Paper Towns by John Green

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Categories	Literature & Fiction
Author	John Green
Publisher	Penguin Books; Reprint edition (September 22, 2009)
Language	English
Paperback	305 pages
Item Weight	12 ounces
Dimensions	5.5 x 0.84 x 8.25 inches

I. Book introduction

Paper Towns is a novel written by John Green, published on October 16, 2008, by Dutton Books. The novel is about the coming-of-age of the protagonist, Quentin “Q” Jacobsen and his search for Margo Roth Spiegelman, his neighbor and childhood crush. During his search, Quentin and his friends Ben, Radar, and Lacey discover information about Margo.

John Green drew inspiration for this book from his experience and knowledge of “paper towns” during a road journey through South Dakota. It debuted at number five on the New York Times bestseller list for children’s books and was awarded the 2009 Edgar Award for best young adult novel. A film adaptation was released on July 24, 2015.

Plot

Paper Towns mostly takes place in and around Jefferson Park, a fictional subdivision located in suburban Orlando, Florida and focuses on narrator and protagonist Quentin “Q” Jacobsen and his neighbor Margo Roth Spiegelman, with whom Quentin has always had a romantic fascination. As preadolescents, Quentin and Margo together discovered the corpse of a local man who died of suicide in their neighborhood park. Nine years later, Quentin is an outcast whose best friends are Ben and Radar, while Margo is a popular student—both now seniors at Winter Park High School. A month before their graduation, Margo suddenly reappears in Quentin’s life, climbing through his bedroom window as she did during their first meeting. She has devised an eleven-part plan of vengeance on a group of people she feels have hurt her during her time at high school; these people include her cheating boyfriend Jase and peers Lacey and Becca. Margo needs an accomplice and a car to help her, and Quentin accepts. Margo and Quentin successfully complete the tasks, share a romantically ambiguous dance, and return to their homes around dawn.

The next day, Quentin wonders hopefully if Margo will start hanging out with him, but Margo is reported missing by her parents after three days. Quentin, Ben, and Radar soon discover a series of items that Margo has left hidden for Quentin: a picture of Woody Guthrie on Margo’s bedroom window shade, Margo’s highlighted copy of Walt Whitman’s poem “Song of Myself”, and a written address in Quentin’s bedroom doorjamb. Quentin and his friends follow these clues to find an abandoned mini-mall in Christmas, Florida, that contains evidence of Margo’s recent presence. Quentin struggles to analyze all of Margo’s clues and leftover materials in the mini-mall. He suspects the clues are meant to lead him to her current whereabouts, though he worries she may have committed suicide.

Based on a note Margo has left referring to “paper towns”, Quentin realizes Margo may be hiding or buried in one of the many abandoned housing subdivisions—”pseudovisions” or “paper towns”—around Orlando. He drives to all of the pseudovisions where he feels that she may be hiding, but he cannot find her. On the day of his graduation, Quentin comes across an obscure Internet post, with a comment left on it which Quentin recognizes as Margo’s due to its distinctive capitalization, which tells him that Margo has been hiding in a fictitious town in New York State called Agloe (which was created as a copyright trap by mapmakers) and that she plans to leave Agloe immediately after noon on May 29. Quentin, Radar, Ben, and Lacey impulsively skip graduation to drive to Agloe to search for her, rushing to get from Florida to New York before noon on May 29.

In Agloe, they discover Margo is living in an old, dilapidated barn. She is shocked to see them, which angers the group, who expected her to be grateful for their presence. Margo had left those clues only to assure Quentin that she is okay, and did not want to be found. Angry at her lack of gratitude, Radar, Ben, and Lacey leave and spend the night at a motel. Quentin realizes the image he had of Margo was as fake as the one that she had been projecting to everyone else and becomes furious at her for wasting his time. Margo argues that Quentin saved her for egotistical reasons: he wanted to be a knight in shining armor who saved the troubled girl. Ultimately, Quentin accepts that it was unfair for him to expect Margo to live up to his perfect image of her, and he begins to logically overcome his sexual attraction towards her. After their conversation, Margo decides to go to New York City and asks Quentin to accompany her. Quentin wants to stay with her, and they kiss, but he understands his home life and responsibilities prevent him from going. Margo promises to Quentin that she will keep in contact with him.

