10 Quotes from ‘The Fault In Our Stars’ That Will Break Your Heart

There’s something about seriously sad movies that just drives a dagger of love and passion into our souls. Especially if they’re adapted from a best-selling book, as is “The Fault in Our Stars.” The words John Green wrote left an indelible mark on every teenager — and most adults — who’ve read them.

In my review, I wrote: “‘The Fault In Our Stars’ doesn’t shy away from the inevitable harshness of life with cancer and never lets us forget that it’s possible to fall madly, deeply in love, even when that person you love is dying. As Hazel’s favorite book notes, ‘Pain demands to be felt,’ and you will feel pain while watching ‘The Fault In Our Stars.’ I guess that’s not a bad message to offer both kids and grownups. That you can feel pain and somehow find a way to live with it. That somehow, it’ll be okay.”

While perhaps not all of our favorite quotes from the book made it into the movie, many of them did, as noted by the wild applause in the theater every time a character said a treasured line. Here are ten quotes from the book that found their way to the big screen, along with where you can find them in the book (U.S. first edition hardback copy).

1. When Patrick asks Gus how he’s feeling: “I’m on a roller coaster that only goes up, my friend.” (chapter 1, page 11)

2. When Gus explains his cigarette metaphor: “It’s a metaphor, see: You put the killing thing right between your teeth, but you don’t give it the power to do its killing.” (chapter 1, page 20)

3. When Hazel and Gus chat about “An Imperial Affliction”: “There is this unwritten contract between author and reader and I think not ending your book kind of violates that contract.” (chapter 5, page 67)

4. The moment “Okay” officially becomes a thing: “Maybe okay will be our always.” “Okay,” I said.” (chapter 5, page 73)

5. When Hazel and Gus taste the stars in Amsterdam: “Do you know what Dom Perignon said after inventing champagne? He called out to his fellow monks, ‘Come quickly: I am tasting the stars.'” (chapter 11, page 163)

6. When Gus tells Hazel he loves her … sigh …: “I’m in love with you, and I know that love is just a shout into the void, and that oblivion is inevitable, and that we’re all doomed and that there will come a day when all our labor has been returned to dust, and I know the sun will swallow the only earth we’ll ever have, and I am in love with you.” (chapter 10, page 153)

7. When Gus tells Hazel his cancer has returned: “The world is not a wish-granting factory.” (chapter 13, page 214)

8. When Hazel reads her eulogy for Gus: “Some infinities are bigger than other infinities. A writer we used to like taught us that. There are days, many of them, when I resent the size of my unbounded set. I want more numbers than I’m likely to get, and God, I want more numbers for Augustus Waters than he got. But, Gus, my love, I cannot tell you how thankful I am for our little infinity. I wouldn’t trade it for the world. You gave me a forever within the numbered days, and I’m grateful.” (chapter 20, page 260)

9. When Isaac reads his eulogy for Gus: “When the scientists of the future show up at my house with robot eyes and they tell me to try them on, I will tell the scientists to screw off, because I do not want to see a world without him.” (chapter 20, page 258)

10. When Gus delivers one last message to Hazel: “You don’t get to choose if you get hurt in this world … but you do have some say in who hurts you.” (chapter 25, page 313)