John Green Quotes

No one feels another's grief, no one understands another's joy. People imagine they can reach one another. In reality they only pass each other by.

I really do wish people could understand me some day.

People who were born alone are defined by feelings like "Who's gonna be with me when I die? Who will ever understand me? Will I always feel so alone? Maybe if I write a book..." and you forget that that doesn't help you so much.

You don't know me, dude," he says, not smiling this time. Gonzo examines his cards, prepping for his next move. "People always think that they know other people, but they don't. Not really. I mean, maybe they know things about them, like they won't eat doughnuts or they like action movies or whatever. But they don't know what their friends do in their rooms alone at night or what happened to them when they were kids or if they feel ****ed up for no reason at all.

Only one man ever understood me, and he didn't understand me.

We're really all alone. We can't ever get inside another person's spirit, and see the world they do. So we are alone in that sense. The only way we have to communicate feelings is through words.

I do, indeed, close my door at times and surrender myself to a book, but only because I can open the door again and see a human face looking at me.

If you feel alienated from people around you, it's because no one tries to understand you.

My greatest fear is to be misunderstood.

I'm so used to being misunderstood.

You don't know what it's like to be me.

I was very shy and socially awkward.

I think, for a long time, I didn't have people who understood where I was coming from. They were giving me advice on what would be good for them.

The more specific you are about a very general feeling of loneliness is actually how you connect with people.

If you are misunderstood, I want you to know that I feel the same way.

I am more sensitive than other people. Things that other people would not notice awaken a distinct echo in me, and in such moments of lucidity, when I look at myself, I see that I am alone, all alone, all alone.

When I read books it's to escape. It's so I don't have to talk to people.

Are people drawn to each other because of the stories they carry inside? At the library I couldn’t help but notice which patrons checked out the same books. They appeared to have nothing in common, but who could tell what a person was truly made of? The unknown, the riddle, the deepest truth. I noticed them all: the ones who’d lost their way, the ones who’d lived their lives in ashes, the ones who had to prove themselves, the ones who, like me, had lost the ability to feel.

Reading a good book helps us to feel un-alone.

A writer out of loneliness is trying to communicate like a distant star sending signals. He isn't telling or teaching or ordering. Rather he seeks to establish a relationship of meaning, of feeling, of observing. We are lonesome animals. We spend all life trying to be less lonesome.

And yet I understood the alienation of being around others who couldn't really see you or chose not to. I'd felt the self-loathing that came with being a fraud, protraying an image of what you wished you could be but weren't. I'd lived with the fear that people you loved might turn away from you if they ever got to know the true person hidden inside.

There is nothing to talk about" she said. "I'm just a freak that's all.

Books were safer than other people anyway.

But you people do not understand me, and I am afraid you never will.

A lot of times, people think they're the only ones that feel a certain way.