About the Author (John Green)

John Michael Green (born August 24, 1977) is an American author, YouTuber, podcaster, and philanthropist. His books have more than 50 million copies in print worldwide, including The Fault in Our Stars (2012), which is one of the best-selling books of all time. John Green’s rapid rise to fame and idiosyncratic voice are credited with creating a major shift in the young adult fiction market. John Green is also well known for his work in online video, most notably his YouTube ventures with his brother Hank Green.

Born in Indianapolis, Indiana, Green was raised in Orlando, Florida, before attending boarding school outside of Birmingham, Alabama. He attended Kenyon College, graduating with a double major in English and religious studies in 2000. Green then spent six months as a student chaplain at a children’s hospital. He reconsidered his path and began working at Booklist in Chicago while writing his first novel. His debut novel Looking for Alaska (2005) was awarded the 2006 Michael L. Printz Award. While living in New York City, Green published his second novel, An Abundance of Katherines (2006). Starting on January 1, 2007, John and his brother Hank launched the Vlogbrothers YouTube channel, a series of vlogs submitted to one another on alternating weekdays; the videos spawned an active online-based community called Nerdfighteria and an annual telethon-style fundraiser called Project for Awesome, both of which have persisted and grown over time.

John Green moved back to Indianapolis in 2007, and published three novels over the next three years: Let It Snow: Three Holiday Romances (2008, with Maureen Johnson and Lauren Myracle); his third solo novel, Paper Towns (2008); and Will Grayson, Will Grayson (2010, with David Levithan). From 2010 to 2013, John and Hank launched several online video projects, including VidCon, an annual conference for the online video community, and Crash Course (2011–present), a wide-ranging educational channel. Green’s 2012 novel, The Fault in Our Stars, and the 2014 film adaptation were massive commercial and critical successes, leading to several other film and television adaptations of his work. He was included in Time magazine’s 2014 list of the 100 most influential people in the world.

Green’s subsequent projects, his novel Turtles All the Way Down (2017) and The Anthropocene Reviewed (2018–2021), dealt more directly with his anxiety and obsessive–compulsive disorder. The Anthropocene Reviewed began as a podcast in January 2018, with Green reviewing different facets of the Anthropocene on a five-star scale. The podcast was then adapted into The Anthropocene Reviewed: Essays on a Human-Centered Planet (2021), his first nonfiction book. Since the mid-2010s, John Green has been a prominent advocate for global health causes: he is a trustee for Partners In Health (PIH), supporting their goal of reducing maternal mortality in Sierra Leone, and has worked with PIH and a number of organizations in fighting tuberculosis worldwide. Green’s second nonfiction book, Everything Is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection, is set to be released in March 2025.

II. Reviewer: Paper Towns by John Green

Here is a summary of the book Review “Paper Towns by John Green“. Helps you have the most overview of the book without searching through time. Please access “BookQuote.Net“ regularly or save it to keep track and update the latest information.

1. JAMIE FELTON reviews Paper Towns

I need to start off with my criticism of John Green:

1. Margo and Quentin are exactly the same people as Colin and Katherine and Miles and Alaska. Quentin/Colin/Miles is this very thoughtful, somewhat nerdy young man who is on the cusp of fucking reaching out and grabbing life by the balls however he can. He is also enamored with Margo/Alaska/Katherine, a girl who is unattainable. She is unpredictable and full of a shimmering charm; she fades oasis-style the closer and closer you try to get. In addition, she feels too much and is never really seen for who she is (but rather, for who everyone wants her to be). Having said this, I am in love with Quentin/Colin/Miles, and Margo/Alaska/Katherine is the girl I want to meet/aspire to someday be so I can’t be too critical. Green knows these people and has lit them from inside with realism and dimension.
2. There were moments (albeit far fewer than in his previous books) where I felt like…okay, this is maybe a teensy bit contrived. A little bit too perfectly quirky. I cannot totally relate or believe in a guy who has invented a mathematical formula calculating the probability that the next Katherine he dates will dump him. I think it’s a creative premise that makes me want to read the book and is extremely well-executed, but if I don’t believe in someone, I’m not going to fully feel for them or understand them. This prevents me from enjoying the book as much as I do Margaret Atwood, etc. Maybe this doesn’t bother anyone else, but it bothers me, and I just can’t put the guy up on a pedestal.

