The Fault in Our Stars (2012) (edit title/settings)

Ridiculously Simplified Synopsis edit see section history

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Summary edit see section history

Characters edit see section history

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• Hazel Grace Lancaster: Main protagonist and narrator of the book. Smart, funny, sarcastic teenager living with stage IV thyroid cancer which has metastasized to her lungs. She remains positive about her condition, and has earned her GED and is taking classes at a local college. Her favorite book is "An Imperial Affliction."
• Augustus Waters: Handsome and witty 17-year-old boy with one prosthetic leg. He's in remission from osteosarcoma. Hazel meets him at her cancer support group. He was there for his friend Isaac. He is also muscular and has a crooked smile that drives Hazel crazy.
• Isaac: Goes to Support Group with Hazel Lancaster and has eye cancer. Is also best friends with Augustus Waters. Dating Monica. Likes to play video games.
• Mr. Peter Van Houten: The author of Hazel's favorite book 'An Imperial Affliction,' he is seen as some sort of god who understands Hazel and cancer as well as she knows herself dealing with it. Hazel's role model.
• Mrs. Lancaster: Hazel's mother and Hazel's primary caretaker. Makes a big deal of every holiday. Very overprotective. Makes sure Hazel goes to Support Group so she can make friends.
• Mr. Lancaster: Hazel's father who is very emotional, and cries often. He majored in biochemistry in college.
• Kaitlyn: One of the remaining school friends of Hazel's. They have very little in common as Kaitlyn is much more superficial than Hazel, however they continue to meet up to talk about life. Hazel feels inclined to stay friends with her so she has some connection to her old school life. 25-year-old British sophisticate in a sixteen-year-old American body.
• Philip: Hazel's large bedside oxygen tank that she uses each night. It supplies oxygen and breathes for her. She called it Phillip because "she just thought it looked like a Phillip."
• Lidewij Vliegenthart: Peter Van Houten's assistant, and his sole friend. She seems to be his only hope.
• Patrick: Leader of the Cancer Kid Support Group. Survivor of testicular cancer, a subject he keeps bringing up at every single group meeting. He is very proud of his balllessness. Always saying Support Group is in the "Literal heart of Jesus Christ"
• Monica: Isaac's girlfriend. The two are very much in love. Their catchphrase is "always." Strong believers in PDA.
• Bas: Lidewij's boyfriend.
• Bluie: Hazel's blue teddy bear.
• Mr. Waters: Augustus's dad. Very thin for a man his age and has two girls from a previous marriage who are already married and with kids of their own.
• Mrs. Waters: Augustus' mother, sees the positive side of everything, has little meanings sewn into pillows and hanging all over her house.
• Martha: Augustus' half sister. Married and has kids.
• Julie: Augustus' half sister. Also married to a lawyer.
• Anna: Main character in Van Houten's novel, also diagnosed with cancer. Hazel is able to relate to her.
• Dr. Maria: Hazel's refreshingly honest cancer doctor.
• Graham: Isaac's kid brother.
• Derek Wellington: Kaitlyn's boring boyfriend.
• Caroline Mathers: Augustus' ex-girlfriend, who passed away from cancer of the brain.
• Jackie: Innocent and inquisitive child at mall.
• Alison: Hazel's nurse while in the ICU.
• Lida: Irritatingly attractive and healthy cancer survivor from the support group.
• Michael: one of the kids in support group who had and died of leukemia
• Dr. Simons: An oncologist

Quotes edit see section history

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• “I fell in love the way you fall asleep: slowly, and then all at once.”

  Hazel Grace Lancaster

• “My thoughts are stars I can't fathom into constellations.”

  Augustus Waters

• “Because you’re beautiful. I enjoy looking at beautiful people, and I decided a while ago not to deny myself the simpler pleasures of existence.”

  Augustus Waters

• “Some infinities are bigger than other infinities.”

  Hazel Grace Lancaster

• “I’d always thought the world was a wish-granting factory.”

  Augustus Waters

• “We find humor where we can.”

