Paper Towns Quotes
"The way I figure it, everyone gets a miracle."
"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."
"Dr. Jefferson Jefferson has a school named after him in Orlando and also a large charitable foundation, but the fascinating and unbelievable-but-true thing about Dr. Jefferson Jefferson is that he was not a doctor of any kind."
"He was just an orange juice salesman named Jefferson Jefferson."
"I always got very nervous whenever I heard that Margo was about to show up, on account of how she was the most fantastically gorgeous creature that God had ever created."
"Both my parents are therapists, which means that I am really goddamned well adjusted."
"If I had a nervous breakdown every time something awful happened in the world, I’d be crazier than a shithouse rat."
"We were in the business of mutual amusement, and we were reasonably prosperous."
"If 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."
"The rules of capitalization are so unfair to words in the middle."
"In the scheme of things, what kind of trouble can SeaWorld get you into?"
"You can’t see the rust or the weeds or the paint cracking. You see the place as someone once imagined it."
"The only thing worse than getting rejected at dance school is crying about getting rejected at dance school."
"All those paper people living in their paper houses, burning the future to stay warm."
"I don’t think she ever said anything that wasn’t an attempt at undermination."
"I’ve lived here for eighteen years and I have never once in my life come across anyone who cares about anything that matters."
"In sickness and in health. In good times and in bad. For richer, for poorer. Till dawn do us part."
"We bring the fucking rain down on our enemies."
"I don’t want some kids to find me swarmed with flies on a Saturday morning in Jefferson Park."
"We’re not going to break anything. It’s just entering, because there’s an unlocked door."
"All the things paper-thin and paper-frail. And all the people, too."
"Then it would definitely mean he didn’t like you."
"You 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 cul-de-sacs, those streets that turn in on themselves, all the houses that were built to fall apart."
"I wonder how long till she gets to see the Team Radar Residence and Museum."
"I just had a guy point a freaking shotgun at me for helping you, so don’t be pissed at me."
"You can’t just shut up and calm down and stop being so goddamned terrified of every little adventure?"
"It’s more impressive. From a distance, I mean."
"But it didn’t feel like fun; it felt like a heart attack."
"All the paper kids drinking beer some bum bought for them at the paper convenience store."
"All the paper people living in their paper houses, burning the future to stay warm."
"Light, the visible reminder of Invisible Light."
"At least I broke into SeaWorld with Margo Roth Spiegelman my senior year of high school. At least I carpe’d that one diem."
"You shall no longer take things at second or third hand . . . . nor look through the eyes of the dead . . . . nor feed on the spectres in books."
"All goes onward and outward . . . . and nothing collapses, And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier."
"If no other in the world be aware I sit content, And if each and all be aware I sit content."
"Missing me one place search another, I stop somewhere waiting for you."
"We are going to get caught, probably, and when we do, just let me talk. You just look cute and be that weird mix of innocent and confident, and we'll be fine."
"The true ninja doesn’t make a splash at all."
"This feels pretty good to me," I confessed. "Even if there isn't anything to see."
"Planning, I guess. I don’t know. Doing stuff never feels as good as you hope it will feel."
"We call if there’s something to call about. She left the address for Q. Not for the cops."
"Something about seeing them makes me feel as if she is not dead until we find her."
"I don’t know who she is anymore, or who she was, but I need to find her."
"I am so fucking glad to see that dead fucking raccoon."
"If you move as though your hand will go through the block, and if you believe that your hand will go through the block, then it will."
"The last time I was this scared, I peed myself."
"The last time I was this scared, I actually had to face a Dark Lord in order to make the world safe for wizards."
"No one leaves the room until everyone leaves the room."
"I missed her I missed her I missed her I miss her."
"I wanted Margo’s disappearance to change me; but it hadn’t, not really."
"I will play out the string. I will not betray your trust. I will find you."
"Promised Mom. Boo, Sleepy Quentin! Yay, Designated Driver!"
"You keep expecting people not to be themselves."
"Margo was not a miracle. She was not an adventure. She was a girl."
"It was dishonest to act like Margo hadn’t participated in her own obfuscation."
"The pleasure isn’t in doing the thing; the pleasure is in planning it."
"It is so hard to leave—until you leave. And then it is the easiest goddamned thing in the world."
"What a treacherous thing it is to believe that a person is more than a person."
"Maybe I am the most horribly self-centered person in the history of the world. But God, do you think I would have done it if I didn’t need to?"
"As much as life can suck, it always beats the alternative."
"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."
"I couldn’t figure out any other way that I could leave without getting dragged back."
"If it doesn’t happen to you, it doesn’t happen at all."
"People are different when you can smell them and see them up close, you know?"
"You think you’re the painter, but you’re the canvas."
"If half the cells inside of you are not you, doesn’t that challenge the whole notion of me as a singular pronoun?"
"The thing about a spiral is, if you follow it inward, it never actually ends. It just keeps tightening, infinitely."
"It’s kind of great, being an idea that everybody likes. But I could never be the idea to myself, not all the way."
"I can’t believe you didn’t want me to find you."
"Imagining isn’t perfect. You can’t get all the way inside someone else."
"I felt like I might vomit. For someone who actively dislikes bodily fluids, I throw up quite a lot."
"It’s part of the look, Molly. Stained shirts are huge in Paris right now."
"It would’ve been nice to tell him that, whatever it was, that it didn’t have to be the end of the world."
"Maybe the strings break, or maybe our ships sink, or maybe we’re grass—our roots so interdependent that no one is dead as long as someone is still alive."