Hazel Grace Lancaster
Really? That's disgusting!
Augustus Waters
What?
Hazel Grace Lancaster
What? Do you think that is cool? Or something? You just ruined the whole thing.
Augustus Waters
The whole thing?
Hazel Grace Lancaster
Yes, this whole thing.
Hazel Grace Lancaster
Even though you have freaking cancer, you are willing to give money to corporation for a chance to acquire even more cancer? Let me just assure you that not being able to breathe? SUCKS. Totally disappointing. Totally.
Augustus Waters
They don't kill you unless you light them. And I've never lit one. 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. A metaphor.
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[from trailer]
Augustus Waters
What's your story?
Hazel Grace Lancaster
I was diagnosed when I was 13...
Augustus Waters
No no no, your real story.
Hazel Grace Lancaster
I am quite unextraordinary.
Augustus Waters
I reject that.
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[last lines]
Augustus Waters
[voice over, from his eulogy to Hazel]
Mr. Van Houten. I'm a good person, but a shitty writer. You're a shitty person, but a good writer. I think we'd make a good team. I don't wanna ask you for any favors, but if you have the time - and from what I saw you had plenty - please fix this for me: It's a eulogy for Hazel. She asked me to write one, and I'm trying, but I just... I could use a little flair. See, the thing is... we all wanna be remembered. But Hazel's different. Hazel knows the truth. She didn't want a million admirers, she just wanted one. And she got it. Maybe she wasn't loved widely, but she was loved deeply. And isn't that more than most of us get? When Hazel was sick, I knew I was dying, but I didn't wanna say so. She was in the ICU when I snuck in for ten minutes and I just sat with her before I got caught. Her eyes were closed, her skin pale, but her hands were still her hands, still warm, and her nails were painted this dark blue black color, and... I just held them. And I willed myself to imagine a world without us and what a worthless world that would be. She's so beautiful. You don't get tired of looking at her. You never worry if she's smarter than you, 'cause you know she is. She's funny without ever being mean. I love her. God, I love her, I'm so lucky to love her, Van Houten. You don't get to choose if you get hurt in this world, but you do have a say in who hurts you. And I like my choices. I hope she likes hers. Okay, Hazel Grace?
Hazel Grace Lancaster
Okay.
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Hazel Grace Lancaster
Hello. My name is Hazel Grace Lancaster. And Augustus Waters was the star-crossed love of my life. Ours is an epic love story and I probably won't be able to get more than a sentence out without disappearing into a puddle of tears. Like all real love stories, ours will die with us, as it should. You know, I'd kind of hoped that he'd be the one eulogizing me, because there is really no one else... Yeah, no, um... I'm not gonna talk about our love story, 'cause I can't. So instead I'm gonna talk about math. I'm not a mathematician, but I do know this: There are infinite numbers between zero and one. There's point one, point one two, point one one two, and an infinite collection of others. Of course, there is a bigger set of infinite numbers between zero and two or between zero and a million. Some infinities are simply bigger than other infinities. A writer that we used to like taught us that. You know, I want more numbers than I'm likely to get, and God, do I want more days for Augustus Waters than what he got. But Gus, my love, I can not tell you how thankful I am, for our little infinity. You gave me a forever, within the numbered days. And for that I am... I am eternally grateful. I love you so much.
Augustus Waters
I love you too.
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[from trailer]
Augustus Waters
What's your name?
Hazel Grace Lancaster
Hazel
Augustus Waters
No, your full name
Hazel Grace Lancaster
Hazel Grace Lancaster
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Hazel Grace Lancaster
I fell in love with him the way you fall asleep: Slowly, and then all at once.
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[from trailer]
Isaac
You know, Gus talks about you all the time.
Hazel Grace Lancaster
We're just friends.
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Augustus Waters
I am in love with you. And I know that love is just a shout into the void, and that oblivion is inevitable, and that we're all doomed. And that one day all our labor will be returned to dust. And I know that the sun will swallow the only earth we will ever have. And I am in love with you.
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Augustus Waters
It's all dark to Isaac.
Isaac
Dude, I'm not deaf, I'm just blind, so I can hear when you make fun of my disability.
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Augustus Waters
Hello, are you Monica's mother?
Monica's Mom
I am...
Augustus Waters
Hello, ma'am. Your daughter, she's done a great injustice, so we've come here seeking revenge. You see, we may not look like much, but between the three of us we have five legs, four eyes and two and a half pairs of working lungs, but we also have two dozen eggs, so if I were you, I would go back inside.
[Monica's mother looks freaked and goes back inside]
Isaac
Did... That actually worked?
Augustus Waters
Yep.
Isaac
That was the stupidest speech I've ever... That actually worked?
