Hazel’s oxygen tank hums softly, but her heart races louder for Augustus—a love defying time’s cruel clock.
John Green’s The Fault in Our Stars captures the raw pulse of Hazel Grace Lancaster, a 16-year-old facing terminal cancer, and Augustus Waters, whose bold spirit dares to rewrite their fate.
These 51 quotes, drawn from the Penguin 2014 edition, unlock the novel’s emotional depth, weaving laughter, courage, and timeless lessons of love and loss. Whether you’re a fan seeking connection or a student exploring Green’s prose, these lines light a path through life’s fleeting infinities.
*Note: Page numbers may vary by edition, so check your copy for precision.*
Hazel’s Lens: Cancer’s Stark Truth
Can Hazel’s sharp wit pierce cancer’s haze? Her voice, raw and unyielding, lays bare the truths of a life on the edge. These lines unveil her unyielding spirit:
“Whenever you read a cancer booklet or website or whatever, they always list depression among the side effects of cancer. But, in fact, depression is not a side effect of cancer. Depression is a side effect of dying.”
~ John Green, The Fault in Our Stars, (Character: Hazel Grace Lancaster, Chapter 1, Page 3, Theme: Mortality, Realism)
Hazel’s bluntness strips away pretense.
“There was quite a lot of competitiveness about it, with everybody wanting to beat not only cancer itself, but also the other people in the room. Like, I realize that this is irrational, but when they tell you that you have, say, a 20 percent chance of living five years, the math kicks in and you figure that’s one in five . . . so you look around and think, as any healthy person would: I gotta outlast four of these bastards.”
~ John Green, The Fault in Our Stars, (Character: Hazel Grace Lancaster, Chapter 1, Page 5, Theme: Survival, Human Nature)
Her dark humor wrestles with survival’s odds.
“Look, let me just say it: He was hot. A nonhot boy stares at you relentlessly and it is, at best, awkward and, at worst, a form of assault. But a hot boy . . . well.”
~ John Green, The Fault in Our Stars, (Character: Hazel Grace Lancaster, Chapter 1, Page 9, Theme: Attraction, Humor)
A flicker of desire hints at life beyond illness.
Her guarded heart begins to stir.
Meeting Augustus: Defiance in Bloom
What sparks when a boy’s crooked smile meets a girl’s wary gaze? Augustus Waters strides into Hazel’s life with fearless charm, igniting hope. These moments capture their electric dawn:
“There were five others before they got to him. He smiled a little when his turn came. His voice was low, smoky, and dead sexy. ‘My name is Augustus Waters,’ he said. ‘I’m seventeen. I had a little touch of osteosarcoma a year and a half ago, but I’m just here today at Isaac’s request.’ ‘And how are you feeling?’ asked Patrick. ‘Oh, I’m grand.’ Augustus Waters smiled with a corner of his mouth. ‘I’m on a roller coaster that only goes up, my friend.’”
~ John Green, The Fault in Our Stars, (Characters: Hazel Grace Lancaster, Patrick, Augustus Waters, Chapter 1, Page 11, Theme: Optimism, Resilience)
Augustus’s bold entrance shifts Hazel’s world.
“Augustus, perhaps you’d like to share your fears with the group.’ ‘My fears?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘I fear oblivion,’ he said without a moment’s pause. ‘I fear it like the proverbial blind man who’s afraid of the dark.’ ‘Too soon,’ Isaac said, cracking a smile. ‘Was that insensitive?’ Augustus asked. ‘I can be pretty blind to other people’s feelings.’”
~ John Green, The Fault in Our Stars, (Characters: Patrick, Augustus Waters, Isaac, Chapter 1, Pages 11-12, Theme: Fear, Existentialism)
His raw honesty draws Hazel closer.
