Quotes

"It's reminding people what friendship should really feel like, which is inconvenient, and annoying, and a bit of a pain in the arse."

~ Alex Day

"In real life, people are rude! People are shit!"

~ Alex Day

"In our hyper-secular world, worship is still inevitable. But it's vital to remember that our gods don't choose us. We choose them."

~ John Green

"I'm being extremely clever up here and there's no one to stand around looking impressed! What's the point in having you all?"

~ The Doctor

"The universe is big, it's vast and complicated and ridiculous. And sometimes, very rarely, impossible things just happen and we call them miracles."

~ The Doctor

"Forever is composed of nows."

~ Emily Dickinson

"Some infinities are bigger than other infinities."

~ Hazel Grace Lancaster

"It makes good times even better when you know they are going to end."

~ Violet

"You can love someone so much, he thought. But you can never love someone as much as miss them."

~ Colin Singleton

"We're invisible. I've never been here with someone else. It's different being invisible with someone."

~ Lindsey Lee Wells

"What a treacherous thing it is to believe that a person is more than a person."

~ Q Jacobsen

This is what I do in the times when I don't know who I am: I look for quotes. Because I am the quotes and the quotes are me. "I'm not a complex person, wind me up and watch me go" ~ "Don't Look Back" by Alex Day

A Piece of Brilliance

So I was watching John Green's video about Book Expo and towards the end he said this:

"In our hyper-secular world, worship is still inevitable. But it's vital to remember that our gods don't choose us. We choose them."

~ John Green

And I think that is just amazingly true.  John Green is an amazing author. If you haven't read his books, I encourage you to do so.

DFTBA!

Quote of the Week: from three weeks ago

Okay, this is my first quote to make up for my absence. It's pretty long but it's one of my favorites ever.

"It's a paper town. I mean look at it, Q: look at all those cul-de-sacs, those streets that turn in on themselves, all the houses that were built to fall apart. All those paper people living in their paper houses, burning the future to stay warm. All the paper kids drinking beer some bum bought for them at the paper convenience store. Everyone demented with the mania of owning things. All the things paper-thin and paper-frail. And all the people, too. I've lived here for eighteen years and I have never come across anyone who cares about anything that matters."

~ Paper Towns by John Green

There is something about this quote that makes you look at the world in a different way. The whole book, Paper Towns, has got to be one of my favorites. The characters are people just like me (albeit a bit older) and I don't have to imagine much to understand their feelings and reactions. The book makes you think, and it made me look at the world in a different way. I definitely recommend reading it, if you weren't convinced by the quote.

Seize the Story by Victoria Hanley

If you are a writer, I encourage you to read this book. If not, well...you may still find it interesting, but certainly this is meant directly for "teens who like to write" as it says on the cover.

At first when I looked around for writing advice books I came up with some nice ones. Yeah, they're all nice. I haven't yet read the favorite recommendation of professionals that is Bird by Bird, but I've read Seize the Story by Victoria Hanley; that should count for something, shouldn't it?

On a side note, has anyone else noticed that "seize" is one of the 927 words in the English language that break "i before e except after c?" Because of those words, it is no longer taught in schools.

Continuing with the subject at hand.

So I was reading through all these things talking about writing and publishing, and then I came across Seize the Story. This is not only a helpful guide but also fun to read. Yeah, it goes into grammar and "show don't tell" and things like that, but it's not dry in the least. It's the only writing book I've actually bought besides Writer's Market. It's the only book I dragged along here.

So.

Open up your local library's homepage and search Seize the Story to make sure they have it. If not, get it somewhere else. But to any writers: I do encourage you to read it.

I found this quote...

...and I really want to share it...

So voici, a quote within a picture. I found this on Tumblr.

"Writing: A profession for introverts who want to tell you a story but don't want to make eye contact while telling it."

~John Green

It is extremely true...when you write, you can shut yourself in your house and not see anyone for weeks. Although, that would be downright miserable.

Cups of tea: 26, going on 27

Quote of the Week

I really super extra want to put a quote from TFiOS in here, but I do not want to be spoilerful. So here is a quote that is found in TFiOS but is also found in one of John's YouTube videos. At least, something similar is found there.

