It was an indulgence, learning last words. Other people had chocolate; I had dying declarations.
Interpretation
The quote suggests that the speaker finds value and joy in understanding the final thoughts of others, contrasting this with more common indulgences.
In this quote, John Green expresses a unique appreciation for the 'last words' or final declarations of individuals, highlighting a fascination with mortality and the reflections people share before they pass. This contrasts with more typical indulgences, like enjoying chocolate, framing the act of learning about dying declarations as a deep and meaningful pursuit that resonates with the complexities of life and death.
In practice
This quote would fit perfectly in a speech about the significance of legacies left behind.
Always' was a promise! How can you just break the promise?" "Sometimes people don't always understand the promises they're making when they make them," I said. Isaac shot me a look. "Right, of course. But you keep the promise anyway. That's what love is. Love is keeping the promise anyway. Don't you believe in true love?" I didn't answer. I didn't have an answer. But I thought that if true love did exist, that was a pretty good definition of it.
Augustus Waters was the great star-crossed love of my life. Ours was an epic love story, and I won’t be able to get more than a sentence into it without disappearing into a puddle of tears. Gus knew. Gus knows. I will not tell you our love story, because—like all real love stories—it will die with us, as it should.
I find it really offensive when people say that the emotional experiences of teenagers are less real or less important than those of adults. I am an adult, and I used to be a teenager, and so I can tell you with some authority that my feelings then were as real as my feelings are now.
I don't think pandemics make us afraid of death, I think they make us afraid of oblivion. They force us to grapple with the futility of effort. Also they make us barf which isn't fun either... Wash your hands, cover your coughs, and find a way to hold in balance the futility of effort with the necessity to struggle.
So often we try to make other people feel better by minimizing their pain, by telling them that it will get better (which it will) or that there are worse things in the world (which there are). But that's not what I actually needed. What I actually needed was for someone to tell me that it hurt because it mattered. I have found this very useful to think about over the years, and I find that it is a lot easier and more bearable to be sad when you aren't constantly berating yourself for being sad.
We kiss. Her hands are freezing on my face, and she tastes like coffee and the smell of the onion is still stuck in my nose, and my lips are all dry from the endless winter. And it's awesome.
Even though I'm seventeen, I guess I still thought this would always be true - that there would always be that lost-and-found, and not the lost-and-still-lost that I am now trapped inside.
The hurrier I go, the behinder I get.
Hope may be the thing that pulls you forward, may be the thing that keeps you going, but that it's dangerous, that it's painful and risky, that it's making a dare in the world and when has the world ever let us win a dare?
The secret of life', he said, 'is to become very very good at somethin' that's very very 'ard to do.
Life is short, break the rules.
Why should all life be work, when we all can borrow. Let's think only of today, and not worry about tomorrow.
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