Looking for Alaska Quotes | Course Hero

1.

That’s the mystery isn’t it? Is the labyrinth living or dying?

Alaska
Before, 128 days before

Alaska quotes from Colombian author Gabriel García Márquez’s (1927–2014) novel The General in His Labyrinth (1989). In it, Venezuelan statesman Simón Bolívar (1783–1830) asks, just before he dies, “How will I ever get out of this labyrinth?” Alaska raises the question of whether Bolívar wanted to die. Alaska’s fascination with this quotation foreshadows her own death and the question of whether she wanted to die.

2.

Y’all smoke to enjoy it. I smoke to die.

Alaska
Before, 110 days before

Alaska delivers this line with a smile that holds “all the delight of a kid on Christmas morning,” and so it does not necessarily register as serious. However, Alaska often makes statements that reveal she has a death wish. Smoking is an example of the risky behavior to which Alaska is attracted.

3.

You just use the future to escape the present.

Alaska
Before, 100 days before

Alaska tells Miles that imagining what one will do in the future “is a kind of nostalgia.” She believes it is escapist behavior because instead of living in the moment and making choices that will improve the current situation, a person can simply get lost in making vague future plans. She seems to propose some sort of concrete action to escape the “labyrinth.”

4.

How do you get out of the labyrinth of suffering?

Alaska
Before, 52 days before

Alaska declares that Bolívar’s labyrinth is suffering and that “suffering is universal.” She says this is the important question with which people of all religions wrestle. She seems to ponder deeply about how to escape her own suffering.

5.

If people were rain, I was drizzle and she was a hurricane.

Miles
Before, 49 days before

Miles compares himself, an average, “gawky” teen, with Alaska, whom he considers a force of nature. Realizing she is out of his league, he can only dream about being with someone as “endlessly fascinating” as she is.

6.

People believe in an afterlife because they couldn’t bear not to.

Miles
Before, 4 days before

Miles concludes the concept of an afterlife gives a sense of security to mortals terrified by death. The alternative to an afterlife is “being in a big black nothing.” No one wants that for their loved ones or for themselves.

7.

Everyone who wades through time eventually gets dragged out to sea by the undertow.

Miles
Before, 2 days before

Miles is speaking to the inevitability of death. As he ponders Alaska’s revelation about the death of her mother, Miles has to think of the last words of the 25th president of the United States, William McKinley (1843–1901). As his wife screamed that she wanted to go too, he said, “We are all going.” These words make Miles confront his own labyrinth of suffering: everyone dies and nothing can prevent it.

8.

A lot of times, people die how they live.

Miles
Before, the last day

When Lara asks Miles why he likes last words so much, he confesses he believes last words reveal much about the character of a person. He claims last words tell him why someone becomes the “sort of people biographies get written about.” This confession also gets to the heart of why Miles narrates this particular novel with Alaska at its center. Alaska lives and dies impulsively, but Miles never gets to know her last words.

9.

It’s just. It’s like. POOF. And you’re gone.

The Colonel
After, 2 days after

John Green succinctly expresses the horrific realization to which all humans must all come: anyone can die at any moment. Until this point, the Colonel and Miles have considered death only in the abstract, but now it has become painfully clear to them that death is a concrete certainty.

10.

It cannot be much harder than being left behind.

Miles
After, 6 days after

Here Miles refers to the last words of American explorer Meriwether Lewis (1774–1809): “So hard to die.” Miles agrees it must be difficult for the person who dies but acknowledges the immense pain and suffering of those who must live on without their loved one.

11.

It’s like now you only care about the Alaska you made up.

The Colonel
After, 4 days after

The Colonel is frustrated with Miles because Miles refuses to see Alaska as a whole person, capable of being both selfish and kind. Green speaks here to the tendency for the bereaved to see only the good sides of their deceased loved ones instead of embracing their complicated truths. Miles also has a particular “manic pixie dream girl” lens with which he views Alaska, thereby reducing her to an object of his affection and taking away her agency as an independent person.

12.

She made me different. For she had embodied the Great Perhaps.

Miles
After, 20 days after

Miles credits Alaska with helping him transform into a person who can now embrace the Great Perhaps. This attribution places Alaska squarely in “Manic Pixie Dream Girl” territory. She exists solely on the page to further Miles’s character journey. Alaska may be the title character, but she is cast merely as a supporting player in Miles’s life.

13.

I needed … to really know her, because I needed more to remember.

Miles
After, 20 days after

This statement gets to the heart of the title of the novel: Looking for Alaska. Miles looks for ways to understand who Alaska is, but because he is unwilling to see her whole complicated self, he has a hard time in his search. For Miles, Alaska exists as a dream girl, a girl who promised him a future with her “to be continued?” and then left him behind. He seems to be more upset by the loss of that promise than by the loss of the real person Alaska was.

14.

We had to forgive to survive in the labyrinth.

Miles
After, 136 days after

After reading Takumi’s letter, Miles finally seems to understand that Alaska’s story is bigger than just how it affects him personally. Takumi is also suffering and having to deal with survivor’s guilt. Miles realizes forgiveness is essential in bearing the suffering in life. One must forgive not only others but also oneself.

15.

We cannot die. Like all energy, we can only change shapes and sizes and manifestations.

Miles
After, 136 days after

By the end of the novel, Miles has finally reached a satisfactory answer for himself about what the afterlife entails. He believes people must go somewhere, because energy that exists cannot be destroyed. He is able to forgive himself for his role in Alaska’s death and also to forgive her for “leaving” him.