*SEMI-SPOILER ALERT BUT SOMETHING LIKE THE QUOTE IS ALSO ON YOUTUBE SO WHATEVER*

"...Never was Shakespeare more wrong than when he had Cassius note, 'The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars / but in ourselves.' Easy enough to say when you're a Roman nobleman (or Shakespeare!) but there is no shortage of fault to be found amid our stars."

-Peter Van Houten in The Fault in Our Stars by John Green

TFiOS was AWESOME. Read it.

Cups of tea: 26

J'ai fini!

So I proclaimed when I finished The Fault in Our Stars, aka the book that has officially topped my favorites list.

I am not going to hand out any spoilers. I want everyone to have the same experience I did when reading this wonderful will-be classic. As John Green himself said he hoped it would, it made me feel ALL OF THE THINGS! I did cry, I laughed more than once, it made me think. It is a beautiful work of fiction that somewhere, sometime, in some other parallel life, is true. Fiction is what we call something that isn't real in our world. But it's real, in a place that we call Imagination. Writers spend a lot of time there.

This book made me cry, but unlike Feed and Mockingjay, it did not make me feel depressed afterwards. I do not know if depression has left me. I do not care. Today it has at least gone on vacation. I am hoping very much that it stays there.

Now I have to, in some point in my life, read An Imperial Affliction, if it exists. I strongly encourage you to read TFiOS. It is the best book I've read in a while. And in the acknowledgements, he thanked Nerdfighters for being awesome! That's me! (And hopefully you as well...)

Cups of tea: 26

What's in that box?

TFiOS is holy, there's no arguing. It must be preserved, perfect and pristine and SIGNED.

But I wanted to read it in school. In English class you get bonus points if you're reading when the teacher comes in, so that was one reason, and another was that I just wanted to damn well read it.

So what did I do?

I took the box in which the holy book came in and took it to school with the book in it. The book survived this long in that box with no damage whatsoever, so it was a pretty good place to put it.

However, by second period, people began asking me, "What's in that box?" One girl (incidentally another Shira) told me to take the book out and toss the box. NO, I responded, I WILL NOT. It is HOLY. One girl actually recognized the book (on account of the fact that her sister is reading it - I want to meet this sister!).

Today, because I was looking at the box in class out of boredom, I discovered the more than slight over-cautiousness of Israeli security. There is a note on the package that commands you to remember if you were expecting a package. If not, well, it only says to talk to the people at the post office. No telling what they would do with it. Possibly try to detonate it.

I also discovered a sticker in French that informs me of the fact that my book has been to France and Germany. This would never have happened if I had been back in America! So even though it's later than I would have procured it in America, it's pretty awesome that the book has so far been through three continents.

Cups of tea: 25?

THE FAULT IN OUR STARS IS HERE AND IT'S HOLY

Exactly what the title says.

And why is it holy?

Because John Green signed it. HE ACTUALLY HAS PHYSICALLY SIGNED IT. His signature is red, if you were wondering. Most of them were green. Some were purple. I got red. I cannot put into words how excited I am for it to BE HERE.

The reason John Green is so amazing is because he is a leader of Nerdfighteria and he's a brilliant author. Yes, John, if every you stumble across this blog post, which it is very likely you won't, I want you to know that you are one of my role models. I want to be able to write as powerfully as you can. Not better than you (because frankly, that would be close to impossible) but I would like to move people with words. As you do. And besides that you're a great YouTuber with views that I mostly agree with. I say mostly because I have not seen all of your videos.

Why am I addressing someone who will likely never read this post? I have no idea. Do not question the bipolar depressed lunatic. Which I am pretty close to being, really, if I'm not that yet.

Cups of tea: 24

To the Post Office!

So just now, we went to the post office to pick up a package which my mom thought was some sheet music for the Magnificat she's playing in a few weeks, but NO! Guess what it was!

It's so exciting!

IT'S THE FAULT IN OUR STARS! BY JOHN GREEN! THE BOOK THAT WAS SUPPOSED TO ARRIVE MID-FEBRUARY! AHHH!

Now I shall open it...