John Green Quote
Listen, kid. This is what happens: Somebody-girl usually-got a free spirit, doesn't get on too good with her parents. These kids, they're like tied-down helium balloons. They strain against the string and strain against it, and then something happens, and that string gets cut, and they just fly away. And maybe you never see the balloon again. It lands in Canada or somethin', gets work at a restaurant, and before the balloon even notices, it's been pouring coffee in that same dinner to the same sad bastards for thirty years. Or maybe three or four years from now or three or four days from now, the prevailing winds take the balloon back home, because it needs money, or it sobered up, or it misses its kid brother. But listen, kid, that string gets cut all the time. Yeah, bu-I'm not finished, kid. The thing about these balloons is that there are so goddamned many of them. The sky is choked full of them, rubbing up against one another as they float to here or from there, and every one of those damned balloons ends up on my desk, one way or another, and after awhile a man can get discouraged. Everywhere the balloons, and each of them with a mother and father, or God forbid both, and after a while, you can't even see'em individually. You look up at all the balloons in the sky and you can see all of the balloons, but you cannot see any one balloon.
Listen, kid. This is what happens: Somebody-girl usually-got a free spirit, doesn't get on too good with her parents. These kids, they're like tied-down helium balloons. They strain against the string and strain against it, and then something happens, and that string gets cut, and they just fly away. And maybe you never see the balloon again. It lands in Canada or somethin', gets work at a restaurant, and before the balloon even notices, it's been pouring coffee in that same dinner to the same sad bastards for thirty years. Or maybe three or four years from now or three or four days from now, the prevailing winds take the balloon back home, because it needs money, or it sobered up, or it misses its kid brother. But listen, kid, that string gets cut all the time. Yeah, bu-I'm not finished, kid. The thing about these balloons is that there are so goddamned many of them. The sky is choked full of them, rubbing up against one another as they float to here or from there, and every one of those damned balloons ends up on my desk, one way or another, and after awhile a man can get discouraged. Everywhere the balloons, and each of them with a mother and father, or God forbid both, and after a while, you can't even see'em individually. You look up at all the balloons in the sky and you can see all of the balloons, but you cannot see any one balloon.
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About John Green
Born in Indianapolis, Indiana, Green was raised in Orlando, Florida, before attending boarding school outside of Birmingham, Alabama. He attended Kenyon College, graduating with a double major in English and religious studies in 2000. Green then spent six months as a student chaplain at a children's hospital. He reconsidered his path and began working at Booklist in Chicago while writing his first novel. His debut novel Looking for Alaska (2005) was awarded the 2006 Michael L. Printz Award. While living in New York City, Green published his second novel, An Abundance of Katherines (2006). Starting on January 1, 2007, John and his brother Hank launched the Vlogbrothers YouTube channel, a series of vlogs submitted to one another on alternating weekdays; the videos spawned an active online-based community called Nerdfighteria and an annual telethon-style fundraiser called Project for Awesome, both of which have persisted and grown over time.
John moved back to Indianapolis in 2007, and published three novels over the next three years: Let It Snow: Three Holiday Romances (2008, with Maureen Johnson and Lauren Myracle); his third solo novel, Paper Towns (2008); and Will Grayson, Will Grayson (2010, with David Levithan). From 2010 to 2013, John and Hank launched several online video projects, including VidCon, an annual conference for the online video community, and Crash Course (2011–present), a wide-ranging educational channel. Green's 2012 novel, The Fault in Our Stars, and the 2014 film adaptation were massive commercial and critical successes, leading to several other film and television adaptations of his work. He was included in Time magazine's 2014 list of the 100 most influential people in the world.
Green's subsequent projects, his novel Turtles All the Way Down (2017) and The Anthropocene Reviewed (2018–2021), dealt more directly with his anxiety and obsessive–compulsive disorder. The Anthropocene Reviewed began as a podcast in January 2018, with Green reviewing different facets of the Anthropocene on a five-star scale. He adapted the podcast into his first nonfiction book in 2021. Since the mid-2010s, John Green has been a prominent advocate for global health causes: he is a trustee for Partners In Health (PIH), supporting their goal of reducing maternal mortality in Sierra Leone, and has worked with PIH and a number of organizations in fighting tuberculosis worldwide. Green's second nonfiction book, Everything Is Tuberculosis, was released in March 2025.