A tragedy that falls under young adult fiction, the novel traces the story of Miles “Pudge” Halter as he enrolls in a new school and befriends Alaska Young, Chip “The Colonel” Martin and others. The first half focuses on teenage drama and the latter follows Chip’s desire to ‘seek the Great Perhaps’ and uncover the secret behind Alaska’s unfortunate passing.
What we read after that is how all the characters grew and stretched to cope with the loss. Read some of the most touching Looking for Alaska quotes below.
Looking for Alaska Quotes That Touched the Hearts of Readers
Looking for Alaska Quotes About Alaska Young
#1. “So, I walked back to my room and collapsed on the bottom bunk, thinking that if people were rain, I was drizzle and she was a hurricane.” — Pudge.
#2. “In the dark beside me, she smelled of sweat and sunshine and vanilla,” — Pudge.
#3. “I was gawky and she was gorgeous and I was hopelessly boring and she was endlessly fascinating. So, I walked back to my room and collapsed on the bottom bunk, thinking that if people were rain, I was drizzle and she was a hurricane.” — Pudge.
#4. “When I look at my room, I see a girl who loves books.” — Alaska.
#5. “Someday no one will remember that she ever existed, I wrote in my notebook, and then, or that I did. Because memories fall apart, too. And then you’re left with nothing, left not even with a ghost but with its shadow. In the beginning, she had haunted me, haunted my dreams, but even now, just weeks later, she was slipping away, falling apart in my memory and everyone else’s, dying again.” — John Green.
#6. “I felt the unfairness of it, the inarguable injustice of loving someone who might have loved you back but can’t due to deadness.” — John Green.
#7. “A woman so strong she burns heaven and drenches hell.” — John Green.
#8. “I’ve always liked quiet people: You never know if they’re dancing in a daydream or if they’re carrying the weight of the world.” — John Green.
Looking for Alaska Quotes on Friendship
#9. “But we knew what could be found out, and in finding it out, she had made us closer—the Colonel and Takumi and me, anyway.” — Pudge.
#10. “The five of us walking confidently in a row, I’d never felt cooler. The Great Perhaps was upon us, and we were invincible. The plan may have had faults, but we did not.” — Pudge.
#11. “And if the Colonel thought that calling me his friend would make me stand by him, well, he was right.” — Pudge.
#12. “We are greater than the sum of our parts.” — Pudge.
Looking for Alaska Quotes on Death
#13. “What is an ‘instant’ death anyway? How long is an instant? Is it one second? Ten? The pain of those seconds must have been awful as her heart burst and her lungs collapsed and there was no air and no blood to her brain and only raw panic. What the hell is instant? Nothing is instant. Instant rice takes five minutes, instant pudding an hour. I doubt that an instant of blinding pain feels particularly instantaneous.” — Pudge.
#14. “But a lot of times, people die how they live. And so last words tell me a lot about who people were, and why they became the sort of people biographies get written about. Does that make sense?” — Pudge.
#15. “Y’all smoke to enjoy. I smoke to die.” — Alaska.
#16. “So hard to die. I don’t doubt that it is, but it cannot be much harder than being left behind.” — John Green.
#17. “I may die young, but at least I’ll die smart.” — Alaska. Looking for Alaska Quotes on the Labyrinth
#18. “The only way out of the labyrinth of suffering is to forgive.” — Pudge.
#19. “Imagining the future is a kind of nostalgia. You spend your whole life stuck in the labyrinth, thinking about how you’ll escape it one day, and how awesome it will be, and imagining that future keeps you going, but you never do it. You just use the future to escape the present.” — John Green.
#20. “After all this time, it seems to me like straight and fast is the only way out-but I choose the labyrinth.” — John Green.
#21. “The labyrinth blows, but I choose it.” — John Green.
#22. “I still think that maybe the “afterlife” is just something we made up to ease the pain of loss, to make our time in the labyrinth bearable. Maybe we are just matter, and matter gets recycled.” — John Green.
#23. “If only we could see the endless string of consequences that result from our smallest actions. But we can’t know better until knowing better is useless.” — John Green.
#24. “At some point, we all look up and realize we are lost in a maze.” — John Green.
#25. “And I wrote my way out of the labyrinth.” — John Green. Other Looking for Alaska Quotes
#26. “I never liked writing concluding paragraphs to papers – where you repeat what you’ve already said with phrases like ‘In summation’, and ‘To conclude’.” — John Green.
#27. “God, it’s over. Takumi, you gotta stop stealing other people’s problems and get some of your own.” — John Green.
#28. “I mean, it’s stupid to miss someone you didn’t even get along with. But I don’t know, it was nice, you know, having someone you could always fight with.” — John Green.
#29. “We need never be without hope because we can never be irreparably broken.” — John Green.
#30. “You just use the future to escape the present.” — John Green.
#31. “The snow may be falling in the winter of my discontent, but at least I’ve got sarcastic company.” — John Green.
#32. “I’ve always liked quiet people: You never know if they’re dancing in a daydream or if they’re carrying the weight of the world.” — John Green.
#33. “I’m the motherfucking fox, no one can catch the fox.” — Takumi.
#34. “I’m just scared of ghosts, Pudge. And home is full of them.” — Alaska.
#35. “Because you simply cannot draw these things out forever. At some point, you just pull off the Band-Aid and it hurts, but then it’s over and you’re relieved.” — John Green.
#36. “The way young people speak about one another’s bodies says a great deal about our society. In today’s world, boys are much more likely to objectify girl’s bodies than the other way around. Boys will say amongst themselves that so-and-so has a nice rack, while girls will more likely say that a boy is cute, a term that describes both physical and emotional characteristics. This has the effect of turning girls into mere objects, while boys are seen by girls as whole people.” — John Green.
#37. “I am concussed,” I announced, “entirely sure of my self-diagnosis.” — Pudge.
Conclusion
We take a roller-coaster ride through the whirlwind emotions of Pudge and his friends and follow Alaska Young herself. We follow them with bated breath in their quest for love and the way out of the Labyrinth. It feels like the journey we take every day as we live our lives. I like their answer to forgiveness, do you?
Image source: Looking for Alaska photo from www.tvovermind.com
