguin

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• Before I got here, I thought for a long time that the way out of the labyrinth was to pretend that it did not exist, to build a small, self-sufficient world in the back corner of the endless maze and to pretend that I was not lost, but home.

  John Green

  Home, Self, Long

  John Green (2015). “Looking For Alaska Special 10th Anniversary Edition”, p.169, Penguin

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• Imagining the future is a kind of nostalgia. (...) You spend your whole life stuck in the labyrinth, thinking about how you'll escape it one day, and how awesome it will be, and imagining that future keeps you going, but you never do it. You just use the future to escape the present.

  John Green

  Inspirational, Life, Thinking

  John Green (2008). “Looking for Alaska”, p.58, Penguin

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• 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.

  John Green

  Real, Alaska, Waiting

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• When adults say, "Teenagers think they are invincible" with that sly, stupid smile on their faces, they don't know how right they are. We need never be hopeless, because we can never be irreparably broken. We think that we are invincible because we are. We cannot be born, and we cannot die. Like all energy, we can only change shapes and sizes and manifestations. They forget that when they get old. They get scared of losing and failing. But that part of us greater than the sum of our parts cannot begin and cannot end, and so it cannot fail.

  John Green

  Teenage, Stupid, Real

  John Green (2008). “Looking for Alaska”, p.161, Penguin

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• Sometimes you lose a battle. But mischief always wins the war

  John Green

  Hipster, War, Winning

  John Green (2013). “The John Green Collection”, p.61, Penguin

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

  John Green

  Heart, Alaska, Neighbor

  John Green (2015). “Looking For Alaska Special 10th Anniversary Edition”, p.169, Penguin

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• How will I ever get out of this labyrinth!

  Gabriel Garcia Marquez

  Halloween, Alaska, Labyrinth

  Gabriel Garcia Marquez (2014). “The General in His Labyrinth”, p.195, Penguin UK

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• 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.

  John Green

  I Hate You, Alaska, Knowing Better

  John Green (2015). “Looking For Alaska Special 10th Anniversary Edition”, p.169, Penguin

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

  John Green

  Hipster, Fall, Alaska

  John Green (2015). “Looking For Alaska Special 10th Anniversary Edition”, p.149, Penguin

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