  Augustus Waters

• “I told Augustus the broad outline of my miracle: diagnosed with stage 4 thyroid cancer when I was thirteen. I didn’t tell him that the diagnosis came three months after I got my first period, like, ‘Congratulations, you’re a woman! Now, die.’”

  Hazel Grace Lancaster

• “I think my school friends wanted to help me through my cancer, but they eventually found out that they couldn't. For one thing, there was no through.”

  Hazel Grace Lancaster

• “You have a choice in this world, I believe, about how to tell sad stories, and we made the funny choice.”

  Hazel Grace Lancaster

• “The thing about dead people," he said, and then stopped himself. "The thing is you sound like a bastard if you don't romanticize them, but the truth is...complicated, I guess.”

  Augustus Waters

• “I have been wanting to call you on a nearly minutely basis, but I have been waiting until I could form a coherent thought in re An Imperial Affliction." (He said "in re." He really did. That boy.)”

  Augustus Waters and Hazel Grace Lancaster

• “That's the thing about pain... It demands to be felt.”

  Augustus Waters

• “There will come a time when all of us are dead. All of us. There will come a time when there are no human beings remaining to remember that anyone ever existed or that our species ever did anything. There will be no one left to remember Aristotle or Cleopatra, let alone you. Everything that we did and built and wrote and thought and discovered will be forgotten and all of this will have been for naught. Maybe that time is coming soon and maybe it is millions of years away, but even if we survive the collapse of our sun, we will not survive forever. There was time before organisms experienced consciousness, and there will be time after. And if the inevitability of human oblivion worries you, I encourage you to ignore it. God knows that’s what everyone else does.”

  Hazel Grace Lancaster

• “Sometimes it seems the universe wants to be noticed. That's what I believe. I believe the universe wants to be noticed. I think the universe is improbably biased toward consciousness, that it rewards intelligence in part because the universe enjoys its elegance being observed. And who am I, living in the middle of history, to tell the universe that it-or my observation of it-is temporary?”

  Mr. Lancaster

• “That's why I like you ... You are so busy being yourself you have no idea how utterly unprecedented you are.”

  Augustus Waters

• “Oh, I wouldn't mind, Hazel Grace. It would be a privilege to have my heart broken by you.”

  Augustus Waters

• “The tales of our exploits will survive as long as the human voice itself.”

  Augustus Waters

• “Some tourists think Amsterdam is a city of sin, but in truth it is a city of freedom. And in freedom, most people find sin.”

  Taxi driver

• “"All salvation is temporary," Augustus shot back. "I bought them a minute. Maybe that's the minute that buys them an hour, which is the hour that buys them a year. No one's going to buy them forever, Hazel Grace, but my life bought them a minute. And that's not nothing.'”

  Augustus Waters

• “I was thinking about the word handle, and all the unholdable things that get handled.”

  Hazel Grace Lancaster

• “We're as likely to hurt the universe as we are to help it, and we're not likely to do either.”

  Augustus Waters

• “Sometimes, you read a book and it fills you with this weird evangelical zeal, and you become convinced that the shattered world will never be put back together unless and until all living humans read the book. And then there are books which you can't tell people about, books so special and rare and yours that advertising your affection feels like a betrayal.”

  Hazel Grace Lancaster

• “I am going to read this terrible book with the boring title that does not contain stormtroopers.”

  Augustus Waters

• “A nonhot boy stares at you relentlessly and it is, at best, awkward and, at worst, a form of assault. But a hot boy...well.”

  Hazel Grace Lancaster

• “Sometimes people don't understand the promises they're making when they make them." "Right, of course. But you keep the promise anyway. That's what love is. Love is keeping the promise anyway.”

  Hazel Grace Lancaster and Isaac

• “I don't know what I believe, Hazel. I thought being an adult meant knowing what you believe, but that has not been my experience.”

  Mr. Lancaster

• “Grief does not change you, Hazel. It reveals you.”

  Peter van Houten

• “You don't get to choose if you get hurt in this world, old man, but you do have some say in who hurts you.”

