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Who am I to say that these things might not be forever? Who is Peter Van Houten to assert as fact the conjecture that our labor is temporary? All I kn...more

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Here's the thing about Hazel: Almost everyone is obsessed with leaving a mark upon the world. Bequeathing a legacy. Outlasting death. We all want to b...more

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The real heroes anyway aren't the people doing things; the real heroes are the people NOTICING things, paying attention. The guy who invented the smal...more

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I wondered if hurdlers ever thought, you know, "This would go faster if we just got rid of the hurdles.

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Funerals, I had decided, are for the living.

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According to the conventions of the genre, Augustus Waters kept his sense of humor till the end, did not for a moment waiver in his courage, and his s...more

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There will come a time,' I said, 'when all of us are dead. All of us. There will come a time when there are no human beings remaining to remember that...more

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You do not immortalize the lost by writing about them. Language buries, but does not resurrect.

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I went on spouting bullshit Encouragements as Gus's parents, arm in arm, hugged each other and nodded at every word. Funerals, I had decided, are for ...more

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and I told myself -- as I've told myself before -- that the body shuts down then the pain gets too bad, that consciousness is temporary, that this wil...more

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You die in the middle of your life.

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The oblivion fear is something else, fear that I won't be able to give anything in exchange for my life. If you don't live a life in service of a grea...more

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It's not life or death, the labyrinth. Suffering. Doing wrong and having wrong things happen to you.

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The thing about dead people... The thing is you sound like a bastard if you don't romanticize them, but the truth is... complicated, I guess.

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I didn't tell him that the diagnosis came three months after I got my first period. Like: Congratulations! You're a woman. Now die.