“There will come a time when all of us are dead. All of us. There will come a time when there are no human beings remaining to remember that anyone ever existed or that our species ever did anything. There will be no one left to remember Aristotle or Cleopatra, let alone you. Everything that we did and built and wrote and thought and discovered will be forgotten and all of this will have been for naught. Maybe that time is coming soon and maybe it is millions of years away, but even if we survive the collapse of our sun, we will not survive forever. There was time before organisms experienced consciousness, and there will be time after. And if the inevitability of human oblivion worries you, I encourage you to ignore it. God knows that’s what everyone else does.”
~ John Green, The Fault in Our Stars, (Character: Hazel Grace Lancaster, Chapter 1, Pages 12, 13, Theme: Mortality, Acceptance)
Hazel’s cosmic fears find a mirror in Augustus.
“We are literally in the heart of Jesus,’ he said. ‘I thought we were in a church basement, but we are literally in the heart of Jesus.’ ‘Someone should tell Jesus,’ I said. ‘I mean, it’s gotta be dangerous, storing children with cancer in your heart.’ ‘I would tell Him myself,’ Augustus said, ‘but unfortunately I am literally stuck inside of His heart, so He won’t be able to hear me.’”
~ John Green, The Fault in Our Stars, (Characters: Patrick, Hazel Grace Lancaster, Augustus Waters, Chapter 1, Page 16, Theme: Humor, Faith)
Their playful banter weaves a fragile bond.
“Because you’re beautiful. I enjoy looking at beautiful people, and I decided a while ago not to deny myself the simpler pleasures of existence”
~ John Green, The Fault in Our Stars, (Character: Augustus Waters, Chapter 1, Page 16, Theme: Attraction, Honesty)
Augustus’s bold charm cracks Hazel’s defenses.
“It’s a metaphor, see: You put the killing thing right between your teeth, but you don’t give it the power to do its killing.”
~ John Green, The Fault in Our Stars, (Character: Augustus Waters, Chapter 1, Page 20, Theme: Control, Symbolism)
His defiance sparks a deeper connection.
A shared rebellion kindles their flame.
Love’s Spark: Books and Bonds
Can a book’s pages hold the weight of their hearts? Hazel and Augustus find refuge in stories, forging a love that defies their scars. These quotes trace their tender intimacy:
“I told Augustus the broad outline of my miracle: diagnosed with Stage IV thyroid cancer when I was thirteen. (I didn’t tell him that the diagnosis came three months after I got my first period. Like: Congratulations! You’re a woman. Now die.)”
~ John Green, The Fault in Our Stars, (Character: Hazel Grace Lancaster, Chapter 2, Page 24, Theme: Survival, Vulnerability)
Hazel’s wry vulnerability opens a door.
“Sometimes, you read a book and it fills you with this weird evangelical zeal, and you become convinced that the shattered world will never be put back together unless and until all living humans read the book.”
~ John Green, The Fault in Our Stars, (Character: Hazel Grace Lancaster, Chapter 2, Page 33, Theme: Passion, Connection)
Her passion for stories pulls Augustus in.
“Books so special and rare and yours that advertising your affection feels like a betrayal.”
~ John Green, The Fault in Our Stars, (Character: Hazel Grace Lancaster, Chapter 2, Page 33, Theme: Intimacy, Loyalty)
Her guarded heart finds a trusted keeper.
“Without pain, how could we know joy?’ (This is an old argument in the field of thinking about suffering and its stupidity and lack of sophistication could be plumbed for centuries but suffice it to say that the existence of broccoli does not, in any way, affect the taste of chocolate.)”
~ John Green, The Fault in Our Stars, (Characters: Augustus Waters’s mother, Hazel Grace Lancaster, Chapter 2, Page 35, Theme: Suffering, Philosophy)
Hazel’s clever retort reveals her sharp mind.
