The night I finished John Green’s The Fault in Our Stars, I sat on my bed crying. For Hazel and Augustus. For the friend I lost to cancer years ago. For the people I was afraid to love. For those I never realized I’d lose.
John Green doesn’t just evoke emotion. Over the past few days, he took me on an odyssey of emotions. He’s made me look inside myself. Questions things. And THINK. Think differently, think obsessively, think openly.
I can’t quite explain all the reasons I was crying, but it’s definitely because of his beautiful prose, his disarmingly lovable characters, and his vivid storytelling.
But this book didn’t just make me cry. It made me laugh out loud and smile like I haven’t since college. The characters are brilliantly witty and their dark humor in the face of oblivion is oddly uplifting.
Some of my favorite lines:
“Depression is not a side effect of cancer. Depression is a side effect of dying. (Cancer is also a side effect of dying. Almost anything is, really.)”
“And if the inevitability of human oblivion worries you, I encourage you to ignore it. God knows that’s what everyone else does.”
“Ma’am, your daughter’s car has just been deservedly egged by a blind man. Please close the door and go back inside or we’ll be forced to call the police.”
If I could only read one book for the rest of my days, this is the book I’d choose to read.
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