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1
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Augustus Waters
That's a thing about pain. It demands to be felt.
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Isaac
Augustus Waters was a cocky son of a bitch. But we forgive him. Not because of his super-human good looks or because he only got 19 years when he should have gotten way more.
Augustus Waters
18 years, buddy.
Isaac
Dude, come on, really? I'm assuming you have a little time, you interrupting bastard. You interrupt in the middle of my eulogy... You're supposed to be dead! But when the scientists of the future come to my house with robot eyes and they tell me to try them on, I will tell those scientists to piss off 'cause, Gus, I don't want to see a world without you in it. I know I don't want to see a world without Augustus Waters.
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Augustus Waters
Your hands are so cold.
Hazel Grace Lancaster
Oh, they're not so much cold as just under-oxygenated.
Augustus Waters
Hazel Grace?
Augustus Waters
I love it when you talk medical to me.
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Hazel Grace Lancaster
Is it really 1 A.M.?
Augustus Waters
Is it? Yeah, yes, it is.
Hazel Grace Lancaster
Okay.
Augustus Waters
Okay.
Hazel Grace Lancaster
Okay.
Augustus Waters
Perhaps, 'okay' will be our 'always.'
Hazel Grace Lancaster
Okay.
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Hazel Grace Lancaster
Funerals, I've decided, are not for the dead. They are for the living.
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Augustus Waters
This is it.
Hazel Grace Lancaster
I'm so excited I can barely breathe.
Augustus Waters
As opposed to normal?
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Van Houten
She thinks I have a drinking problem.
Lidewij
I also think the Earth is round.
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Augustus Waters
Oh my God, I'm flying. Oh my God, we're flying. We're - we're flying! Look down! Nothing has ever looked like this in all of human history!
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Hazel Grace Lancaster
You're welcome.
Augustus Waters
However, we do need closure, don't you think?
Hazel Grace Lancaster
That is exactly what I was asking Van Houten for in my letters.
Augustus Waters
But he never responded.
Hazel Grace Lancaster
Nope.
Augustus Waters
[inhales theatrically]
"Dear Mr. Waters. I write to thank you for your electronic correspondence. I am grateful to anyone that sets aside time to read my book."
Augustus Waters
Yes?
Hazel Grace Lancaster
What are you doing?
Augustus Waters
I may have found Van Houten's assistant. E-mailed her.
Hazel Grace Lancaster
Augustus!
Augustus Waters
She may have forwarded that e-mail onto Van Houten. Shall I continue?
Hazel Grace Lancaster
Oh my God, yeah, go go go!
Augustus Waters
"I am particularly indebted to you, sir." Hazel Grace, he just called me "sir."
Hazel Grace Lancaster
Augustus, keep reading! Keep reading!
Augustus Waters
"... both for your kind words about "An Imperial Affliction" and for taking the time to tell me that the book, and here I quote you directly, 'meant a great deal' to you and your friend Hazel Grace'."
Augustus Waters
Of course I did. "To answer your question: No, I have not written anything else, nor will I. I do not feel like continuing to share my thoughts with readers would benefit either them or me. However, thank you for your generous e-mail. Yours most sincerely, Peter Van Houten." So yeah, that just happened.
Hazel Grace Lancaster
Oh my God!
Augustus Waters
I've been trying to tell you, I'm kind of awesome.
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Hazel Grace Lancaster
Is this where you bring all your romantic conquests?
Augustus Waters
Yeah, every last one of them. Which is probably why I'm still a virgin.
Hazel Grace Lancaster
You are not still a virgin! Are you really?
Augustus Waters
Let me show you something.
[picks up a stick and draws a circle in the ground]
Augustus Waters
See this circle? That is the circle of virgins.
Hazel Grace Lancaster
Uh-huh?
[Gus draws another barely visible circle within the already drawn circle]
Augustus Waters
And this... is 18-year-old dudes with one leg.
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Patrick
Your turn, Gus.
Augustus Waters
Yeah, sure. I'm, uh, I'm Augustus Waters. I'm 18 years old. I had a touch of osteosarcoma about a year and a half ago. And I lost this baby as a result.
[pulls up his right trouser leg to reveal a prosthetic leg]
Augustus Waters
And now I'm part cyborg, which is awesome. But really I'm just here at Isaac's request.
Isaac
Yeah.
Patrick
And how are you feeling, Gus?
Augustus Waters
I'm grand! Yeah. I'm on a rollercoaster that only goes up, my friend.
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Hazel Grace Lancaster
You know, this obsession you have, with being remembered?
Augustus Waters
Don't get mad.
