John Green, Looking for Alaska

"How will I ever get out of this labyrinth!" to a margin note written in her loop-heavy cursive: Straight & Fast."

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

"You can’t burn down a made-up place."

"If people were rain I was a drizzle and she was a hurricane."

"Chip, she’s gone,” and he said, “I thought I’d feel her looking down on us, but you’re right. She’s just gone"

"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."

"What the hell is instant? Nothing is instant. Instant rice takes five minutes, instant pudding in an hour."

"There comes a time when we realize that our parents cannot save themselves or save us, that everyone who wades through time eventually gets dragged out to sea by the undertow - that, in short, we are all going."

"All right. The snow may be falling in the winter of my discontent, but at least I've got sarcastic company."

"... going out late at night and laying in the dewy field and reading a Kurt Vonnegut book by moonlight."

"Later, I walked towards the dorm circle beside Alaska. The cicadas hummed their one-note song, just as they had at home in Florida. She turned to me as we made our way through the darkness and said,"When you’re walking at night, do you ever get creeped out and even though it’s silly and embarrassing you just want to run home?”It seemed too secret and personal to admit to a virtual stranger but I told her, “Yeah, totally.”For a moment, she was quiet. Then she grabbed my hand, whispered,“Run run run run run,” and took off, pulling me behind her."

"Be present in this class. And then, when it's over, be present out there."

"I hated listening to everyone else stumble on their words and try to phrase things in the vaguest possible way so they wouldn't sound dumb, and I hated how it was all just a game of trying to figure out what the teacher wanted to hear and then saying it."

"Pudge/Colonel: "I am sorry that I have not talked to you before. I am not staying for graduation. I leave for Japan tomorrow morning. For a long time, I was mad at you. The way you cut me out of everything hurt me, and so I kept what I knew to myself. But then even after I wasn't mad anymore, I still didn't say anything, and I don't even really know why. Pudge had that kiss, I guess. And I had this secret. You've mostly figured this out, but the truth is that I saw her that night, I'd stayed up late with Lara and some people, and then I was falling asleep and I heard her crying outside my back window. It was like 3:15 that morning, maybe, amd I walked out there and saw her walking through the soccer field. I tried to talk to her, but she was in a hurry. She told me that her mother was dead eight years that day, and that she always put flowers on her mother's grave on the anniversary but she forgot that year. She was out there looking for flowers, but it was too early-too wintry. That's how I knew about January 10. I still have no idea whether it was suicide. She was so sad, and I didn't know what to say or do. I think she counted on me to be the one person who would always say and do the right things to help her, but I couldn"t. I just thought she was looking for flowers. I didn't know she was going to go. She was drunk just trashed drunk, and I really didn't think she would drive or anything. I thought she would just cry herself to sleep and then drive to visit her mom the next day or something. She walked away, and then I heard a car start. I don't know what I was thinking. So I let her go too. And I'm sorry. I know you loved her. It was hard not to." Takumi"

"I found myself thinking about President William Mc Kinley, the third American president to be assassinated. He lived for several days after he was shot, and toward the end, his wife started crying and screaming, "I want to go, too! I want to go, too!" And with his last measure of strength, Mc Kinley turned to her and spoke his last words: "We are all going."

"...you missed the chance to explore the equally interesting Buddhist belief in being present for every facet of your daily life, of being truly present. Be present in this class. And then, when it's over be present out there,"

"She'd obviously read the book many times before, and so she read flawlessly and confidently, and I could hear her smile in the reading of it, and the sound of that smile made me think that maybe I would like novels better if Alaska Young read them to me."

"We have to forgive to survive in this labyrinth [of suffering]"

"We need never to be hopeless, because we can never be irreparably broken."

"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."