John Green Quotes

Everything is too far away in the past, or mysteriously too close.

Nothing is as far away as one minute ago.

People have reflected on the quality of time ever since they've been writing. I suppose I have thought about and written about the question of living in the present - but it only lasts for an instant, and then everything becomes the past. The future, you know nothing about, except for some anticipations you have.

I only remember the future.

When you are in the future, the past looks different.

Every true history must force us to remember that the past was once as real as the present and as uncertain as the future.

When the uncertain future becomes the past, the past in turn becomes uncertain.

Odd that the future should be so difficult to bring into focus when the past, uninvited, offered itself up so easily for inspection.

The mind exists in time, in fact the mind is time; it exists in the past and the future. And remember, time consists of only two tenses, the past and the future. The present is not part of time, the present is part of eternity.

I haven't done a marathon for a long time. So we'll see. I will need good luck.

The past is an old armchair in the attic, the present an ominous ticking sound, and the future is anybody's guess.

Our faith in the present dies out long before our faith in the future.

The future is, of course, imaginary - an unreal place that I create from my expectations, which are made from my remembered experiences, especially repeated experiences.

Yesterday's just a memory, tomorrow is never what it's supposed to be.

Present, n. That part of eternity dividing the domain of disappointment from the realm of hope.

A strange thing is memory, and hope; one looks backward, and the other forward; one is of today, the other of tomorrow. Memory is history recorded in our brain, memory is a painter, it paints pictures of the past and of the day.

Old is always fifteen years from now.

I don't think the human mind can comprehend the past and the future. They are both just illusions that can manipulate you into thinking theres some kind of change.

The past is really almost as much a work of the imagination as the future.

Not only is the past of a person with no memory inaccessible; his ability to think about the future is imperilled. Time travel, then, is ultimately - and paradoxically - an exercise in remembering. And without that capacity it simply cannot exist.

Strange, I feel as if up to now I had written no more than a few notes.

But what is the past? Could it be, the firmness of the past is just illusion? Could the past be a kaleidoscope, a pattern of images that shift with each disturbance of a sudden breeze, a laugh, a thought? And if the shift is everywhere, how would we know?

Because everything up to now is a story and everything after now is a story.

We are always looking into the future, but we see only the past.

The future is foretold from the past and the future is only possible because of the past. Without past and future, the present is partial. All time is eternally present and so all time is ours. There is no sense in forgetting and every sense in dreaming. Thus the present is made rich.