John Green
John Green
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionAuthor
Date of Birth24 August 1977
CountryUnited States of America
want too-much way
The universe is biased toward consciousness because the universe wants to be noticed. It's a way into existential hope that doesn't have too much cliché wrapped around it.
school thinking parent
I think when you're 16, if you have good parents, they generally just fade in the background. I had great parents, and because they were great, I thought very little about them in high school.
father character interesting
Becoming a father made me much more interested in the parent character in my novels. I've never found parents that interesting.
jobs people everyday
One of the jobs of a writer is to add nuance and ambiguity to that straight line that people often draw to very specific kinds of heroism. Most of us don't get to be Snooki. For most of us heroism has to be in our everyday lives.
stars hero journey
If we restructure things to see that the hero's journey is a degree in astrophysics rather than a journey to star in a reality show, that's a better world.
people literature heroic
All good American literature is always interested in people who are ambiguously heroic, like Gatsby.
religious kids thinking
I don't think ministering requires a religious context. The number one thing is that every parent is extremely worried about their kid. Of course, when a chaplain shows up, that can exacerbate this worry rather than calm it.
religious thinking people
I think people who are religious are more likely to want one around, but it's a very secular position.
thinking challenges vision
The challenge is the same whether or not I'm collaborating: to empathize with your reader and to tell a story that will matter to him or her. But the mechanics of going about that challenge change when you're collaborating, because you have someone to help refine your thinking and expand your vision of what might happen.
ideas people trying
The ideas of directing attention outward, trying to imagine other people complexly, trying not to see myself as the center of the universe - these concepts have become important to me, and I hope they're at work in my life on a minute-by-minute basis.
real people robots
I don't see a future where we're all taught by robots. The real life, physical experience of being in a classroom and having conversations with knowledgeable people is immeasurably valuable and irreplaceable.
internet available censored
The internet is necessarily public. It can be filtered-public or censored-public, but it necessarily has to be open and available.
being-yourself teenager lying
Don't lie to anyone, but particularly don't lie to millennials. They just know. They can smell it. Be yourself: if you're old, be old. If you don't know anything about pop culture, don't pretend to know anything about pop culture. When you credit teenagers with intelligence and emotional sophistication, they respond intelligently and with emotional sophistication.
brain
It's bad for your brain not to unplug.