  Augustus Waters

• “I’m like. Like. I’m like a grenade, Mom. I’m a grenade and at some point I’m going to blow up and I would like to minimize the casualties, okay?”

  Hazel Grace Lancaster

• “I just want to stay away from people and read books and think and be with you guys because there’s nothing I can do about hurting you; you’re too invested, so just please let me do that, okay? I'm not depressed. I don t need to get out more. And I can t be a regular teenager, because I'm a grenade.”

  Hazel Grace Lancaster

• “You are not a grenade, not to us. Thinking about you dying makes us sad, Hazel, but you are not a grenade. You are amazing. You can t know, sweetie, because you’ve never had a baby become a brilliant young reader with a side interest in horrible television shows, but the joy you bring us is so much greater than the sadness we feel about your illness.”

  Mr. Lancaster

• “You've gotta pick your battles in this world, Hazel”

  Mrs. Lancaster

• “If you want me to be a teenager, don’t send me to Support Group. Buy me a fake ID so I can go to clubs, drink vodka, and take pot.”

  Hazel Grace Lancaster

• “The contraption was necessary because my lungs sucked at being lungs.”

  Hazel Grace Lancaster

• “I fear oblivion,” he said without a moment’s pause. “I fear it like the proverbial blind man who’s afraid of the dark.”

  Augustus Waters

• “I can be pretty blind to other people’s feelings.”

  Augustus Waters

• “Thank you for explaining that my eye cancer isn’t going to make me deaf. I feel so fortunate that an intellectual giant like yourself would deign to operate on me.”

  Isaac

• “I’m gonna try to get me some eye cancer just so I can make this guy’s acquaintance.”

  Hazel Grace Lancaster

• “Someone should tell Jesus,” I said. “I mean, it’s gotta be dangerous, storing children with cancer in your heart."”

  Hazel Grace Lancaster

• “It’s a metaphor, see: You put the killing thing right between your teeth, but you don’t give it the power to do its killing.””

  Augustus Waters

• “I love it when you talk medical to me.”

  Augustus Waters

• “I want to see you again tonight. But I’m willing to wait all night and much of tomorrow.”

  Augustus Waters

• “I take quite a lot of pride in not knowing what’s cool.”

  Hazel Grace Lancaster

• “You know, like when you look in the mirror and the thing you see is not the thing as it really is.”

  Hazel Grace Lancaster to Kaitlyn

• “But we both know that okay is a very flirty word. Okay is BURSTING with sensuality.”

  Augustus Waters

• “We’re not sentimental people,” Mom added, deadpan. “We d leave you at an orphanage with a note pinned to your pajamas."”

  Mrs. Lancaster

• “What a slut time is. She screws everybody.”

  Hazel Grace Lancaster

• “You realize that trying to keep your distance from me will not lessen my affection for you.”

  Augustus Waters

• “Your child(ren) will be introduced to the ups and downs of human life gently and safely, and may also learn the most important lesson of all: No matter how hard you kick, no matter how high you get, you can’t go all the way around.”

  Hazel Grace Lancaster and Augustus Waters

• “I mean, seriously: How did scrambled eggs get stuck with breakfast exclusivity? You can put bacon on a sandwich without anyone freaking out. But the moment your sandwich has an egg, boom, it’s a breakfast sandwich.”

  Hazel Grace Lancaster

• “The weird thing about houses is that they almost always look like nothing is happening inside of them, even though they contain most of our lives. I wondered if that was sort of the point of architecture.”

  Hazel Grace Lancaster

• “Easy comfort isn’t comforting.”

  Hazel Grace Lancaster

• “It would be awesome to fly in a superfast airplane that could chase the sunrise around the world for a while.”

  Augustus Waters

• “People always get used to beauty, though.”

  Hazel Grace Lancaster

• “Not like a heaven where you ride unicorns, play harps, and live in a mansion made of clouds. But yes. I believe in Something with a capital S. Always have.”

  Augustus Waters

• “Like all sick children,” he answered dispassionately, “you say you don’t want pity, but your very existence depends upon it.”