However, however, I fucking loved this book. And I’m not going to summarize it. It was practically perfect and ridiculously engrossing and extremely fascinating (so much so that my adverb use has increased exponentially). If I even tried to give a synopsis, it would trivialize it too much. Green uses Leaves of Grass in a way that made me want to re-read it (after having suffered through it in high school) and potentially graffiti it all over the United States because: we. have. it. so. wrong. here. (I love Green’s use of periods). Part of why I loved it is for selfish reasons. Margo’s struggles are my own, and her hates are my hates. In Quentin deciphering Margo, it helped me realize a lot of things about myself; this is something that would be valuable to anyone who needs to become the wounded man.

2. PATRICK reviews Paper Towns

This sort of read is off the beaten track for me, non-fantasy YA-ish literature.

That said, it’s amazingly well-written, and I enjoyed it immensely. John Green is an amazing author, and he writes with a delicacy I admire and envy.

This book, was sweet and light and heartbreaking and true. It’s the sort of book I’ll never be able to write…

Highly recommended for anyone.

3. LOUIZE reviews Paper Towns

“It’s so hard to leave-until you leave. And then it is the easiest goddamned thing in the world…Leaving feels too good, once you leave.”

We all leave eventually. No matter who and what we are, or where we’re from, we will someday and somehow leave our comfort zones or the norm of our lives to find ourselves a place in this world. Some people take their time into actually doing it. They spent much time planning and scheming on how they should gloriously plow into life. There are some who tried a few times before succeeding, by accepting that their heavy butts are beginning to be a burden to their family and to the economy.

Then, there are those who are used to having things come to them in a rush; and when it’s not fast enough they go for it instead… Such is Margo Roth Spiegelman and many other teenagers out there who cannot wait to be themselves without the restriction of the norm. My dear nephew, Jaff, calls it emancipation. This is perfectly normal; it’s a matter of how they are properly motivated and inspired. They should be equipped, so as not to become scattered dandelions, gliding aimlessly waiting where the wind will blow them. Unfortunately for Margo, she has uninspired parents to motivate her. They are like the paper cut-outs Margo described, who boxed themselves inside this very peculiar thing called normal life. They regard Margo’s actions as rebellion.

“It is easy to forget how full the world is of people, full to bursting, and each of them imaginable and consistently misimagined.”

Margo, on the other hand, sees life as a colorful journey filled with dark abandoned buildings, knee-high grasses, endless road, moonlit roof and plenty of exhilarating risks. But all this is unknown to her family and friends. All her life, she has coated herself with a shell of Margo Stuff- the cool ones. It then became difficult for her to remove her coating and be herself. So the only option is to leave it all behind. But there is still one string attached to this papergirl – Quentin Jacobsen. She wants Q to know her; understand her; love her for who she is inside, no matter how crooked and unreasonable that Margo may be.

“The way I figure it, everyone gets a miracle.”

Q braved the challenge- he took the journey and accepted the would be consequences of it. Little did he know that this journey will not only lead him to Margo, but discover the Margo hiding within too. Thus, making him aware of his own capabilities and weaknesses. Knowing that he will succeed in finding his place in the world someday soon. And maybe, just maybe, he’ll find Margo there as well.

This book gets you to think about the idea of a person and the actual being of a person. Because, of course, it is rather unfair to be thought of as (just) a mere idea. My favorite part is the Vessel. It made me laugh out loud listening to Ben’s pissing-in-beer-bottle scene. I had fun with this; I do hope you will too.

4. MEGS reviews Paper Towns

This book truly had me on an emotional roller coaster, and I enjoyed almost every minute of it.

The book was broken into 3 parts, and I honestly felt completely different about each of them.

Part 1:

The first part of this book was brilliant. It was a lovely introduction to the characters, and their life as high school seniors. It has had a flashback which was a fun scene.

The whole part with Q and Margo out at night was amazing. It was suspenseful and quite fun to read about those antics. We really got a sense of how far Q would go to impress this girl, although I never really understood why he liked her so much in the first place. Not that there was anything wrong with Margo, but they went years without talking and still he’s obsessed.