“May I see you again?’ he asked. There was an endearing nervousness in his voice. I smiled. ‘Sure.’ ‘Tomorrow?’ he asked. ‘Patience, grasshopper,’ I counseled. ‘You don’t want to seem overeager. ‘Right, that’s why I said tomorrow,’ he said. ‘I want to see you again tonight. But I’m willing to wait all night and much of tomorrow.’ I rolled my eyes. ‘I’m serious,’ he said. ‘You don’t even know me,’ I said. I grabbed the book from the center console. ‘How about I call you when I finish this?’ ‘But you don’t even have my phone number,’ he said. ‘I strongly suspect you wrote it in this book.’ He broke out into that goofy smile. ‘And you say we don’t know each other.”
~ John Green, The Fault in Our Stars, (Characters: Augustus Waters, Hazel Grace Lancaster, Chapter 2, Pages 36, 37, Theme: Flirtation, Connection)
Their playful dance weaves a deeper thread.
“Tell me my copy is missing the last twenty pages or something. Hazel Grace, tell me I have not reached the end of this book. OH MY GOD DO THEY GET MARRIED OR NOT OH MY GOD WHAT IS THIS?!”
~ John Green, The Fault in Our Stars, (Character: Augustus Waters, Chapter 4, Page 53, Theme: Passion, Humor)
Augustus’s fervor mirrors Hazel’s, binding them.
“All salvation is temporary,’ Augustus shot back. ‘I bought them a minute. Maybe that’s the minute that buys them an hour, which is the hour that buys them a year. No one’s gonna buy them forever, Hazel Grace, but my life bought them a minute. And that’s not nothing.”
~ John Green, The Fault in Our Stars, (Character: Augustus Waters, Chapter 4, Page 59, Theme: Impact, Hope)
His quiet heroism pulses with purpose.
“Sometimes people don’t understand the promises they’re making when they make them.”
~ John Green, The Fault in Our Stars, (Character: Hazel Grace Lancaster, Chapter 4, Page 60, Theme: Relationships, Trust)
Her insight tempers their growing trust.
“That’s the thing about pain… It demands to be felt”
~ John Green, The Fault in Our Stars, (Character: Augustus Waters, Chapter 4, Page 63, Theme: Pain, Reality)
Pain’s weight draws them ever closer.
Love blooms, fragile yet fierce.
Promises Forged: Love Amid Shadows
How do you vow eternity with borrowed time? Hazel and Augustus weave promises in the face of fading light, their love a quiet rebellion. These words capture their defiant bond:
“That’s part of what I like about the book in some ways. It portrays death truthfully. You die in the middle of your life, in the middle of a sentence”
~ John Green, The Fault in Our Stars, (Character: Hazel Grace Lancaster, Chapter 5, Page 67, Theme: Death, Truth)
Hazel’s stark truth grounds their dreams.
“And then the line was quiet but not dead. I almost felt like he was there in my room with me, but in a way it was better, like I was not in my room and he was not in his, but instead we were together in some invisible and tenuous third space that could only be visited on the phone.”
~ John Green, The Fault in Our Stars, (Character: Hazel Grace Lancaster, Chapter 5, Page 72, Theme: Connection, Intimacy)
Distance forges a tender closeness.
“Maybe okay will be our always”
~ John Green, The Fault in Our Stars, (Character: Augustus Waters, Chapter 5, Page 73, Theme: Hope, Love)
A single word carries their forever.
“But I believe in true love, you know? I don’t believe that everybody gets to keep their eyes or not get sick or whatever, but everybody should have true love, and it should last at least as long as your life does.”
~ John Green, The Fault in Our Stars, (Character: Isaac, Chapter 5, Page 75, Theme: Love, Hope)
Isaac’s hope strengthens their resolve.
“I’m a grenade and at some point I’m going to blow up and I would like to minimize the casualties, okay?”
~ John Green, The Fault in Our Stars, (Character: Hazel Grace Lancaster, Chapter 6, Page 99, Theme: Fear, Self-Perception)
Fear tempers her love’s fierce pull.
Their promises shine, daring time’s shadow.
Amsterdam’s Light: Love Against Time
Can love outlast a city’s fleeting glow? In Amsterdam’s embrace, Hazel and Augustus chase joy amid truth’s sting. These quotes burn with their boundless spark:
“But it is the nature of stars to cross, and never was Shakespeare more wrong than when he has Cassius note, ‘The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars / But in ourselves.’”