  Peter Van Houten

• “Our fearlessness shall be our secret weapon.”

  Hazel Grace Lancaster

• “They will robot-laugh at our courageous folly,” he said. “But something in their iron robot hearts will yearn to have lived and died as we did: on the hero’s errand.”

  Augustus Waters

• “The negative image of things blown together and then blown apart.”

  Augustus Waters

• “You’d see Jesus on the cross, and you’d see a dude getting stabbed in the neck, and you’d see people dying at sea and in battle and a parade of martyrs. But Not. One. Single. Cancer. Kid. Nobody biting it from the plague or smallpox or yellow fever or whatever, because there is no glory in illness. There is no meaning to it. T here is no honor in dying of.”

  Augustus Waters

• “I’m on a roller coaster that only goes up,” he said. “And it is my privilege and my responsibility to ride all the way up with you,” I said.”

  Augustus Waters and Hazel Grace Lancaster

• “There is no try,” I said. “There is only do.”

  Hazel Grace Lancaster

• “I used to think it would be fun to live on a cloud.”

  Augustus Waters

• “Ignorance is bliss.”

  Hazel Grace Lancaster

• “Take a picture of this so Isaac can see it when they invent robot eyes.”

  Augustus Waters

• “Ma’am,” Augustus said, nodding toward her, “your daughter’s car has just been deservedly egged by a blind man. Please close the door and go back inside or we’ll be forced to call the police.”

  Augustus Waters

• “Why do you need an adoring public when you’ve got me?”

  Hazel Grace Lancaster

• “This is it. I can’t even not smoke anymore.”

  Augustus Waters

• “I do not believe I have ever met a more physically attractive person who was more acutely aware of his own physical attractiveness.”

  Isaac

• “But, Gus, my love, I cannot tell you how thankful I am for our little infinity. I wouldn’t trade it for the world. You gave me a forever within the numbered days, and I’m grateful.”

  Hazel Grace Lancaster

• “Author's note: This is not so much an author's note as an author's reminder of what was printed in small type a few pages ago: This book is a work of fiction. I made it up. Neither novels or their readers benefit from attempts to divine whether any facts hide inside a story. Such efforts attack the very idea that made-up stories can matter, which is sort of the foundational assumption of our species. I appreciate your cooperation in this matter.”

  John Green

• “The pleasure of remembering had been taken from me, because there was no longer anyone to remember with. It felt like losing your co- rememberer meant losing the memory itself, as if the things we’d done were less real and important than they had been hours before.”

  Hazel Grace Lancaster

• “Thinking you won’t die is yet another side effect of dying.”

  Hazel Grace Lancaster

• “Writing does not resurrect. It buries.”

  Peter Van Houten

• “We’re as likely to hurt the universe as we are to help it, and we’re not likely to do either.”

  Augustus Waters

• “The real heroes anyway aren’t the people doing things; the real heroes are the people NOTICING things, paying attention.”

  Augustus Waters

• “I was a bit of a Victorian lady, fainting-wise.”

  Hazel Grace Lancaster

• “'you don't even know me,' i said. i grabbed the book from the center console. 'how about i call you when i finish this?' 'but you don't even have my phone number,' he said.' i strongly suspect you wrote it in the book.' he broke out into that goofy smile. 'and you say we don't know each other.”

  Hazel and Augustus

• “if we'd put them in a case in the living room, they would have been everyone's flowers. i wanted them to be my flowers.”

  Hazel

• “'You used,' he said, and then took a sharp breath,'to call me Augustus.'”

  Augustus

• “'Do you know what today is?' 'it's not my birthday, is it?' She laughed.'Not just yet. It's July fourteenth, Hazel,' 'Is it your birthday?' 'No...' 'Is it Harry Houdini's birthday?' 'No...' 'I am really tired of guessing.' 'IT IS BASTILLE DAY!'”

  Hazel and her mom

• “Pain demands to be felt.”

  Augustus Waters

• “Love is keeping the promise anyway.”

  Isaac

• “Don't tell me you're one of those people who become their disease.”

