The Fault in Our Stars: Chapters 1-4

I was veritably swimming in a paralyzing and totally clinical depression

So here’s how it went in God’s heart: The six or seven or ten of us walked/wheeled in, grazed at a decrepit selection of cookies and lemonade, sat down in the Circle of Trust, and listened to Patrick recount for the thousandth time his depressingly miserable life story

by exploiting his cancertastic past, slowly working his way toward a master’s degree that will not improve his career prospects, waiting, as we all do, for the sword of Damocles to give him the relief that he escaped lo those many years ago when cancer took both of his nuts but spared what only the most generous soul would call his life.

The only redeeming facet of Support Group was this kid named Isaac, a long-faced, skinny guy with straight blond hair swept over one eye.

I looked away, suddenly conscious of my myriad insufficiencies.

The hour proceeded apace: Fights were recounted, battles won amid wars sure to be lost; hope was clung to; families were both celebrated and denounced; it was agreed that friends just didn’t get it; tears were shed; comfort proffered.

“I fear it like the proverbial blind man who’s afraid of the dark.”

Everything that we did and built and wrote and thought and discovered will be forgotten and all of this”—I gestured encompassingly—“will have been for naught.

I’d learned this from my aforementioned third best friend, Peter Van Houten, the reclusive author of An Imperial Affliction, the book that was as close a thing as I had to a Bible.

I feel so fortunate that an intellectual giant like yourself would deign to operate on me.

“Yes, it’s difficult to ascertain whether he is trying to arouse her or perform a breast exam.”

“It’s a metaphor,” I said, dubious.

“That explains the aura of sophistication.”

Augustus said, “Hazel and I are going to watch V for Vendetta so she can see her filmic doppelganger, mid-two thousands Natalie Portman.

The day of the existentially fraught free throws was coincidentally also my last day of dual leggedness.

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.

(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.)

“Sadly, the bridge is already under insurgent control due to questionable strategizing by my bereft cohort.”

Any attempts to feign normal social interactions were just depressing because it was so glaringly obvious that everyone I spoke to for the rest of my life would feel awkward and self-conscious around me, except maybe kids like Jackie who just didn’t know any better.

it can’t end, then it should at least continue into perpetuity like the adventures of Staff Sergeant Max Mayhem’s platoon.

I enjoyed being coy.

His dismembered body exploded like a geyser and the screen went red.

He nodded, the tears not like tears so much as a quiet metronome—steady, endless.

Pardon the double entendre, my friend, but there’s something a little worrisome in your eyes.”