~ John Green, The Fault in Our Stars, (Character: Peter Van Houten, Chapter 7, Page 111, Theme: Fate, Love)
A fictional pen traces their fated path.
“What a slut time is. She screws everybody.”
~ John Green, The Fault in Our Stars, (Character: Peter Van Houten, Chapter 7, Page 112, Theme: Time, Cynicism)
Time’s betrayal looms over their joy.
“That’s why I like you. Do you realize how rare it is to come across a hot girl who creates a adjectival version of the word pedophile? You are so busy being you that you have no idea how utterly unprecedented you are.”
~ John Green, The Fault in Our Stars, (Character: Augustus Waters, Chapter 8, Page 123, Theme: Love, Appreciation)
Augustus marvels at Hazel’s singular light.
“As he read, I fell in love the way you fall asleep: slowly, and then all at once.”
~ John Green, The Fault in Our Stars, (Character: Hazel Grace Lancaster, Chapter 8, Pages 124-25, Theme: Love, Intimacy)
Hazel’s heart falls, soft yet unstoppable.
“I’m in love with you, and I know that love is just a shout into the void, and that oblivion is inevitable, and that we’re all doomed and that there will come a day when all our labor has been returned to dust, and I know the sun will swallow the only earth we’ll ever have, and I am in love with you.”
~ John Green, The Fault in Our Stars, (Character: Augustus Waters, Chapter 10, Page 153, Theme: Love, Mortality)
His love roars against the void.
“I’m in love with you,’ he said quietly. ‘Augustus,’ I said. ‘I am,’ he said. He was staring at me, and I could see the corners of his eyes crinkling. ‘I’m in love with you, and I’m not in the business of denying myself the simple pleasure of saying true things. I’m in love with you, and I know that love is just a shout into the void, and that oblivion is inevitable, and that we’re all doomed and that there will come a day when all our labor has been returned to dust, and I know the sun will swallow the only earth we’ll ever have, and I am in love with you.”
~ John Green, The Fault in Our Stars, (Characters: Augustus Waters, Hazel Grace Lancaster, Chapter 11, Page 155, Theme: Love, Honesty)
His quiet truth seals their fate.
“Oh, I wouldn’t mind, Hazel Grace. It would be a privilege to have my heart broken by you.”
~ John Green, The Fault in Our Stars, (Character: Augustus Waters, Chapter 11, Page 176, Theme: Love, Sacrifice)
His devotion drowns her doubts.
“The world is not a wish-granting factory.”
~ John Green, The Fault in Our Stars, (Character: Hazel Grace Lancaster, Chapter 12, Page 182, Theme: Reality, Resilience)
Hazel’s clarity anchors their fleeting joy.
“Some infinities are bigger than other infinities.”
~ John Green, The Fault in Our Stars, (Character: Peter Van Houten, Chapter 12, Page 189, Theme: Time, Infinity)
A borrowed truth frames their endless love.
“Our fearlessness shall be our secret weapon.”
~ John Green, The Fault in Our Stars, (Character: Hazel Grace Lancaster, Chapter 12, Page 202, Theme: Courage, Love)
Hazel’s bold spirit defies their limits.
“Augustus Waters,’ I said, looking up at him, thinking that you cannot kiss anyone in the Anne Frank House, and then thinking that Anne Frank, after all, kissed someone in the Anne Frank House, and that she would probably like nothing more than for her home to have become a place where the young and irreparably broken sink into love.”
~ John Green, The Fault in Our Stars, (Character: Hazel Grace Lancaster, Chapter 12, Page 202, Theme: Love, Memory)
Their love finds sanctuary in history’s echo.
Yet shadows creep, dimming their starlight.
Grief’s Weight: Courage in Farewell
How do you cling to love when breath fades? Hazel and Augustus face mortality’s unyielding truth, their courage a fragile flame against the dark. These quotes burn with their final stand:
“You have a choice in this world, I believe, about how to tell sad stories, and we made the funny choice.”