  Gus

• “Kaitlyn just happened to be an extremely sophisticated twenty-five-year-old British socialite stuck inside a sixteen-year-old body in Indianapolis. Everyone accepted it.”

  Hazel Grace Lancaster

• “<...>nostalgia is a side effect of dying.”

• “And if the inevitability of human oblivion worries you, I encourage you to ignore it. God knows that's what everyone else does.”

  Hazel Grace Lancaster

• “As he read, I fell in love the way you fall asleep: slowly, and then all at once.”

  Hazel Grace Lancaster

• “You gave me a forever within the numbered days, and I'm grateful.”

  Hazel Grace Lancaster

• “It felt like losing your co-rememberer meant losing the memory itself, as if the things we'd done were less real and important than they had been hours before.”

  Hazel Grace Lancaster

• “"Keep your shit together," I whispered to my lungs.”

  Hazel

Setting & Locations edit see section history

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• Indianapolis, Indiana: The basic setting for the book. Hometown of the characters.
• Amsterdam, Netherlands: Where Peter Van Houten resides.
• Literal Heart of Jesus: The basement of the church where Hazel goes to support group. The support group meets in the spot where Jesus' heart would have been.
• Funky Bones: Sculpted bones in the park Augustus takes Hazel.

Organizations edit see section history

• Support Group: Hazel, Isaac and Augustus all attend a support group for kids with cancer in the basement of a church; specifically the Literal Heart of Jesus. Support Group is where Hazel meets both Isaac and Augustus and where the book begins.

First Sentence edit see section history

Table of Contents edit see section history

Glossary edit see section history

• NEC: No Evidence of Cancer
• BiPAP: Bilevel Positive Airway Pressure is a machine that helps users breathe more easily.
• G-tube: Gastronomy tube. Used to deliver liquid nutrition into the stomachs of patients.
• Hamartia: tragic flaw: a flaw in the character of the protagonist of a literary tragedy that brings about his or her downfall ~ Bing Dictionary
• Cancer Perks: Because of their cancer, the afflicted person tends to get special treatment and gifts that they otherwise would not have gotten if they were healthy. Things like signed baseballs from famous players, discounts off of certain items, and personally meeting a long time hero are examples of cancer perks.
• The Genies: A fictionalized version of the Make a Wish Foundation. Children with cancer who are facing unlikely recovery are often given the opportunity for one 'Wish'.
• Phalanxifor: A fictional medicine to help cancer

Themes & Symbolism edit see section history

• Death: Describe this theme.
• Love
• Existentialism
• Heroes(and why you should never meet them)
• Who am I?

Series & Lists edit see section history

Authors & Contributors edit see section history

1. John Green (Author)

First Edition edit see section history

Awards edit see section history

• Pennsylvania Young Readers' Choice Award (Finalist, 2012)
• Odyssey Award (January 2013)

Classification edit see section history

• Library of Congress: PZ7.G8233 Fau 2012
• Dewey: Add the Dewey Classification.

Notes for Parents edit see section history

Language, sex (not graphic, but present nonetheless), and underage drinking. All that aside, I would absolutely let my children read this - probably as young as a mature 12-13, without worry. Nothing feels gratuitous here, and children will not be reading it for the sex, drugs and language. There is much to be learned about the value of living and relationships. Note: the children/parental relationships here are very strong - an unusual feature in a young adult read!

Subjects edit see section history

• Books › Teens › Health, Mind & Body
• Books › Literature & Fiction › Authors, A-Z › ( G )
• Books › Teens › Social Issues › Being a Teen
• Books › Teens › Social Issues › Dating & Intimacy › Fiction
• Books › Teens › Social Issues › Death
• Books › Teens › Religion & Spirituality
• Books › Teens › Literature & Fiction

Links to Supplemental Material edit see section history

• John Green Books

Movie Connections edit see section history

• The Fault In Our Stars (IMDb): The movie adaptation does not yet have a release date and only has one character casted (Shailene Woodley to play Hazel Grace Lancaster).

More Books Like This edit see section history

Books Cited by This Book edit see section history