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A review by icequeen37
Greška u našim zvijezdama by John Green
5.0
While Hazel fell in love ''the way you fall asleep, slowly, and then all at once,'' I fell in love immediately and all at once. This is, by far, the best book I've read in a long long time. Yeah, I've read some good books. Some greats books, even some excellent books. But this? It is a masterpiece that surpasses time and age. So far, I've read only one book by John Green. I loved it, but I loved it mostly for his wonderful writing, while the topic was so-so. Here, I adored it all. It may seem how one cannot really go wrong with such a strong theme as teenagers dying from cancer, but that's simply not true. This book could've been a cliche, really. But it's not. The simplicity of the language and the depth of meaning make it wonderful. We know from page one the story can only end badly, in the death of our main characters. What I didn't see was Augustus dying before Hazel. Tricky, John Green. Very tricky. And sneaky. It made my cry for the last couple of chapters. Everything that is described, it is done so in such a simple yet profound manner, you can feel the joy and the pain of everyone involved. You can feel Hazel's happiness in everything involving their trip to Amsterdam, her tenderness toward Augustus when he smiles, and Augustus's devotion toward Hazel when he so much as listens to her speak. Then there's the humor, oh the humor... It's excellent, thought-provoking and just brilliant. This book stays with you the way all great writing does - you want to read it again and again, at times you want to burn it to hell because it made you blubber and question everything, but really you just want to re-live it all over again. I'll share some favorite quotes now and leave myself in silence for a while after this unique experience.
“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.”
“I believe the universe wants to be noticed. I think the universe is improbably biased toward consciousness, that it rewards intelligence in part because the universe enjoys its elegance being observed. And who am I, living in the middle of history, to tell the universe that it-or my observation of it—is temporary?”
“My name is Hazel. Augustus Waters was the great star-crossed love of my life.”
“There are infinite numbers between 0 and 1. There’s .1 and .12 and .112 and an infinite collection of others. Of course, there is a bigger infinite set of numbers between 0 and 2, or between 0 and a million. Some infinities are bigger than other infinities. A writer we used to like taught us that. There are days, many of them when I resent the size of my unbounded set. I want more numbers than I’m likely to get, and God, I want more numbers for Augustus Waters than he got. But, Gus, my love, I cannot tell you how thankful I am for our little infinity. I wouldn’t trade it for the world. You gave me a forever within the numbered days, and I’m grateful.”
“But it is the nature of stars to cross, and never was Shakespeare more wrong than when he has Cassius note, ‘The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars / But in ourselves.”
“Without pain, how could we know joy?′ This is an old argument in the field of thinking about suffering and its stupidity and lack of sophistication could be plumbed for centuries but suffice it to say that the existence of broccoli does not, in any way, affect the taste of chocolate.”
“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.”
“I almost felt like he was there in my room with me, but in a way, it was better, like I was not in my room and he was not in his, but instead we were together in some invisible and tenuous third space.”
“I’m a grenade,” I said again. “I just want to stay away from people and read books and think.”
“There will come a time when all of us are dead. All of us. There will come a time when there are no human beings remaining to remember that anyone ever existed or that our species ever did anything. There will be no one left to remember Aristotle or Cleopatra, let alone you. Everything that we did and built and wrote and thought and discovered will be forgotten and all of this will have been for naught.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t mind, Hazel Grace. It would be a privilege to have my heart broken by you.”
“You have a choice in this world, I believe, about how to tell sad stories, and we made the funny choice.”
“Our fearlessness shall be our secret weapon.”
“All your attempts to save yourself from me will fail.”
“I will not tell you our love story, because—like all real love stories—it will die with us, as it should.”
“You gave me a forever within the numbered days, and I’m grateful.”
“Only now that I loved a grenade did I understand the foolishness of trying to save others from my own impending fragmentation: I couldn’t unlove Augustus Waters. And I didn’t want to.”
“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.”
“I believe the universe wants to be noticed. I think the universe is improbably biased toward consciousness, that it rewards intelligence in part because the universe enjoys its elegance being observed. And who am I, living in the middle of history, to tell the universe that it-or my observation of it—is temporary?”
“My name is Hazel. Augustus Waters was the great star-crossed love of my life.”
“There are infinite numbers between 0 and 1. There’s .1 and .12 and .112 and an infinite collection of others. Of course, there is a bigger infinite set of numbers between 0 and 2, or between 0 and a million. Some infinities are bigger than other infinities. A writer we used to like taught us that. There are days, many of them when I resent the size of my unbounded set. I want more numbers than I’m likely to get, and God, I want more numbers for Augustus Waters than he got. But, Gus, my love, I cannot tell you how thankful I am for our little infinity. I wouldn’t trade it for the world. You gave me a forever within the numbered days, and I’m grateful.”
“But it is the nature of stars to cross, and never was Shakespeare more wrong than when he has Cassius note, ‘The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars / But in ourselves.”
“Without pain, how could we know joy?′ This is an old argument in the field of thinking about suffering and its stupidity and lack of sophistication could be plumbed for centuries but suffice it to say that the existence of broccoli does not, in any way, affect the taste of chocolate.”
“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.”
“I almost felt like he was there in my room with me, but in a way, it was better, like I was not in my room and he was not in his, but instead we were together in some invisible and tenuous third space.”
“I’m a grenade,” I said again. “I just want to stay away from people and read books and think.”
“There will come a time when all of us are dead. All of us. There will come a time when there are no human beings remaining to remember that anyone ever existed or that our species ever did anything. There will be no one left to remember Aristotle or Cleopatra, let alone you. Everything that we did and built and wrote and thought and discovered will be forgotten and all of this will have been for naught.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t mind, Hazel Grace. It would be a privilege to have my heart broken by you.”
“You have a choice in this world, I believe, about how to tell sad stories, and we made the funny choice.”
“Our fearlessness shall be our secret weapon.”
“All your attempts to save yourself from me will fail.”
“I will not tell you our love story, because—like all real love stories—it will die with us, as it should.”
“You gave me a forever within the numbered days, and I’m grateful.”
“Only now that I loved a grenade did I understand the foolishness of trying to save others from my own impending fragmentation: I couldn’t unlove Augustus Waters. And I didn’t want to.”