If you were to go, and hopefully someday you will, you would see a lot of paintings of dead people. You'd see Jesus on the cross, and you'd see a dude get stabbed in the neck, and you'd see people dying at sea and in battle and a parade of martyrs. But Not. One. Single. Cancer. Kid. Nobody biting it from the plague or smallpox or yellow fever or whatever, because there is no glory in illness. There is no meaning to it. There is no honor in dying of.
Interpretation
This quote reflects on how society often glorifies certain types of death while disregarding the suffering from illness, suggesting a lack of meaning in death caused by disease.
In this quote, John Green highlights the stark contrast between the glorified deaths depicted in art and the often overlooked deaths from illness. He argues that society tends to romanticize certain deaths, such as those of martyrs, while ignoring the painful realities of dying from diseases like cancer or plague, implying that these deaths, devoid of heroism and dignity, lack societal recognition and meaning.
In practice
This quote could be used in a discussion about the representation of death in art and culture.
Always' was a promise! How can you just break the promise?" "Sometimes people don't always understand the promises they're making when they make them," I said. Isaac shot me a look. "Right, of course. But you keep the promise anyway. That's what love is. Love is keeping the promise anyway. Don't you believe in true love?" I didn't answer. I didn't have an answer. But I thought that if true love did exist, that was a pretty good definition of it.
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 find it really offensive when people say that the emotional experiences of teenagers are less real or less important than those of adults. I am an adult, and I used to be a teenager, and so I can tell you with some authority that my feelings then were as real as my feelings are now.
I don't think pandemics make us afraid of death, I think they make us afraid of oblivion. They force us to grapple with the futility of effort. Also they make us barf which isn't fun either... Wash your hands, cover your coughs, and find a way to hold in balance the futility of effort with the necessity to struggle.
So often we try to make other people feel better by minimizing their pain, by telling them that it will get better (which it will) or that there are worse things in the world (which there are). But that's not what I actually needed. What I actually needed was for someone to tell me that it hurt because it mattered. I have found this very useful to think about over the years, and I find that it is a lot easier and more bearable to be sad when you aren't constantly berating yourself for being sad.
We kiss. Her hands are freezing on my face, and she tastes like coffee and the smell of the onion is still stuck in my nose, and my lips are all dry from the endless winter. And it's awesome.
The unexpected has happened so continually in my life that it has ceased to deserve the name.
Old age is like a plane flying through a storm. Once you're aboard, there's nothing you can do.
It was so much fun to have the freedom to wander America, with no assignments. For 25 or 30 years I never had an assignment. These were all stories I wanted to do myself.
Time is the coin of life. Only you can determine how it will be spent.
Sometimes...it's better for a man just to walk away. But if you can't walk away? I guess that's when it's tough.
Sometimes I would almost rather have people take away years of my life than take away a moment.
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