LIterary birthday - John Green, 24 August 1977

Happy Birthday, John Green, born 24 August 1977

12 John Green Quotes

1. I really think that reading is just as important as writing when you’re trying to be a writer. Because it’s the only apprenticeship we have. It’s the only way of learning how to write a story.
2. I’m tired of adults telling teenagers that they aren’t smart, that they can’t read critically, that they aren’t thoughtful.
3. Teenagers have more intense reading experiences because they’ve had fewer of them. It’s like the first time you fall in love. You have a connection to that first person you fell in love with because it was so intense and unprecedented.
4. Read a lot. Read broadly… Tell stories to your friends, and pay attention to when they get bored… Write a lot.
5. When you’re writing a novel, you spend four years sitting in your basement and a year waiting for the book to come out and then you get the feedback. When you do work online, the moment you’re finished making it, people start responding to it which is really fun and allows for a kind of community development you just can’t have in novels.
6. The funny thing about writing is that whether you’re doing it well or you’re doing it poorly, it looks the exact same. That is actually one of the main ways that writing is different from ballet dancing.
7. Teenage readers also have a different relationship with the authors whose work they value than adult readers do. I loved Toni Morrison, but I don’t have any desire to follow her on Twitter. I just want to read her books.
8. It is very sad to me that some people are so intent on leaving their mark on the world that they don’t care if that mark is a scar.
9. You can’t not like ‘The Great Gatsby.’ It’s got the best sentences in, like, ever.
10. Different authors write different ways, have different relationships with their audiences, and those are all legitimate.
11. My responsibility is to try to tell true stories. To me a true story is always hopeful, but never simply, uncomplicatedly happy.
12. I don’t think we should see the world of books as fundamentally separate from the world of the Internet. Yes, the Internet contains a lot of videos of squirrels riding skateboards, but it can also be a place that facilitates big conversations about books.

Green is an American writer of young adult fiction and a YouTube vlogger and educator. His novels include Looking for Alaska and The Fault in Our Stars.

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