~ John Green, The Fault in Our Stars, (Character: Hazel Grace Lancaster, Chapter 13, Page 209, Theme: Storytelling, Choice)
Hazel wields humor as a shield against despair, choosing light in sorrow’s grip.
“Much of my life had been devoted to trying not to cry in front of people who loved me, so I knew what Augustus was doing. You clench your teeth. You look up. You tell yourself that if they see you cry, it will hurt them, and you will be nothing but a Sadness in their lives, and you must not become a mere sadness, so you will not cry, and you say all of this to yourself while looking up at the ceiling, and then you swallow even though your throat does not want to close and you look at the person who loves you and smile.”
~ John Green, The Fault in Our Stars, (Character: Hazel Grace Lancaster, Chapter 13, Pages 213-14, Theme: Grief, Strength)
Her silent resolve cradles their love, a quiet act of defiance.
“Only now that I loved a grenade did I understand the foolishness of trying to save others from my own impending fragmentation: I couldn’t unlove Augustus Waters. And I didn’t want to.”
~ John Green, The Fault in Our Stars, (Character: Hazel Grace Lancaster, Chapter 13, Page 214, Theme: Love, Self-Perception)
Love’s fierce pull drowns her fears, embracing the risk of loss.
“I’ll fight it. I’ll fight it for you. Don’t you worry about me, Hazel Grace. I’m okay. I’ll find a way to hang around and annoy you for a long time.”
~ John Green, The Fault in Our Stars, (Character: Augustus Waters, Chapter 13, Page 215, Theme: Courage, Love)
Augustus’s vow blazes with stubborn hope, fighting for her smile.
“Because there is no glory in illness. There is no meaning to it. There is no honor in dying of.”
~ John Green, The Fault in Our Stars, (Character: Augustus Waters, Chapter 13, Page 217, Theme: Mortality, Truth)
He strips death of false crowns, facing its stark reality.
A broader perspective offers solace amid loss.
“I believe the universe wants to be noticed. I think the universe is improbably biased toward the consciousness, that it rewards intelligence in part because the universe enjoys its elegance being observed. And who am I, living in the middle of history, to tell the universe that it-or my observation of it-is temporary?”
~ John Green, The Fault in Our Stars, (Character: Mr. Lancaster, Chapter 14, Page 223, Theme: Philosophy, Wonder)
Mr. Lancaster’s cosmic musings lift their grief, suggesting their lives echo in the universe’s vast gaze.
“According to the conventions of the genre, Augustus Waters kept his sense of humor till the end, did not for a moment waiver in his courage, and his spirit soared like an indomitable eagle until the world itself could not contain his joyous soul. But this is the truth, a pitiful boy who desperately wanted not to be pitiful, screaming and crying, poisoned by an infected G-tube that kept him alive, but not alive enough. I wiped his chin and grabbed his face in my hands and knelt down close to him so that I could see his eyes, which still lived. ‘I’m sorry. I wish it was like that movie, with the Persians and the Spartans.’ ‘Me too,’ he said. ‘But it isn’t,’ I said. ‘I know,’ he said. ‘There are no bad guys.’ ‘Yeah.’ ‘Even cancer isn’t a bad guy really: Cancer just wants to be alive.”
~ John Green, The Fault in Our Stars, (Characters: Hazel Grace Lancaster, Augustus Waters, Chapter 18, Pages 245-46, Theme: Grief, Truth)
Hazel clings to his fading truth, her love unbowed.