Hazel Grace Lancaster
I am mad! I'm mad because I think you're special. And isn't that enough? You think that the only way to lead a meaningful life, is for everyone to remember you. For everyone to love you! Guess what, Gus - this is your life! This is all you get! You get me, and you get your family and you get this world, and that's it! And if that's not enough for you, then I'm sorry, but its not nothing. Because I love you. And I'm going to remember you.
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Hazel Grace Lancaster
The only thing worse than biting it from cancer is having a kid bite it from cancer.
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Isaac
She said she wanted to break up with me before the surgery, 'cause she couldn't handle it. I'm about to lose my eyesight and SHE can't handle it. I kept saying "always" to her, you know, like always. And she kept talking over me and not saying it back, and that was... It was like I was gone already, you know? And...
Hazel Grace Lancaster
Yeah, sometimes people don't understand the promises that they're making when they make them.
Isaac
I know, but... I just feel like such a loser, and I still have her necklace.
Hazel Grace Lancaster
Take it off.
Augustus Waters
Dude, take that off!
[Isaac pulls it off and breaks the chain]
Hazel Grace Lancaster
Yeah!
[Isaac throws it away]
Augustus Waters
Here we go, man. Here we go.
Isaac
I just wanna kick something.
[stands up and starts kicking the TV]
Augustus Waters
Don't hit that, don't hit that! Dude. Uh...
[he finds a pillow and gives it to Isaac]
Augustus Waters
Hit this.
Isaac
Sorry.
[starts hitting the pillow violently]
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Hazel Grace Lancaster
[In Voice-Over/Narrative]
It was unbearable... The whole thing. Every second, worse than the last. One of the first things they ask you in the ER is to rate your pain on a scale from one to ten. I've been asked this question hundreds of times. And I remember once when I couldn't catch my breath and it felt like my chest was on fire, the nurse asked me to rate my pain. Though I couldn't speak, I held up nine fingers. Later, when I started feeling better, the nurse came in and called me a fighter. "You know how I know?" she said. "You called a ten a nine." But that wasn't the truth. I didn't call it a nine because I was brave. The reason I called it a nine was because I was saving my ten. And this was it... This was the great and terrible ten.
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Hazel Grace Lancaster
[before leaving for Amsterdam]
OK lungs, you keep your shit together for one week. You got it? One more week.
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Van Houten
Let's imagine you are racing a tortoise, the tortoise has a 10 yard lead in the start, and in the time it takes you to run 10 yards, the tortoise's moved maybe one yard. So alright, you're faster than the tortoise but you cannot never catch it, you can only decrease his lead. Now certainly you can run past the tortoise as long as you don't contemplate the mechanics of that, but the question of how turns out to be so complicated that no one really solved it until Cantor proved that some infinities are bigger than other infinities... I think that answers your question.
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[first lines]
Hazel Grace Lancaster
I believe we have a choice in this world about how to tell sad stories. On the one hand, you can sugarcoat it the way they do in movies and romance novels, where beautiful people learn beautiful lessons, where nothing is too messed up that can't be fixed with an apology and a Peter Gabriel song. I like that version as much as the next girl, believe me. It's just not the truth. This is the truth. Sorry.
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Augustus Waters
Apparently the world is not a wish-granting factory.
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Frannie
[Hazel Grace is wearing a shirt printed with René Magritte's "The Treachery of Images", a painting of a pipe with the words "this is not a pipe" in French]
I really don't get that shirt.
Hazel Grace Lancaster
Van Houten will get it. Trust me. There are like fifty Magritte references in "Imperial Affliction."
Frannie
"This is not a pipe."
Hazel Grace Lancaster
Exactly.
Frannie
But it is a pipe.
Hazel Grace Lancaster
No, it's not. It's a drawing of a pipe. See?
[she doesn't]
Hazel Grace Lancaster
All representations of a thing are inherently abstract. A drawing of a thing is not the thing itself. Not is a t-shirt of a drawing of a thing the thing itself.
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Hazel Grace Lancaster
I love you so much, Augustus Waters.
Augustus Waters
I love you too, Hazel Grace. So, so much.
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[as Hazel Grace and Gus enter his hotel room, they kiss and getting undressed]
Augustus Waters
It just sort of like ends right above where the knee would be, and tapers off.
Hazel Grace Lancaster
What?
Augustus Waters
My leg. You know, just so you're prepared.
[Gus looks away, Hazel grabs his face and turns his face to her]
Hazel Grace Lancaster
Gus, get over yourself.
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Hazel Grace Lancaster
Augustus, I can't breathe.
Augustus Waters
It's okay.
[Gus helps her to put her oxygen tube back under her nose]
Augustus Waters
Hazel. You're beautiful.
Hazel Grace Lancaster
Stop.
Augustus Waters
No, you're so beautiful. I'm so lucky.
Hazel Grace Lancaster
I'm so lucky.
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