Summer Reading Blog #1: The Fault In Our Stars

Pages: 1-313 (End)
Prompt: Pick three of your favorite quotes from the book, and reflect on them.

     I feel like I am the last person to read this book in our class, but I'm so glad that I ended up reading it! It's one of those books I could read multiple times, and never get tired of reading it because it's SO amazing, perfect, sad, detailed, compelling, smart, edgy, hilarious, just in every way possible perfect! It includes a ton of quotes also, so I'm going to be sharing three of my favorites, and reflecting on them!

1. (A very popular one) "It's a metaphor, see: You put the killing thing right between your teeth, but you don't give it the power to do it's killing. A metaphor."

I love this quote. That's like carrying around a loaded gun everywhere you go, but never shoot anyone or anything with it. I love this. I wish people would instead of using bad things to hurt themselves or others, or society in general, that they would all just use those things as metaphors, so the World would be a better place. It's scary to think that people are actually doing themselves so much harm by smoking a cigarette, when so many people are smoking cigarettes today. Obviously, if you haven't read the book, you wouldn't know what Augustus (the character that says this) means by what he is saying. Well, he is talking about a cigarette. How he puts the cigarette in his mouth, but never lights it, never smokes it, never lets it do any harm. He almost is teasing it, like saying, "Ha, look, you can't do anything to me! You're right there, and are almost hurting me so badly, but I'm not going to let you do that." If every situation was like that, where people were the bigger person, and didn't give bad things the satisfaction of ruining their lives, or someone else's, then no one would ever be able to harm the World or the people in it. I love the idea of this, if everything could just work out, if bad things could just be used as metaphors, and our society could become a better, smarter generation of people, but it's not realistic. Now, I know that, that is taking this quote to a whole, new level, and this quote was most likely not supposed to interpreted exactly like this, but that's just how I see it.

2. "The World is not a Wish Granting Factory."

I love this quote as well. I think that a lot of people in society think that everything should go their way. That nothing bad should happen to them, and that if something doesn't go their way, then it's the end of the World, and life is unfair, and that shouldn't have happened to them. Though, that's not what life is about. Life is about coming across obstacles, and challenges, and tests, and how you choose to overcome the obstacle, can say a lot about you, but, the obstacle was not put there to make you weaker, but to build you up and make you stronger. The World was not created for everything to go perfectly, it was created so that people could go though life, with challenges, and hard ships, so they could learn to overcome, and become stronger! The World was not made so people could have whatever they wanted when ever they wanted it. It wasn't created so people could tell it what they wanted, and the World could just magically make that happen, and the sooner people realize this, the better! I can't stand it when people complain about how hard their lives are (unless they are unbearably bad) because everybody's lives are hard in some way or another, and complaining about it, doesn't fix anything. Some people might not have the worst life, and others may have one heck of a tough life, but you better realize that you're not the only one struggling! I can't stand when people say, "Oh my gosh, my mom yelled at me for getting a C, she's so mean, I have the WORST Mom!" Or, "I have to get up at 5:30 for soccer practice, my life stinks!" Like, stop complaining, some people don't have homes, or food! Sorry, if you don't have the perfect life, and saying I wish this and I wish that, is not going to change anything! The World is not a wish granting factory!

3. "My thoughts are stars I cannot fathom into constellations."

I totally, and completely, honestly understand this quote! Augustus Waters is the one who says it, and I understand this feeling, and these thoughts. When you're so overwhelmed with ideas, and questions, and thoughts, and answers, and solutions, and problems, all in your head, it's hard to form them into one coherent thought, idea, sentence, paragraph, story. You can't connect them together, you can't bring yourself to think straight, everything is just kind of jumbled, and you can't straighten everything out in your mind. When I'm really stressed out with an abundance of school, and dance, and housework, and after school activities, and memorizing this, and remembering this, and remembering what I need for school the next day, or even simply remembering to bring my flute to school on band days. When I have test questions to think about, and homework assignments to remember, and everything else, it's hard to from everything into one coherent thought. I can't think straight, and end up forgetting something or other, but I just can't bring myself to be able have it all figured out. Everything it just a big jumble of words and phrases, that I just can't get straight, and I can completely and totally relate to this quote, and I guess in some way or another, connect to the other quotes I talked about as well.

So, those were three of my favorite quotes from "The Fault In Our Stars" By: John Green, and I hope what I said about each quote, can come across pretty clearly, or at least understandable!