“My name is Hazel. Augustus Waters was the great star-crossed love of my life. Ours was an epic love story, and I won’t be able to get more than a sentence into it without disappearing into a puddle of tears. Gus knew. Gus knows. I will not tell you our love story, because-like all real love stories-it will die with us, as it should. I’d hoped that he’d be eulogizing me, because there’s no one I’d rather have…’ I started crying. ‘Okay, how not to cry. How am I-okay. Okay.’ I took a few deep breaths and went back to the page. ‘I can’t talk about our love story, so I will talk about math. I am not a mathematician, but I know this: There are infinite numbers between 0 and 1. There’s .1 and .12 and .112 and infinite collection of others. Of course, there is a Bigger infinite set of numbers between 0 and 2, or between 0 and a million. Some infinities are bigger than other infinities. A writer we used to like taught us that. There are days, many of them, when I resent the size of my unbounded set. I want more numbers than I’m likely to get, and God, I want more numbers for Augustus Waters than he got. But, Gus, my love, I cannot tell you how thankful I am for our little infinity. I wouldn’t trade it for the world. You gave me a forever within the numbered days, and I’m grateful.”
~ John Green, The Fault in Our Stars, (Character: Hazel Grace Lancaster, Chapter 20, Pages 259-60, Theme: Love, Grief)
Her eulogy weaves love into eternity’s fabric.
“The only person I really wanted to talk to about Augustus Waters’s death with was Augustus Waters.”
~ John Green, The Fault in Our Stars, (Character: Hazel Grace Lancaster, Chapter 21, Page 262, Theme: Loss, Isolation)
Solitude sharpens her longing for him.
“When you go into the ER, one of the first things they ask you to do is rate your pain on a scale of one to ten, and from there they decide which drugs to use and how quickly to use them. I’d been asked this question hundreds of times over the years, and I remember once early on when I couldn’t get my breath and it felt like my chest was on fire, flames licking the inside of my ribs fighting for a way to burn out of my body, my parents took me to the ER. nurse asked me about the pain, and I couldn’t even speak, so I held up nine fingers. Later, after they’d given me something, the nurse came in and she was kind of stroking my head while she took my blood pressure and said, ‘You know how I know you’re a fighter? You called a ten a nine.’ But that wasn’t quite right. I called it a nine because I was saving my ten. And here it was, the great and terrible ten, slamming me again and again as I lay still and alone in my bed staring at the ceiling, the waves tossing me against the rocks then pulling me back out to sea so they could launch me again into the jagged face of the cliff, leaving me floating faceup on the water, undrowned.”
~ John Green, The Fault in Our Stars, (Character: Hazel Grace Lancaster, Chapter 21, Pages 262-63, Theme: Pain, Resilience)
Her pain’s vast scale reveals an unbroken spirit.
Their flame endures, lighting the dark.
Legacy of Stars: Love’s Lasting Echoes
What endures when love’s pulse stills? Hazel and Augustus carve a legacy of courage, love, and quiet defiance, their words a constellation for the living. These quotes echo their eternal mark:
“Augustus Waters was a self-aggrandizing bastard. But we forgive him. We forgive him not because he had a heart as figuratively good as his literal one sucked, or because he knew more about how to hold a cigarette than any nonsmoker in history, or because he got eighteen years when he should’ve gotten more.’ ‘Seventeen,’ Gus corrected. ‘I’m assuming you’ve got some time, you interrupting bastard. ‘I’m telling you,’ Isaac continued, ‘Augustus Waters talked so much that he’d interrupt you at his own funeral. And he was pretentious: Sweet Jesus Christ, that kid never took a piss without pondering the abundant metaphorical resonances of human waste production. And he was vain: I do not believe I have ever met a more physically attractive person who was more acutely aware of his own physical attractiveness. ‘But I will say this: When the scientists of the future show up at my house with robot eyes and they tell me to try them on, I will tell the scientists to screw off, because I do not want to see a world without him.’ I was kind of crying by then.”
~ John Green, The Fault in Our Stars, (Characters: Isaac, Augustus Waters, Hazel Grace Lancaster, Chapter 20, Page 258, Theme: Friendship, Memory)
Isaac’s tribute paints Augustus’s vivid soul.
