Aura Branscome

“According to the conventions of the genre, Augustus Waters kept his sense of humor till the end, did not for a moment waiver in his courage, and his spirit soared like an indomitable eagle until the world itself could not contain his joyous soul.

But this is the truth, a pitiful boy who desperately wanted not to be pitiful, screaming and crying, poisoned by an infected G-tube that kept him alive, but not alive enough.

I wiped his chin and grabbed his face in my hands and knelt down close to him so that I could see his eyes, which still lived. 'I'm sorry. I wish it was like that movie, with the Persians and the Spartans.'

'Me too,' he said.

'But it isn't,' I said.

'I know,' he said.

'There are no bad guys.'

'Yeah.'

'Even cancer isn't a bad guy really: Cancer just wants to be alive.”
― John Green, The Fault in Our Stars

“How do you get so empty? he wondered. Who takes it out of you?”
― Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

“A man has no religion who has not slowly and painfully gathered one together, adding to it, shaping it; and one's religion is never complete and final, it seems, but must always be undergoing modification.”
― D.H. Lawrence

“If you're thinking of calling on that Mrs. Pentstemmon, you can save yourself the trouble. The old biddy's dead."
"Dead?" said Sophie. She had a silly impulse to add, But she was alive an hour ago! And she stopped herself, because death is like that: people are alive until they die.”
― Diana Wynne Jones, Howl’s Moving Castle