's 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
"He was gone, and I did not have time to tell him what I had just now realized: that I forgave him, and that she forgave us, and that we had to forgive to survive."
"There were so many of us who would have to live with things done and things left undone that day."
"I am going to take this bucket of water and pour it on the flames of hell, and then I am going to use this torch to burn down the gates of paradise so that people will not love God for want of heaven or fear of hell, but because He is God."
"It's not life or death, the labyrinth. Suffering. Doing wrong and having wrong things happen to you."
"The only way out of the labyrinth of suffering is to forgive."
"We are all going, I thought, and it applies to turtles and turtlenecks, Alaska the girl and Alaska the place, because nothing can last, not even the earth itself.
The best Looking for Alaska quotes on the mysteries of life and the universe
"Thomas Edison's last words were 'It's very beautiful over there.' I don't know where there is, but I believe it's somewhere, and I hope it's beautiful."
"Francois Rabelais. He was a poet. And his last words were 'I go to seek a Great Perhaps.' That's why I'm going. So I don't have to wait until I die to start seeking a Great Perhaps."
"The Buddha said that suffering was caused by desire, we'd learned, and that the cessation of desire meant the cessation of suffering."
"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."
"What is an 'instant' death anyway? How long is an instant? Is it one second? Ten? "
"Nothing is instant. Instant rice takes five minutes, instant pudding an hour. I doubt that an instant of blinding pain feels particularly instantaneous."
"You just use the future to escape the present."
"I just did some calculations and I've been able to determine that you're full of..."
"It's my fox hat."
"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 human nature
"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."
"It's not because I want to make out with her."
"Sometimes you lose a battle. But mischief always wins the war."
"That didn't happen, of course. Things never happened the way I imagined them."
"They love their hair because they're not smart enough to love something more interesting."
"When adults say, 'Teenagers think they are invincible' with that sly, stupid smile on their faces, they don't know how right they are."
"What you must understand about me is that I'm a deeply unhappy person."
"We need never be hopeless, because we can never be irreparably broken."
"We think that we are invincible because we are. We cannot be born, and we cannot die."
"When I look at my room, I see a girl who loves books."
"Have you really read all those books in your room?"
"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.”