“I’ve tried to make stuff for people that won’t be mere distraction but will instead be encouragements—not the kind that fall apart when you take them way down deep into the darkness which is you, but the kind that can be useful even then. And this is a plainly and old-fashioned-ly moralistic way of imagining the making of things, but I do believe in it. I believe that fiction can help.” —John Green (2014)

Photo: Unsplash

“I don’t believe that books, even bad books, corrupt us. Instead, I believe books challenge and interrogate. They give us windows into the lives of others and give us mirrors so we can better see ourselves. And ultimately, if you have a worldview that can be undone by a novel, let me submit that the problem is not with the novel.” —John Green, On the Banning of Looking for Alaska (2016)

(Photo: Unsplash)

“John Green is intellectual freedom.” —Kate Lechtenberg, in a blog post for the Office for Intellectual Freedom of the American Library Association (2017)

(Photo: John Green)

“I believe that by just standing there, without judgement, stories can proclaim the full humanity of their characters, and in doing so can help us see the humanity within ourselves.” —John Green (2022)

“I left the note on the top bunk and sat down at the computer, and I wrote my way out of the labyrinth . . . “ — John Green, Looking for Alaska (2005)

“It is easy to forget how full the world is of people, full to bursting, and each of them imaginable and consistently misimagined.” — John Green, Paper Towns (2008)

“You have a choice in this world, I believe, about how to tell sad stories, and we made the funny choice.” —John Green, The Fault in Our Stars (2012)

“You matter as much as the things that matter to you.” —John Green, An Abundance of Katherines (2006)

“It’s not a mountain that you climb or a hurdle that you jump, it’s something that you live with in an ongoing way.” —John Green (2017)

“We live in hope—that life will get better, and more importantly that it will go on, that love will survive even though we will not. And between now and then, we are here because we’re here because we’re here because we’re here.

I give auld lang syne five stars.” — John Green, The Anthropocene Reviewed (2021)

“Read books. Care about things. Get excited. Try not to be too down on yourself. Enjoy the ever present game of knowing.” —Hank Green

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