“My name is Hazel. Augustus Waters was the great star-crossed love of my life. Ours was an epic love story, and I won’t be able to get more than a sentence into it without disappearing into a puddle of tears. Gus knew. Gus knows. I will not tell you our love story, because-like all real love stories-it will die with us, as it should. I’d hoped that he’d be eulogizing me, because there’s no one I’d rather have…’ I started crying. ‘Okay, how not to cry. How am I-okay. Okay.’ I took a few deep breaths and went back to the page. ‘I can’t talk about our love story, so I will talk about math. I am not a mathematician, but I know this: There are infinite numbers between 0 and 1. There’s .1 and .12 and .112 and infinite collection of others. Of course, there is a Bigger infinite set of numbers between 0 and 2, or between 0 and a million. Some infinities are bigger than other infinities. A writer we used to like taught us that. There are days, many of them, when I resent the size of my unbounded set. I want more numbers than I’m likely to get, and God, I want more numbers for Augustus Waters than he got. But, Gus, my love, I cannot tell you how thankful I am for our little infinity. I wouldn’t trade it for the world. You gave me a forever within the numbered days, and I’m grateful.”
~ John Green, The Fault in Our Stars, (Character: Hazel Grace Lancaster, Chapter 20, Pages 259-60, Theme: Love, Grief)
Hazel’s eulogy carves their love eternal.
“When you go into the ER, one of the first things they ask you to do is rate your pain on a scale of one to ten, and from there they decide which drugs to use and how quickly to use them. I’d been asked this question hundreds of times over the years, and I remember once early on when I couldn’t get my breath and it felt like my chest was on fire, flames licking the inside of my ribs fighting for a way to burn out of my body, my parents took me to the ER. nurse asked me about the pain, and I couldn’t even speak, so I held up nine fingers. Later, after they’d given me something, the nurse came in and she was kind of stroking my head while she took my blood pressure and said, ‘You know how I know you’re a fighter? You called a ten a nine.’ But that wasn’t quite right. I called it a nine because I was saving my ten. And here it was, the great and terrible ten, slamming me again and again as I lay still and alone in my bed staring at the ceiling, the waves tossing me against the rocks then pulling me back out to sea so they could launch me again into the jagged face of the cliff, leaving me floating faceup on the water, undrowned.”
~ John Green, The Fault in Our Stars, (Character: Hazel Grace Lancaster, Chapter 21, Pages 262-63, Theme: Pain, Resilience)
Her pain’s depth reveals her unyielding fight.
“I love you present tense.”
~ John Green, The Fault in Our Stars, (Character: Hazel Grace Lancaster, Chapter 22, Page 270, Theme: Love, Presence)
Hazel anchors love in the eternal now.
“Grief does not change you, Hazel. It reveals you.”
~ John Green, The Fault in Our Stars, (Character: Peter Van Houten, Chapter 23, Page 286, Theme: Grief, Identity)
Grief unveils Hazel’s enduring core.
