Quote 34
According to Maslow, I was stuck on the second level of the pyramid, unable to feel secure in my health and therefore unable to reach for love and respect and art and whatever else, which is, of course, utter horses*** (13.23)
Sometimes philosophers totally don't have it right. Hazel can reach for love if she wants to, even with the cancer eating away at her insides.
Quote 35
"Everything that we did and built and wrote and thought and discovered will be forgotten […] and this will have been for naught […] And if the inevitability of human oblivion worries you, I encourage you to ignore it. God knows that's what everyone else does." (1.64)
This is part of Hazel's diatribe at Support Group that totally wins over Augustus. Because, you know, there's nothing sexier to a seventeen-year-old boy than a girl who can talk about how you're all going to die and be forgotten. Right?
Quote 36
Cancer kids are essentially side effects of the relentless mutation that makes the diversity of life on earth possible. (4.4)
Instead of thinking of herself as an individual, Hazel finds it more comforting to think of herself as part of a big scheme in the universe. How does this affect the way she thinks about her identity?