really. I could write this whole blog post thing solely through quotes from THIS SONG WILL SAVE YOUR LIFE by Leila Sales.
this book did not make me cry and it did have a somewhat (now) stereotypical 'drawn to suicide' main character. but, and this is a huge but-- this novel is not about suicide. like all my other favourite books, this wonderful wonderful book is about life. it is the story of Elise. Elise has a life of a thousands teenagers today. the whole novel is so wonderfully awkward and so real. Many quotes i loved and related to (extracted from goodreads) are pasted down below.
"Sometimes people think they know you. They know a few facts about you, and they piece you together in a way that makes sense to them. And if you don't know yourself very well, you might even believe that they are right. But the truth is, that isn't you. That isn't you at all.”
“I had this feeling suddenly. I get this feeling a lot, but I don’t know if there’s one word for it. It’s not nervous or sad or even lonely. It’s all of that, and then a bit more. The feeling is I don’t belong here. I don’t know how I got here, and I don’t know how long I can stay before everyone else realizes that I am an impostor. I am a fraud. I’ve gotten this feeling nearly everywhere I have ever been in my life. There’s nothing you can do about it except drink some water and hope that it subsides. Or you can leave.”
“I didn’t know. I feel sometimes like…there are all these rules. Just to be a person. You know? You’re supposed to carry a shoulder bag, not a backpack. You’re supposed to wear headbands, or you’re not supposed to wear headbands. It’s okay to describe yourself as likeable, but it’s not okay to describe yourself as eloquent. You can sit in the front of the school bus, but you can’t sit in the middle. You’re not supposed to be with a boy, even when he wants you to. I didn’t know that. There are so many rules, and they don’t make any sense, and I just can’t learn them all”
“Tonight the Internet seemed filled with versions of me, like a fun house filled with mirrors. Some of them made me look prettier, and some of them made me look uglier, and some of them chopped me right in half, but none of them were right.”
“Throughout it all, you are still, always, you: beautiful and bruised, known and unknowable.”
and i now quote, “That's the problem with life. You never get enough time to stare at your ceiling and try to figure out what's going on.”
I come with a few ramblings and never ending thoughts and many quotes. I am one of the many, many teenagers on this planet we call earth. I am also one of the many teenagers who has read 'The Fault in our Stars' by John Green. The master of the universe. No, I kid. Just the brilliant author who captures unfathomable emotions and expresses them with his pen. His sword. In hope to not come across as a another shallow girl stuffing her blog with as many complex words as possible, I shall stop.
The Fault in our Stars is one of my special books. I do not have 'favourite' books, I have 'special' books.
Favourite (adj) by definition is, "preferred to all others of the same kind". Now ask any avid reader, are books all the same? If you are contemplating an answer other than no, .... . Please go read a book.
Continuing, my 'special' books are those which have touched me in a way that is indescribable. Books which provoke unfathomable emotions and thoughts. Books which really let me dig deeper into this life we call 'life' and into myself.
Reading The Fault in our Stars again (I feel unjust if I simply call it 'book'), I come across some of my favourite quotes.
If you have not read or completed reading The Fault in our Stars, I advise to stop reading this blog now and get on to reading only one of the greatest books for all teens. Now these quotes below are in no particular order. Continue.
“Sometimes, you read a book and it fills you with this weird evangelical zeal, and you become convinced that the shattered world will never be put back together unless and until all living humans read the book. And then there are books like An Imperial Affliction, which you can't tell people about, books so special and rare and yours that advertising your affection feels like betrayal” ”
“I'm in love with you," he said quietly.
"Augustus," I said.
"I am," he said. He was staring at me, and I could see the corners of his eyes crinkling. "I'm in love with you, and I'm not in the business of denying myself the simple pleasure of saying true things. 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.”
“The pleasure of remembering had been taken from me, because there was no longer anyone to remember with. It felt like losing your co-rememberer meant losing the memory itself, as if the things we'd done were less real and important than they had been hours before.”
These are my three extracts that I want to share and bring to attention. I get chills and heartache when I read these extracts. To everyone who has read this book, I hope you get them too. How glorious this pain and emotion from "merely" a book can feel. And how I wish I had a relationship like Hazel and Augustus do. Oh the problems of a hopeless romantic..
Here is a song by Stereophonics that I think captures the emotions from The Fault in our Stars. Keep in mind not the video, the s o n g. Well I don't know, I just really like this song. It might have no connection or all the connection. But it is a good song.
