The job of reading is to use stories as a way into seeing other people as we see ourselves — John Green Copy Share Image
“I will get forgotten, but the stories will last. And so we all matter -- maybe less than a lot, but always… — John Green Copy Share Image
Read a lot. Read broadly... Tell stories to your friends, and pay attention to when they get bored... Write a lot. — John Green Copy Share Image
This was what I liked most about my friends: just sitting around & telling stories. — John Green Copy Share Image
That's why those tapes we made are going to be so great one day, because they'll tell stories that time has swallowed… — John Green Copy Share Image
But you want to see shapes; you want to see stories, so you pick them out of the sky. — John Green Copy Share Image
As a reader, I don't feel a story has an obligation to make me happy. I want stories to show me a… — John Green Copy Share Image
I think all true stories are hopeful stories. I don't think there's any room for nihilism. — John Green Copy Share Image
“You're both the fire and the water that extinguishes it. You're the narrator, the protagonist, and the sidekick. You're the storyteller and… — John Green Copy Share Image
I really think that reading is just as important as writing when you're trying to be a writer because it's the only… — John Green Copy Share Image
Whenever I'm asked what advice I have for young writers, I always say that the first thing is to read, and to… — John Green Copy Share Image
Writing fiction is an inherently political activity because people-even imaginary ones-do not live in vacuums... From Twilight to Romeo and Juliet to… — John Green Copy Share Image
Neither novels or their readers benefit from any attempts to divine whether any facts hide inside a story. Such efforts attack the… — John Green Copy Share Image
One of those moments he knew he'd remember and look back on, one of those moments that he'd try to capture in… — John Green Copy Share Image
I learned that myth doesn’t mean a lie; it means a traditional story that tells you something about people and their worldview… — John Green Copy Share Image
And he found himself thinking that maybe stories don't just make us matter to each other - maybe they're also the only… — John Green Copy Share Image
We live in this irreparably broken world, and I don't wish to deny reality, but the amazing thing to me is not… — John Green Copy Share Image
The challenge is the same whether or not I'm collaborating: to empathize with your reader and to tell a story that will… — John Green Copy Share Image
Given the final futility of our struggle, is the fleeting jolt of meaning that art gives us valuable? Or is the only… — John Green Copy Share Image
Even if it’s a dumb story, telling it changes people just the slightest little bit, just as living the story changes me.… — John Green Copy Share Image
And the moral of the story is that you don't remember what happened. What you remember becomes what happened. And the second… — John Green Copy Share Image
I don't know where people got the idea that characters in books a supposed to be likable. Books are not in the… — John Green Copy Share Image
My responsibility is to try to tell true stories. To me a true story is always hopeful, but never simply, uncomplicatedly happy. — John Green Copy Share Image
You have a choice in this world, I believe, about how to tell sad stories, and we made the funny choice. — John Green Copy Share Image
Gratitude is the proper response for the absolute astonishment of getting to be alive, and aware, and an essential part of this… — John Green Copy Share Image
“stories don’t just make us matter to each other—maybe they’re also the only way to the infinite mattering he’d been after for… — John Green Copy Share Image
He knew he couldn't tell stories, that he always included extraneous details & tangents that interested only him. — John Green Copy Share Image
Writing is something you do alone. It's a profession for introverts who wanna tell you a story but don't wanna make eye… — John Green Copy Share Image
I wanted to, you know, get my story out in the world, which, it turns out, is a very misguided notion. — John Green Copy Share Image
I liked Augustus Waters. I really, really really liked him. I liked the way his story ended with someone else. I liked… — John Green Copy Share Image
Breaking down that wall is the kind of story that might have a happy middle - oh, look, we broke down this… — John Green Copy Share Image
Augustus Waters was the great star-crossed love of my life. Ours was an epic love story, and I won’t be able to… — John Green Copy Share Image
I know that books seem like the ultimate thing that's made by one person, but that's not true. Every reading of a… — John Green Copy Share Image
Gus knew. Gus knows. I will not tell you our love story, because—like all real love stories—it will die with us, as… — John Green Copy Share Image
Here's my answer to the very real existential crisis that grips me midway through everything I've ever tried to do: I think… — John Green Copy Share Image
All the characters are made out of words. With reading, I understand that the people aren't real but the fact that they… — John Green Copy Share Image
Issac:"I dislike living in a world without Augustus Waters." Computer: "I don't understand-" Issac: "Me neither. Pause — John Green Copy Share Image
She smiled with all the delight of a kid on Christmas morning and said, "Y'all smoke to enjoy it. I smoke to die." -… — John Green Copy Share Image
Neither novels or their readers benefit from any attempts to divine whether any facts hide inside a story. Such efforts attack the very idea… — John Green Copy Share Image
“Traffic's not too bad on Sheridan, and I'm cornering the car like it's the Indy 500, and we're listening to my favorite NMH song,… — John Green Copy Share Image
So I was ugly. I was never fat, really, and I never wore headgear or had zits or anything. But I was ugly. I… — John Green Copy Share Image
“said to him quietly, as if I couldn’t hear or something. Dad was about to respond but I interrupted.” — John Green Copy Share Image
I believe humans have souls, and I believe in the conservation of souls. — John Green Copy Share Image