Part 2:

The second part of this book just dragged a bit for me. After the first little shocker of the “smelling death” incident it really seemed to slow down a lot. Firstly, I think too much emphasis was put on prom and preparation for something that was really a non-event for the main characters in the end. I just got tired of hearing about prom after so long. Also, finding her just seemed to get monotonous, but that might well be because I’m impatient so don’t worry about that!

Part 3:

The final part of the book was love/hate.

*Spoiler contains the ending…*

The hate: I felt the ending was pretty anticlimactic. It was all leading up until they find her, right? I’m not going to lie I’m a sucker for drama and tragedy, but I wasn’t necessarily hoping they would have found her dead in a shack, having committed suicide. After all of the talk about that I feel that would have been too obvious. I don’t know I just finished the book and was like hmm that’s the end? Well okay…

The love: I love John’s writing, and I adore his characters. I love how it ended solely because he keeps his characters genuine and true to themselves. He didn’t portray them a certain way and then, at the end, abandon that and have them hook up anyway even though it wasn’t best. So yes, I’m glad they went their separate ways.

I definitely enjoyed this book, despite the few things I mentioned, and recommend it.

5. BRITTANY MCCUE reviews Paper Towns

A Thoughtful Journey of Self-Discovery

“Paper Towns” by John Green is a unique and introspective coming-of-age novel that blends mystery, adventure, and philosophical musings. The story centers around Quentin “Q” Jacobsen, a high school senior who embarks on a road trip to find Margo Roth Spiegelman, his enigmatic and adventurous neighbor, after she disappears following a night of pranks.

John Green excels at creating vivid, complex characters, and Margo is no exception. She represents the idealized, unreachable person that Q thinks he knows, but the book skillfully unravels that illusion. What I appreciated most was how “Paper Towns” explores themes of perception, identity, and the dangers of idealizing others. Green challenges the reader to question how well we really know the people we think we understand.

The writing is witty and insightful, with Green’s signature humor shining through, especially in the interactions between Q and his friends. The road trip itself is both entertaining and symbolic, filled with humorous moments and deep reflections on life and relationships.

While the book’s philosophical themes are thought-provoking, some readers may find the pacing slow at times, and the ending, though fitting, might feel anticlimactic for those expecting a more concrete resolution.

Overall, “Paper Towns” is a compelling and beautifully written novel that invites readers to look beyond the surface and understand the complexities of others and themselves. It’s perfect for fans of introspective young adult fiction.

6. TYLER HARNETT reviews Paper Towns

Satisfying read

Knowing and being known by another human is a critical struggle of adolescence. I remember dealing with this conflict in high school through the song “Completely Known” by the band Waterdeep. The foundation of the song is religious, in that we can’t know another person truly, but are known completely by God. This idea was satisfying to me as a high school and early college student struggling with young love and expecting that each relationship would fulfill. Obviously, they didn’t and I was left with my want.

The protagonist of John Green’s book, Paper Towns, struggles through a similar trial as he’s solving the mystery left behind by his idealized love after her disappearance.

The mystery aspect of the book was more engaging than I could have hoped. Each chapter in the first section, The Strings, left me with a new hypothesis and an unquenchable desire to continue to read. The heightened emotions of the high school characters and the urgency of the disappearance push the story toward the climax.

As life does, though, so did the story. The change caused by the tension in “The Strings,” causes all of the characters but Q, the protagonist, to become satisfied in their newness. Only Q’s unfulfilled desire can drive the story toward its finale. I truly appreciated the author’s use of Whitman, which informed the name of the second section, “The Grass.” The ambiguity of the poetry afforded both mystery and introspection. It left the characters and the reader to wonder about knowing anyone at all. The author and Whitman show how people can be mirrors and windows, or both.

As the mystery is unraveled in the third section, “The Vessel,” the characters rush to find the lost girl, Margo. When they find her, though, she’s not what anyone expected her to be in their mirror or window. Q tires to hold on to her, but she is irreparable like strings on a broken instrument. Then he tries to hold on to the knowledge of her as if they were both connected like different leaves of grass with the same roots. He realizes, though, that they are different and says, my favorite quote, “I think the future deserves our faith. But it is hard to argue with Emily Dickinson.” Finally, he becomes satisfied, though scarred, in his metaphor that people are all broken vessels. He sees the beauty in Margo as she is and also appreciates that he can only see his own beauty through the light coming from her cracks. “And it’s only in that time that we can see on another, because we see out of ourselves through our cracks and into others through theirs… But once the vessel cracks, the light can get in. The light can get out.”

