Paper Towns Quotes - Page 2 | Just Great DataBase

Digital communication is such a problem sometimes.

I’ve never seen her eyes dead like that, but then again, maybe I’ve never seen her eyes before.

After all that hearing, he writes, I am exposed . . . . cut by bitter and poisoned hail. That was perfect, I thought: you listen to people so that you can imagine them, and you hear all the terrible and wonderful things people do to themselves and to one another, but in the end the listening exposes you even more than it exposes the people you’re trying to listen to. Walking

When I got here, I did get bored...I got more and more nervous here too, not knowing anybody. And I kept waiting for that loneliness and nervousness to make me want to go back. But it never did. It's the one thing I can't do.

I knew these halls so well—and finally it was starting to feel like they knew me, too.

College: getting in or not getting in. Trouble: getting in or not getting in. School: getting A’s or getting D’s. Career: having or not having. House: big or small, owning or renting. Money: having or not having. It’s all so boring.

I don’t know how I look, but I know how I feel: Young. Goofy. Infinite.

The longer I do my job 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.

I'd been in the dark so long I was still craving it, and I just wanted to lie down somewhere halfway quiet and halfway dark.

And all at once I knew how Margo Roth Spiegelman felt when she wasn't being Margo Roth Spiegelman: she felt empty.

It all seemed so trivial, so embarrassing. It all seemed like paper kids having their paper fun.

And maybe by imagining these futures we can make them real, and maybe not, but either way we must imagine them.

And I should have said something. Of course, I should have said thing after thing after thing after thing.

My dad finished chewing something and then put his fork down and looked at me. The longer I do my job, he said, the more I realise 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.

Yeah, I know. I’m not saying that everything is survivable. Just that everything except the last thing is.

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.

I kept taking glances at her through the crowd, quick snapshots: a photographic series entitled Perfection Stands Still While Mortals Walk Past

Also your mom. Bro, I saw your mom kiss you on the cheek this morning, and forgive me, but I swear to God I was like, man, I wish I was Q. And also, I wish my cheeks had penises.

It always seemed so ridiculous that want to be around someone because they're pretty.Is like basing your breakfast cereal on color instead of taste.

Maybe she loved mysteries so much that she became one.

Aren’t you worried about, like, forever? Forever is composed of nows,

This was what I liked most about my friends: just sitting around and telling stories.

Planning, I guess. I don't know. Doing stuff never feels as good as you hope it will feel.

A normal mother might have said, Hey, I notice you look like you’re coming down off a meth binge and smell vaguely of algae.

There are so many people. It is easy to forget how full the world is of people, full to bursting, and each of them imaginable and consistently misimagined.

Nothing ever happens like you imagine it will, she says.

You listen to people so that you can imagine them, and you hear all the terrible and wonderful things people do to themselves and to one another, but in the end the listening exposes you even more than it exposes the people you’re trying to listen to.

Lacey put a hand to her face, ashamed. You’re a challenging boyfriend, she said. Rewarding, but challenging. We laughed.

...I did not aspire to become the world's only virgin with pubic lice.

...There was no planning. No time for planning. No time for a future. But then the life spans started getting longer,and people started having more and more future, and so they spent more time thinking about it. About the future. And now life has become the future. Every moment of your life is lived for the future...

She was too small and the space covered by maps too big.

Do you think he’s, like, embarrassed of me?Ben laughed. What? No, he said.Technically, I added, you should be embarrassed of him.She rolled her eyes, smiling. A girl accustomed to compliments.

As I took those two steps back, Margo took two equally small and quiet steps forward.

This guy sounds like an alcoholic Kermit the Frog with throat cancer.

I suppose I never found boredom very boring

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

Yes, I can see her almost perfectly in this cracked darkness.

It’s not just them. I’d get sucked right back in, she says, and I’d never get out. It’s not just the gossip and the parties and all that crap, but the whole allure of a life

I learn something about fear. I learn that it is not the idle fantasies of someone who maybe wants something important to happen to him, even if the important thing is horrible.

But it was more than that. You can't divorce Margo the person from Margo the body. You can't see one without seeing the other.

My miracle was this: out of all the houses in all the subdivisions in all of Florida, I ended up living next door to Margo Roth Spiegelman.

Do I just keep leaving places, and leaving them, and leaving them, tramping a perpetual journey?

if you don’t imagine, nothing ever happens at all.

the life spans started getting longer, and people started having more and more future, and so they spent more time thinking about it. 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.

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. That is really lovely, my

But this problem rather pales in comparison to the other problem, which is that both T-shirts are embossed with huge Confederate flags. Printed over the flag are the words HERITAGE NOT HATE. Oh no you didn’t, Radar says when I show him why we’re laughing. Ben Starling, you better not have bought your token black friend a racist shirt.

promised minute to return to my window, but not much more.

She kind of hates Orlando; she called it a paper town. Like, you know, everything so fake and flimsy.

She's so weird. I shrugged. Maybe she was weird, or maybe the rest of us were weird.

But is it the kind of thing she likes to actually do? No. Because Margo knows the secret of leaving, the secret I have only just now learned: leaving feels good and pure only when you leave something important, something that mattered to you. Pulling life out by the roots. But you can’t do that until your life has grown roots.