Paper Towns Quotes

You will go to paper towns and you will never come back.

People love the idea of a paper girl. They always have. and the worst thing is that I loved it, too. I cultivated it, you know … Because it’s kind of great, being an idea that everybody likes. But I could never be the idea to myself, not all the way.

Nothing ever happens like you imagine it will... Yeah, that's true... But then again, if you don't imagine nothing ever happens at all.

At some point, you gotta stop looking up at the sky, or one of these days you'll look back down and see that you floated away too.

As long as we don’t die, this is gonna be one hell of a story. It

Of course he is. You know your problem, Quentin? You keep expecting people not to be themselves. I mean, I could hate you for being massively unpunctual and for never being interested in anything other than Margo Roth Spiegelman, and for, like, never asking me about how it’s going with my girlfriend — but I don’t give a shit, man, because you’re you. My parents have a shit ton of black Santas, but that’s okay. They’re them. I’m too obsessed with a reference Website to answer my phone sometimes when my friends call, or my girlfriend. That’s okay, too. That’s me. You like me anyway. And I like you. You’re funny, and you’re smart, and you may show up late, but you always show up eventually.

It's not shit, it's pee

I missed her. I missed her. I missed her. I miss her.

I felt the unbroken line of me and of her stretching back from our cribs to the dead guy to acquaintanceship to now. And I wanted to tell her that the pleasure for me wasn't planning or doing or leaving; the pleasure was in seeing our strings cross and separate and then come back together.

I didn’t need you, you idiot. I picked you. And then you picked me back … And that’s like a promise. At least for tonight. In sickness and in health. In good times and in bad. For richer, for poorer. Till dawn do us part.

Every moment of your life is lived for the future.

Yeah, well, I wasn’t complimenting you. Just saying: stop thinking Ben should be you, and he needs to stop thinking you should be him, and y’all just chill the hell out.

The store that was Agloe no longer stands. But I believe that if we were to put it back on our maps, someone would eventually rebuild it.

That's always seemed so ridiculous to me, that people would want to be around someone because they're pretty. It's like picking your breakfast cereals based on color instead of taste. But I'm not pretty, not close up anyway. Generally, the closer people get to me the less hot they find me.

Just remember that sometimes the way you think about a person isn't always the way they actually are.

And so when she left, she left for good. But I could not believe she had left for a perpetual journey. She had, I felt sure, left for a place — a place where she could stay long enough for it to matter, long enough for the next leaving to feel as good as the last one had. There is a corner of the world somewhere far away from here where no one knows what Margo Roth Spiegelman means. And Margo is sitting in that corner, scrawling in her black notebook.

That's like promise.At least for tonight.In sickness,in health.In good times and in bad.For richer,for poorer.Till dawn do us apart.

Did you know that for pretty much the entire history of the human species, the average life span was less than thirty years? You could count on ten years or so of real adulthood, right? There was no planning for retirement. No planning for a career. There was no planning … And now life has become the future. Every moment of your life is lived for the future.

When you say nasty things about people, you should never say the true ones, because you can't really fully and honestly take those back, you know?

So we’re going to SeaWorld, she told me. Part Eleven. What, are we going to Free Willy or something? No, she said. We’re just going to go to SeaWorld, that’s all. It’s the only theme park I haven’t broken into yet.

That night,I lay on my side,staring out the window into the invisible world outside.I kept trying to fall asleep,but then my eyes would dart open,just to check.I couldn't help but hope that Margo Roth Spiegelman would return to my window and drag my tired ass through one more night I'd never forget.

I honestly never thought of her as anything but my crazy beautiful friend who does all the crazy beautiful things.

leaving senior year like: its hard to leave to you leave, then its the eased goddam thing you've ever done.

To what do I owe the pleasure?' I asked. Margo and I were still friendly, I guess, but we weren't meet-in-the-dead-of-night-wearing-black-face-paint friendly. She had friends for that, I'm sure. I just wasn't among them.

I am ever told that I have one day to live, I will head straight for the hallowed halls of Winter Park High School, where a day has been known to last a thousand years.

When I wake up, the dying light of the day makes everything seem to matter, from the yellowing sky to the stalks of grass above my head, waving in slow motion like a beauty queen.

Oh bullshit. You didn’t come here to make sure I was okay. You came here because you wanted to save poor little Margo from her troubled little self, so that I would be oh-so-thankful to my knight in shining armor that I would strip my clothes off and beg you to ravage my body.

Nothing ever happens like you imagine it will. But then again, if you don't imagine, nothing ever happens at all.

The longer I do my job, he said, the more I realize that humans lack good mirrors. It’s so hard for anyone to show us how we look, and so hard for us to show anyone how we feel.

not saying that everything is survivable. Just that everything except the last thing is.

I'm a big believer in random capitalization. The rules of capitalization are so unfair to words in the middle.

It is so hard to leave — until you leave. And then it is the easiest goddamned thing in the world.

It’s a paper town. I mean, look at it, Q: look at all those cul-de-sacs, those streets that turn in on themselves, all the houses that were built to fall apart. All those paper people living in their paper houses, burning the future to stay warm. All the paper kids drinking beer some bum bought for them at the paper convenience store. Everyone demented with the mania of owning things. All the things paper-thin and paper-frail. And all the people, too. I’ve lived here for eighteen years and I have never once in my life come across anone who cares about anything that matters.

When I saw Orlando from an airplane, it looked like a LEGO set sunk into an ocean of green.

I guess I’m wondering if it was the place or the people. Like, what if the people around you had been different?How can you separate those things, though? The people are the place is the people.

Every moment of your life is lived for the future — you go to high school so you can go to college so you can get a good job so you can get a nice house so you can afford to send your kids to college so they can get a good job so they can get a nice house so they can afford to send their kids to college.

But there is all this time between when the cracks start to open up and when we finally fall apart. And it’s only in that time that we can see one another, because we see out of ourselves through our cracks and into others through theirs.

About the future. And now life has become the future. Every moment of your life is lived for the future—you go to high school so you can go to college so you can get a good job so you can get a nice house so you can afford to send your kids to college so they can get a good job so they can get a nice house so they can afford to send their kids to college.

When we sat down, Lacey started reading Song of Myself, and she agreed that none of it sounded like anything and certainly none of it sounded like Margo. We still had no idea what, if anything, Margo was trying to say. She gave the book back to me, and they started talking about prom again.

When yu say nasty things about people, you shouldnever say the true ones, because you can't really fully and honest take those back...

You know your problem, Quentin? You keep expecting people not to be themselves...stop thinking Ben should be you, and he needs to stop thinking you should be him, and y'all just chill the hell out.

We drove all the way out Colonial Drive, past the movie theaters and the bookstores that I had been driving to and past my whole life. But this drive was different and better because it occurred during calculus, because it occurred with Ben and Radar, because it occurred on our way to where I believed I would find her.

at some point, you gotta stop looking up at the sky, or one of these days you’ll look back down and see that you floated away, too.

Everyone demented with the mania of owning things. All the things paper-thin and paper-frail.

Maybe Whitman had a gift I don’t have. But as for me: I must ask the wounded man where he is hurt, because I cannot become the wounded man. The only wounded man I can be is me.

When you say nasty things about people, you should never say the true ones, because you can’t really fully and honestly take those back,

It is saying these things that keeps us from falling apart. And maybe by imagining these futures we can make them real, and maybe not, but either way we must imagine them.

You are going to the paper towns. And you are never coming back.

I spy with my little eye, a great story

Once we got out of Jefferson Park, we rolled down the one window that worked so the world would know we had good taste in music.