This is an important concept for adolescents whether its read in this book or another place. In a time in life when they are constantly trying to define and redefine themselves, much of the narrative of our culture is reactionary. I was swept up into punk rock (not that there’s anything wrong with it) because I wanted to be “against the system.” Other students are stuck fitting into a preconceived notion of happiness only to find dissatisfaction too late. The pendulum of societal expectations doesn’t help anyone. This book’s narrative fits into this pendulum, but lands on the idea that it is all OK. Students need to hear that it is OK to be themselves, whether that means running away from the “Paper Towns” or dreaming of a future with a family in the suburbs. Students also need to know that growing up, much like the passing of this book, is fun and mysterious to do, yet sad and satisfying to leave behind.

7. CORY reviews Paper Towns

Great and well crafted

This story is one of the view that captivated me for showing how we think we know people so well but really do not; whether it is due to a lack of paying attention or the shell everyone now seems to put themselves in. It shows how truly connecting with someone is hard and takes much time and attention.

At the beginning Q is just a love sick teenager who experiences the best night of, what has mostly been, an uneventful life. As the story unravels, Q learns that the real Margo was nothing like the persona she put on in school. Undeniably, finding Robert Joyner dead at the age of nine definitely affected her more than anyone had known. In many ways, surrounding herself with superficial friends and having a stereotypical boyfriend, was just a shell to protect who she really was and wanted to be (even though she probably didn’t know who that person was or is). By rifling through clues, both intentional and unintentional, that Margo left; Q discovers that her attitude towards life is contradictory and complex. Clues of travel brochures and magazines showed a person wanting to take on the world and participate, while the locations Margo stayed at where devoid of life and desolate. I believe Margo never really knew what it was like to care for someone or try to understand someone else until in the end when she realized how much Q actually cared about her. It is ironic that,throughout the novel,everything pointed to an adventurous girl who wanted to do as much with her life as possible, but in the end is choosing to shut herself off from society and the world by living by herself and interacting with society as little as possible. I believe this is true for a lot of people today who think it is cool or hip to shut themselves off from the world and society instead of participating in it.

The only way this could have been better is an epilogue into the future. In my mind, Q is the only one who will ever really understand the real Margo. I don’t think there is any doubt that the two eventually will be a couple because Q has accomplished what a lot of people never do in life, truly connect with a person. Q and Margo remind me much of Sam and Charlie in The Perks of Being a Wallflower where both couples have connected in a way that is rare and will not likely happen again with anyone. As another reviewer pointed out, Margo’s selfish personality that I believe changes at the end, is akin to The Great Gatsby and I would also include This Side of Paradise.

8. KIM G reviews Paper Towns

Makes you think

I had to think about my feelings about Paper Towns for a while before I could sit down and write this review. My first thoughts after finishing it were unfavorable. I thought it was well written of course, and fairly entertaining, though kind of frustrating, and I had a lot of trouble understanding Quentin’s motives for doing the things he did. I was originally going to give Paper Towns only three stars.

However, I love John Green, and I thought maybe it was me. Maybe I was overlooking something or not seeing Quentin in the right perspective. So, I talked to my mom and my husband about it. Based on my description of Paper Towns, my mom seemed unimpressed as well, but then she asked me what the main point was, what was Green trying to say? I knew that, though I didn’t get it until close to the end of the book. When I told her, her feelings about it changed. I, myself, liked the “moral” of the story, but I was still caught up in what I thought was the ridiculousness of it. I really couldn’t understand why Quentin reacted to Margo’s disappearance the way he did. I felt like I understood Margo fairly well and her motivations, but I just didn’t get Quentin. So then, it occurred to me to talk to my husband about it. He was a bit of a nerd, like Quentin, in high school, and if anybody could help me understand Quentin, it would probably be him. So, once I saw things from his perspective, I instantly understood why Quentin went to so much trouble for Margo. After that, I decided Paper Towns is not a two star book, it’s a five-star book. It’s brilliant. I was just looking at it from the wrong perspective.

