20 Powerful Quotes from Looking For Alaska by John Green
John Green’s first novel, Looking for Alaska was published in 2005 and was adapted into a TV drama in 2019.
Here’s a reminder of what it’s about:
“BEFORE. Miles Halter’s whole life has been one big non-event until he starts at anything-but-boring Culver Creek Boarding School and meets Alaska Young. Gorgeous, clever, funny and utterly fascinating she pulls Miles into her world, launches him into a new life, and steals his heart. But when tragedy strikes, and Miles comes face-to-face with death he discovers the value of living and loving unconditionally.
AFTER: Nothing will ever be the same.”
The book may be nearly two decades old but John’s writing has aged well, and there are so many fantastic quotes worthy of consideration.
Here’s a list of 20 of the most powerful quotes from John Green’s Looking for Alaska.
“We need never be hopeless, because we can never be irreparably broken”
“They love their hair because they're not smart enough to love something more interesting”
“It always shocked me when I realized that I wasn’t the only person in the world who thought and felt such strange and awful things.”
“Francois Rabelais. He was a poet. And his last words were "I go to seek a Great Perhaps." That's why I'm going. So I don't have to wait until I die to start seeking a Great Perhaps”
“I’ve maybe read a third of ‘em. But I’m going to read them all. I call it my Life’s Library.”
“Sometimes you lose a battle. But mischief always wins the war”
“At some point we all look up and realize we are lost in a maze”
“if people were rain, I was drizzle and she was a hurricane”
“I felt the unfairness of it, the inarguable injustice of loving someone who might have loved you back but can't due to deadness”
“last words tell me a lot about who people were, and why they became the sort of people biographies get written about”
“When you stop wishing things wouldn't fall apart, you stop suffering when they do”
“There are always answers. We just have to be smart enough”
“A woman so strong she burns heaven and drenches hell”
“You spend your whole life stuck in the labyrinth, thinking about how you’ll escape it one day, and how awesome it will be, and imagining that future keeps you going, but you never do it. You just use the future to escape the present”
“So hard to die.' I don't doubt that it is, but it cannot be much harder than being left behind”
“If only we could see the endless string of consequences that result from our smallest actions. But we can't know better until knowing better is useless”
“People, I thought, wanted security. They couldn't bear the idea of death being a big black nothing, couldn't bear the thought of their loved ones not existing, and couldn't even imagine themselves not existing. I finally decided that people believed in an afterlife because they couldn't bear not to”
“Scared isn't a good excuse. Scared is the excuse everyone has always used”
“What the hell is instant? Nothing is instant. Instant rice takes five minutes, instant pudding an hour. I doubt that an instant of blinding pain feels particularly instantaneous”
“We are greater than the sum of our parts.“
Do you have a favourite Looking for Alaska quote? Leave a comment and let me know!
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