“Van Houten, I’m a good person but a shitty writer. You’re a shitty person but a good writer. We’d make a good team. I don’t want to ask you any favors, but if you have time – and from what I saw, you have plenty – I was wondering if you could write a eulogy for Hazel. I’ve got notes and everything, but if you could just make it into a coherent whole or whatever? Or even just tell me what I should say differently. Here’s the thing about Hazel: Almost everyone is obsessed with leaving a mark upon the world. Bequeathing a legacy. Outlasting death. We all want to be remembered. I do, too. That’s what bothers me most, is being another unremembered casualty in the ancient and inglorious war against disease. I want to leave a mark. But Van Houten: The marks humans leave are too often scars. You build a hideous minimall or start a coup or try to become a rock star and you think, ‘They’ll remember me now,’ but (a) they don’t remember you, and (b) all you leave behind are more scars. Your coup becomes a dictatorship. Your minimall becomes a lesion. (Okay, maybe I’m not such a shitty writer. But I can’t pull my ideas together, Van Houten. My thoughts are stars I can’t fathom into constellations.) We are like a bunch of dogs squirting on fire hydrants. We poison the groundwater with our toxic piss, marking everything MINE in a ridiculous attempt to survive our deaths. I can’t stop pissing on fire hydrants. I know it’s silly and useless – epically useless in my current state – but I am an animal like any other. Hazel is different. She walks lightly, old man. She walks lightly upon the earth. Hazel knows the truth: We’re as likely to hurt the universe as we are to help it, and we’re not likely to do either. People will say it’s sad that she leaves a lesser scar, that fewer remember her, that she was loved deeply but not widely. But it’s not sad, Van Houten. It’s triumphant. It’s heroic. Isn’t that the real heroism? Like the doctors say: First, do no harm. The real heroes anyway aren’t the people doing things; the real heroes are the people NOTICING things, paying attention. The guy who invented the smallpox vaccine didn’t actually invented anything. He just noticed that people with cowpox didn’t get smallpox. After my PET scan lit up, I snuck into the ICU and saw her while she was unconscious. I just walked in behind a nurse with a badge and I got to sit next to her for like ten minutes before I got caught. I really thought she was going to die, too. It was brutal: the incessant mechanized haranguing of intensive care. She had this dark cancer water dripping out of her chest. Eyes closed. Intubated. But her hand was still her hand, still warm and the nails painted this almost black dark blue and I just held her hand and tried to imagine the world without us and for about one second I was a good enough person to hope she died so she would never know that I was going, too. But then I wanted more time so we could fall in love. I got my wish, I suppose. I left my scar. A nurse guy came in and told me I had to leave, that visitors weren’t allowed, and I asked if she was doing okay, and the guy said, ‘She’s still taking on water.’ A desert blessing, an ocean curse. What else? She is so beautiful. You don’t get tired of looking at her. You never worry if she is smarter than you: You know she is. She is funny without ever being mean. I love her. I am so lucky to love her, Van Houten. You don’t get to choose if you get hurt in this world, old man, but you do have some say in who hurts you. I like my choices. I hope she likes hers.”
~ John Green, The Fault in Our Stars, (Character: Augustus Waters, Chapter 25, Pages 310-13, Theme: Legacy, Love)
Augustus’s final words crown Hazel’s legacy.
“I do, Augustus. I do.”
~ John Green, The Fault in Our Stars, (Character: Hazel Grace Lancaster, Chapter 25, Page 313, Theme: Love, Acceptance)
Hazel’s quiet vow seals their infinite bond. Which quote stirs your heart most?
Okay? Okay: A Final Word
These 51 quotes from The Fault in Our Stars distill Hazel and Augustus’s saga into a constellation of love, courage, and legacy. Love, fierce and fragile, dares to bloom against time’s relentless march. Courage, raw and unyielding, faces mortality with defiant wit. Their legacy, etched in laughter and tears, reminds us that even brief infinities leave eternal marks. John Green’s words linger, a call to cherish our own numbered days. Their love, etched in these words, dares us to live boldly in our own fleeting infinities.
A Note on Page Numbers:
We sourced these quotes from the Penguin Books Reprint edition (April 8, 2014), ISBN-13: 978-0142424179. Like thoughts we can’t pin into constellations, page numbers may vary across editions. Verify with your copy for precision in essays or citations.
Cite This Page (MLA):
Mortis, Jeremy. “50 The Fault in Our Stars Quotes With Page Numbers.” Ageless Investing, 14 Apr. 2025, agelessinvesting.com/the-fault-in-our-stars-quotes/. Accessed [Date You Accessed].
Cite This Page (APA):
Mortis, J. (2025, April 14). 50 The Fault in Our Stars quotes with page numbers. Ageless Investing. Retrieved [Date You Accessed], from https://agelessinvesting.com/the-fault-in-our-stars-quotes/
Jeremy Mortis, founder of Ageless Investing, applies a rigorous analytical approach (the SPARK framework) to distill timeless wisdom and contextualized quotes from classic literature, saving you time while deepening understanding. Learn more about Jeremy’s unique background and methodology on his author bio page.