I’m telling you all this because I want you all to know, Paper Towns may take a bit of patience, especially if you were never an outsider or someone who got picked on in high school. You really have to think about how Quentin experiences the world. He’s someone on the outside looking in, who finally feels like he may be invited inside. Once you can see that about him, everything he does, no matter how risky it may seem, makes sense. Paper Towns was rife with symbolism and deep meaning, just as the other books by Green are. What you take away from Paper Towns is something that people usually don’t think about, especially teenagers. Paper Towns makes you stop and think, and it’s a pretty fun adventure as well. So, read the book, try to find out who the “real” Margo is.

9. MARIO reviews Paper Towns

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

This is my third John Green’s book, and surprisingly (at least to me), also my favorite.

The reason I like and respect John Green so much, is because of how real his books are. No matter if you don’t like the book, or dislike the characters, after reading it, you’re left with thinking about themes the book dealt with. Important themes it dealt with. And that is why I think his books are so important in today’s YA literature. He writes about stuff that matter, and characters that you can actually relate to.

And I think the reason why this book is my favorite, is because it had a different tone than his other two that I’ve read. This one had mystery aspect to it, that I really enjoyed. It did, like the others, have a lot of laugh out loud moments, but the story was also creepy and intense at some parts, which I really liked.

I also loved the whole ending. It was a perfect way to end a book like this one, and leave us with a bittersweet feeling.

Now I only can’t wait for the movie to come out, ’cause I have a feeling that, just like TFiOS, it will be successful adaptation, that will stay faithful to the book.

10. TABETHA reviews Paper Towns

“I stopped waving. My head was level with hers as we stared at each other from opposite sides of the glass. I don’t remember how it ended…In my memory, it doesn’t end. We just stay there, looking at each other, forever.”

Quentin (“Q”) Jacobsen and Margo Roth Spiegelman live next door to each other, and have been bonded and affected by the childhood trauma they experienced together. They have slowly drifted apart, and are now in high school, but in two different worlds. Margo is adventurous, unpredictable, and popular, while Quentin is more reserved, quiet, and introspective. Quentin has never forgotten about that childhood moment with Margo, and now worships her from afar. One night Margo enters Q’s room through his window, and requests his help on her special mission. The secret mission is completed, but now Margo has disappeared, nowhere to be found…and Q’s obsession with Margo deepens even further…

There are so many brilliant laugh-out-loud moments in this book. When I wasn’t laughing, I was smiling at the banter between Quentin and his sweetly nerdy friends, his overly processing therapist parents, and his mysterious crush Margo. The various adventures Q experiences become adventures for the reader, and I felt completely involved in all of the choices he made. There were more serious moments, of course, and philosophical questions that were asked. The overall message of the story was more realistic than perfect, and in this way, a little more heartbreaking, but as we all know, life is bittersweet.

“…it was a kind of sad I didn’t mind, and so I just listened, letting all of the happiness and sadness of this ending swirl around in me, each sharpening the other. For the longest time, it felt kind of like my chest was cracking open, but not precisely in an unpleasant way.”

III. Paper Towns Quotes by John Green

The best book quotes from Paper Towns by John Green

“What a treacherous thing to believe that a person is more than a person.”

“That’s always seemed so ridiculous to me, that people want to be around someone because they’re pretty. It’s like picking your breakfeast cereals based on color instead of taste.”

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

“I’m not saying that everything is survivable. Just that everything except the last thing is.”

“The town was paper, but the memories were not.”

“If you don’t imagine, nothing ever happens at all.”

“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, There was no planning for a career. There was no planning. No time for plannning. No time for a future. But then the life spans started getting longer, and people started having more and more 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.”

“I didn’t need you, you idiot. I picked you. And then you picked me back.”

“When did we see each other face-to-face? Not until you saw into my cracks and I saw into yours. Before that, we were just looking at ideas of each other, like looking at your window shade but never seeing inside. But once the vessel cracks, the light can get in. The light can get out.”

“Talking to a drunk person was like talking to an extremely happy, severely brain-damaged three-year-old.”

“It is easy to forget how full the world is of people, full to bursting, and each of them imaginable and consistently misimagined.”

