Paper towns by John Green

When did we see each other face-to-face? Not until you saw into my cracks and I saw into yours. Before that, we were just looking at ideas of each other, like looking at your window shade but never seeing inside. But once the vessel cracks, the light can get in. The light can get out.

John Green, Paper Towns

Margo Roth Spiegelman. Quentin Jacobsen. It’s these two characters the story revolves around.

I didn’t need you, you idiot. I picked you. And then you picked me back.

John Green, Paper Towns

It’s Margo that Q is trying to find, but throughout his journey to do so, I think I found Q himself. It’s about the two of them cracking up, letting the light in and letting the light out. Seeing each other not merely through windows but through mirrors, or something like that.

I’m starting to realize that people lack good mirrors. It’s so hard for anyone to show us how we look, & so hard for us to show anyone how we feel.

John Green, Paper Towns

Paper towns by John Green

The entire story is about Q realizing the difference between mirrors and windows. His mirrors and Margo’s windows and vice versa. There are so many things about Q that I love. His love for Margo, his will to find her, his unwaivering will to find her, dead or alive. His incessant tries at trying to find her and ultimately, trying to understand her simply to find her. He overcomes his fears, his insecurities and some of his drawbacks as a person trying to find his person. His Margo. And that’s when he taught me another thing, that we’re all trying to find the people we think they are when all they want to be found for is the people they actually are. The person that Margo actually was. The one with all her strings attached.

I always thought of it like you said, that all the strings inside him broke. But there are a thousand ways to look at it: maybe the strings break, or maybe our ships sink, or maybe we’re grass—our roots so interdependent that no one is dead as long as someone is alive. We don’t suffer from a shortage of metaphors, is what I mean. But you have to be careful which metaphor you choose, because it matters. If you choose the strings, then you’re imagining a world in which you can become irreparably broken. If you choose the grass, you’re saying that we are all infinitely interconnected, that we can use these root systems not only to understand one another but to become one another. The metaphors have implications. Do you know what I mean?

John Green, Paper Towns

The metaphors and their implications. That’s what it was about. That’s what Margo was about.

While trying to find Margo, Q realizes who his friend are. More importantly, how his friends are, who they are as a person and, thanks to Radar, he learns to accept and love them for that.

The thing about this book is, everybody says such beautiful things that I found it almost impossible to go about this review without stocking it up with these quotes. John Green is a master of words, of emotions, of cliffhangers, of twists, of all the things expected and unexpected. Out of all of his characters I think it’s Radar that I loved the most, for his sheer will to stand by his friend through it all and also having the guts to say it like it was to Q’s face.

The town was paper, but the memories were not. – Paper Towns, John Green

Having read a few others of his works, I had gotten so accustomed to him killing one of the lead characters it almost broke my heart to go about this one without a similar fate. Oops, spoiler there and then. Whatever. I loved the ending but then I didn’t love the ending. I think it’s what it’s supposed to be but who the hell likes things as they’re supposed to be?

As much as life can suck, it always beats the alternative.

John Green, Paper Town

All in all, John Green never fails to surprise me. He never fails to charm me with his ability to make me laugh out loud in one paragraph and get all teary in the next. He’s a master of words. A master of emotions. A master of mysteries. Truly a master.