John Green's Looking for Alaska is a nuanced meditation on grief, trauma, and the disastrous complications arising from failing to (as Green himself puts it) “imagine people complexly.” Told from the perspective of Miles “Pudge” Halter, a teen boy who finds himself falling for (and simultaneously deifying) the self-destructive but captivating Alaska Young, a classmate at his new boarding school.
Looking for Alaska examines the ways in which young men often apply great significance to their romantic interests without ever truly knowing them. When Pudge looks at Alaska, he sees the girl of his dreams—beautiful and smart, with a bit of an edge that makes her all the more interesting. But what Pudge fails to understand about Alaska in his over-idealization of her has far-reaching, irreversible consequences. Green intersperses the youthful voice he crafts for Pudge with moments of pure poetry considering existence, the afterlife, and the massive impact that one soul can have on another.
Looking for Alaska resonates with so many young adults thanks to its unflinching look at the challenges and transitions of teenage life. It underscores the importance of empathy and the impact of coming-of-age experiences on individual growth. Below are 30+ of our favorite quotes from the book.
The best Looking for Alaska quotes on personal growth and change
“The only way out of the labyrinth of suffering is to forgive.”
“Imagining the future is a kind of nostalgia. (…) You just use the future to escape the present.”
“At some point we all look up and realize we are lost in a maze.”
“So we gave up. I’d finally had enough of chasing after a ghost who did not want to be discovered.”
“That which came together will fall apart imperceptibly slowly, and I will forget, but she will forgive my forgetting...”
The best Looking for Alaska quotes on the mysteries of life and the universe
“Francois Rabelais. He was a poet. And his last words were ‘I go to seek a Great Perhaps.’ That's why I'm going.”
“Thomas Edison’s last words were ‘It’s very beautiful over there.’ I believe it’s somewhere, and I hope it’s beautiful.”
“What is an ‘instant’ death anyway? How long is an instant? Is it one second? Ten? … Nothing is instant.”
“Y’all smoke to enjoy it. I smoke to die.”
“I may die young, but at least I’ll die smart.”
The best Looking for Alaska quotes on relationships and longing
“So I walked back to my room and collapsed… thinking that if people were rain, I was drizzle and she was a hurricane.”
“When I look at my room, I see a girl who loves books.”
“I wanted so badly to lie down next to her on the couch… Just sleep together in the most innocent sense of the phrase.”
“It always shocked me when I realized that I wasn’t the only person in the world who thought and felt such strange and awful things.”
“They love their hair because they’re not smart enough to love something more interesting.”
The best Looking for Alaska quotes on mortality and recklessness
“When adults say, ‘Teenagers think they are invincible’… they don’t know how right they are.”
“We think that we are invincible because we are. We cannot be born, and we cannot die.”
“You just use the future to escape the present.”
“What people think about me doesn’t matter, because I don’t matter.”
“But a lot of times, people die how they live.”
The best Looking for Alaska quotes on identity and self-perception
“Sometimes you lose a battle. But mischief always wins the war.”
“Sometimes I don’t get you,’ I said. She didn’t even glance at me. She just smiled… ‘You never get me. That’s the whole point.’”
“I just did some calculations and I’ve been able to determine that you’re full of shit.”
“And that part has to go somewhere, because it cannot be destroyed.”
“I mean, it’s stupid to miss someone you didn’t even get along with. But… it was nice, you know, having someone you could always fight with.”
The best Looking for Alaska quotes on suffering and survival
“When you stopped wishing things wouldn't fall apart, you'd stop suffering when they did.”
“We need never be hopeless, because we can never be irreparably broken.”
“I go to seek a Great Perhaps.”
“Nothing is instant.”
“There are always answers. We just have to be smart enough.”
