John Green, Looking for Alaska

"Nineteenth-century preacher Henry Ward Beecher's last words were "Now comes the mystery." The poet Dylan Thomas, who liked a good drink at least as much as Alaska, said, "I've had eighteen straight whiskeys. I do believe that's a record," before dying. Alaska's favorite was playwright Eugene O'Neill: "Born in a hotel room, and--God damn it--died in a hotel room." Even car-accident victims sometimes have time for last words. Princess Diana said, "Oh God. What's happened" Movie star James Dean said, "They've got to see us," just before slamming his Porsche into another car. I know so many last words. But I will never know hers."

"I was caught in a love triangle with one dead side."

"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. You left me Perhapsless, stuck in your goddamned labyrinth. And now I don't even know if you chose the straight and fast way out, if you left me like this on purpose. And so I never knew you, did I? I can't remember, because I never knew."

"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 towards 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."

"I felt the unfairness of it, the inarguable injustice of loving someone who might have loved you back but can't due to deadness."

"We need never be without hope because we can never be irreparably broken."

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

"Rabe'a al-Adiwiyah, a great woman saint of Sufism, was seen running through the streets of her hometown, Basra, carrying a torch in one hand and a bucket of water in the other. When someone asked her what she was doing, she answered, 'I am going to take this bucket of water and pour it on the flames of hell, and then I am going to use this torch to burn down the gates of paradise so that people will not love God for want of heaven or fear of hell, but because He is God."

"She said, "It's not life or death, the labyrinth."Um, okay. So what is it"Suffering," she said. "Doing wrong and having wrong things happen to you. That's the problem. Bolivar was talking about the pain, not about the living or dying. How do you get out of the labyrinth of suffering?... Nothing's wrong. But there's always suffering, Pudge. Homework or malaria or having a boyfriend who lives far away when there's a good-looking boy lying next to you. Suffering is universal. It's the one thing Buddhists, Christians, and Muslims are all worried about."

"Principled hate is a hell of a lot stronger than "Boy, I wish you hadn't mummified me and thrown me into the lake" hate."

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

"The Colonel led all the cheers. Cornbread!" he screamed. CHICKEN!" the crowd responded. Rice!"PEAS!"And then, all together: "WE GOT HIGHER SATs."Hip Hip Hip Hooray!" the Colonel cried. YOU'LL BE WORKIN' FOR US SOMEDAY!"

"I hated sports. I hated sports, and I hated people who played them, and I hated people who watched them, and I hated people who didn't hate people who watched or played them."

"What the hell is that" I laughed."It's my fox hat."Your fox hat"Yeah, Pudge. My fox hat."Why are you wearing your fox hat" I asked."Because no one can catch the motherfucking fox."

"Islam and Christianity promise eternal paradise to the faithful. And that is a powerful opiate, certainly, the hope of a better life to come. But there's a Sufi story that challenges the notion that people believe only because they need an opiate. Rabe'a al-Adiwiyah, a great woman saint of Sufism, was seem running through the streets of her hometown, Basra, carrying a torch in one hand and a bucket of water in the other. When someone asked her what she was doing, she answered, 'I am going to take this bucket of water and pour it on the flames of hell, and then I am going to use this torch to burn down the gates of paradise so that people will not love God for want of heaven of fear of hell, but because He is God."

"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."

"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."

"It is worth it to leave behing my minor life for grander maybes-Miles "Pudge"

"I must talk, and you must listen, for we are engaged here in the most important pursuit in history: the search for meaning. What is the nature of being a person? What is the best way to go about being a person? How did we come to be, and what will become of us when we are no longer? In short: What are the rules of this game, and how might we best play it?"

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