“Here’s what’s not beautiful about it: from here, you can’t see the rust or the cracked paint or whatever, but you can tell what the place really is. You can see how fake it all is. It’s not even hard enough to be made out of plastic. It’s a paper town. I mean, look at it, Q: look at all those culs-de-sac, 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 anyone who cares about anything that matters.”

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

“Maybe all the strings inside him broke.”

“Maybe its like you said before, all of us being cracked open. Like each of us starts out as a watertight vessel. And then things happen – these people leave us, or don’t love us, or don’t get us, or we don’t get them, and we lose and fail and hurt one another. And the vessel starts to crack in places. And I mean, yeah once the vessel cracks open, the end becomes inevitable. Once it starts to rain inside the Osprey, it will never be remodeled. But there is all this time between when the cracks start to open up and when we finally fall apart. And its only that time that we see one another, because we see out of ourselves through our cracks and into others through theirs. When did we see each other face to face? Not until you saw into my cracks and I saw into yours. Before that we were just looking at ideas of each other, like looking at your window shade, but never seeing inside. But once the vessel cracks, the light can get in. The light can get out.”

“Margo always loved mysteries. And in everything that came afterward, I could never stop thinking that maybe she loved mysteries so much that she became one.”

“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.”

“The way I figure it, everyone gets a miracle. Like, I will probably never be struck by lightening, or win a Nobel Prize, or become the dictator of a small nation in the Pacific Islands, or contract terminal ear cancer, or spontaneously combust. But if you consider all the unlikely things together, at least one of them will probably happen to each of us. I could have seen it rain frogs. I could have stepped foot on Mars. I could have been eaten by a whale. I could have married the Queen of England or survived months at sea. But my miracle was different. 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.”

“I’m starting to realize that people lack good mirrors. It’s so hard for anyone to show us how we look, & so hard for us to show anyone how we feel.”

“And all at once I knew how Margo Roth Spiegelman felt when she wasn’t being Margo Roth Spiegelman: she felt empty. She felt the unscaleable wall surrounding her. I thought of her asleep on the carpet with only that jagged sliver of sky above her. Maybe Margo felt comfortable there because Margo the person lived like that all the time: in an abandoned room with blocked-out windows, the only light pouring in through holes in the roof. Yes. The fundamental mistake I had always made—and that she had, in fairness, always led me to make—was this: Margo was not a miracle. She was not an adventure. She was not a fine and precious thing. She was a girl.”

“Peeing is like a good book in that it is very, very hard to stop once you start.”

“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.”

“Isn’t it also that on some fundamental level we find it difficult to understand that other people are human beings in the same way that we are? We idealize them as gods or dismiss them as animals.”

“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.”

“Poetry is just so emo.” he said. “Oh, the pain. The pain. It always rains. In my soul.”

“The rules of capitalization are so unfair to words in the middle of a sentence.”

“It was nice – in the dark and the quiet… and her eyes looking back, like there was something in me worth seeing.”

“Radar threw his books into his locker and shut it. Then the din of conversation around us quieted just a bit as he turned his eyes toward the heavens and shouted, “IT IS NOT MY FAULT THAT MY PARENTS OWN THE WORLD’S LARGEST COLLECTION OF BLACK SANTAS.”

“The pleasure isn’t in doing the thing, the pleasure is in planning it.”

“Tonight, darling, we are going to right a lot of wrongs. And we are going to wrong some rights. The first shall be last; the last shall be first; the meek shall do some earth-inheriting. But before we can radically reshape the world, we need to shop.”

“Just remember that sometimes, the way you think about a person isn’t the way they actually are… People are different when you can smell them and see them up close…”

“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.”

“Those of us who frequent the band room have long suspected that Becca maintains her lovely figure by eating nothing but the souls of kittens and the dreams of impoverished children.”

“I stand in this parking lot, realizing that I’ve never been this far from home, and here is this girl I love and cannot follow. I hope this is the hero’s errand, because not following her is the hardest thing I’ve ever done.”

“This was the first time in my life that so many things would never happen again.”

“Dude, I don’t want to talk about Lacey’s prom shoes. And I’ll tell you why: I have this thing that makes me really uninterested in prom shoes. It’s called a penis.”

Excerpted from Paper Towns by John Green

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