梦想家

完美的梦想永远是梦想

躺下来做梦，就会成为梦想家。
但是要真的成为梦想家，
就必须时时刻刻保持清醒。

≪我不是完美小孩≫ 110页
几米 作品
ISBN 978-7-5110-1956-1

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我

完美的色彩红橙黄绿蓝靛紫

我仔细地看着镜子里的我，
好像整个人变了一个样，
但又是原来的我。
原来的我不喜欢现在的我，
但现在的我也不喜欢原来的我。
现在的我和原来的我都很苦恼。

≪我不是完美小孩≫ 112页
几米 作品
ISBN 978-7-5110-1956-1

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The Only Way to the Infinite Mattering

　　Colin knew nothing about poker except that it was a game of human behavior and probability, and therefore the kind of quasi-closed system in which a Theorem similar to the Theorem of Underlying Katherine Predictability ought to work. And when Hassan turned over his full house, Colin all of a sudden realized: you can make a Theorem that explains why you won or lost past poker hands, but you can never make one to predict future poker hands. The past, like Lindsey had told him, is a logical story. It's the sense of what happened. But since it is not yet remembered, the future need not make any fugging sense at all.

　　In that moment, the future — uncontainable by any Theorem mathematical or otherwise — stretched out before Colin: infinite and unknowable and beautiful. "Eureka," Colin said, and only in saying it did he realize he had just successfully whispered.

　　"I figured something out," he said aloud. "The future is unpredictable."

　　Hassan said, "Sometimes the kafir likes to say massively obvious things in a really profound voice."

　　Colin laughed as Hassan returned to counting the pennies of victory, but Colin's brain was spinning with the implications: if the future is forever, he thought, then eventually it will swallow us all up. Even Colin could only name a handful of people who lived, say, 2,400 years ago. In another 2,400 years, even Socrates, the most well-known genius of that century, might be forgotten. The future will erase everything — there’s no level of fame or genius that allows you to transcend oblivion. The infinite future makes that kind of mattering impossible.

　　But there's another way. There are stories. Colin was looking at Lindsey, whose eyes were crinkling into a smile as Hassan loaned her nine cents so they could keep playing. Colin thought of Lindsey's storytelling lessons. The stories they'd told each other were so much a part of the how and why of his liking her. Okay. Loving. Four days in, and already, indisputably: loving. And he found himself thinking that maybe stories don't just make us matter to each other — maybe they're also the only way to the infinite mattering he'd been after for so long.

　　And Colin thought: Because like say I tell someone about my feral hog hunt. Even if it's a dumb story, telling it changes other people just the slightest little bit, just as living the story changes me. An infinitesimal change. And that infinitesimal change ripples outward—ever smaller but everlasting. I will get forgotten, but the stories will last. And so we all matter—maybe less than a lot, but always more than none.

　　And it wasn't only the remembered stories that mattered. That was the true meaning of the K-3 anomaly: Having the correct graph from the start proved not that the Theorem was accurate, but that there's a place in the brain for knowing what cannot be remembered.

　　Almost without knowing it, he'd started writing. The graphs in his notebook had been replaced by words. Colin looked up then and wiped a single bead of sweat from his tanned, scarred forehead. Hassan turned around to Colin and said, "I realize the future is unpredictable, but I’m wondering if the future might possibly feature a Monster Thickburger."

　　"I predict it will," Lindsey said.

An Abundance of Katherines, P212-214
John Green
ISBN 978-0-14-241070-7

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Your Missing Pieces Never Fit Inside You Again Once They Go Missing

　　"That's what I was thinking about before you came. I was thinking about your mattering business. I feel like, like, how you matter is defined by the things that matter to you. You matter as much as the things that matter to you do. And I got so backwards, trying to make myself matter to him. All this time, there were real things to care about: real, good people who care about me, and this place. It's so easy to get stuck. You just get caught in being something, being special or cool or whatever, to the point where you don't even know why you need it; you just think you do."

　　"You don’t even know why you need to be world-famous; you just think you do."

　　"Yeah. Exactly. We're in the same boat, Colin Singleton. But it didn’t really fix the problem, getting popular."

　　"I don’t think you can ever fill the empty space with the thing you lost. Like getting TOC to date you doesn't fix the Alpo event. I don’t think your missing pieces ever fit inside you again once they go missing. Like Katherine. That's what I realized: if I did get her back somehow, she wouldn't fill the hole that losing her created."

　　"Maybe no girl can fill it."

　　"Right. Being a world-famous Theorem-creator wouldn't, either. That's what I've been thinking, that maybe life is not about accomplishing some bullshit markers. Wait, what's funny?"

　　"Nothing it's just, like — I was thinking that your realization is like if a heroin addict suddenly said, 'You know, maybe instead of always doing more heroin, I should, like, not do heroin.'"

An Abundance of Katherines, P200-201
John Green
ISBN 978-0-14-241070-7

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I'm Going to Start Doing

　　Hollis and Lindsey ended up riding home together, leaving Colin and Hassan alone in the Hearse. They weren’t five miles outside of Memphis when Hassan said, "I had a, um, blinding light spiritual awakening."

　　Colin glanced at him. "Huh?"

　　"Watch the road, kafir. It started a few nights ago, actually, so I guess it wasn't that dramatic — at the old folks' home, when you said I was Mr. Funnypants because I wanted to avoid getting hurt."

　　"No doubt about it," Colin said.

　　"Yeah, well, that's bullshit, and I knew it was bullshit, but then I started wondering exactly why I am Mr. Funnypants, and I didn't have a very good answer. But then, back there, I started thinking about what Hollis is doing. I mean, she's giving up all her time and her money so people can keep jobs. She’s doing something."

　　"Okay . . ." said Colin, not getting it.

　　"And I'm a not-doer. Like, I'm lazy, but I'm also good at not-doing things I'm not supposed to do. I never drank or did drugs or hooked up with girls or beat people up or stole or anything. I was always good at that, although not so much this particular summer. But then doing all that stuff here felt weird and wrong, so now I'm back to happily not-doing. But '’ve never been a doer. I never did anything that helped anybody. Even the religious things that involve doing, I don't do. I don’t do zakat84. I don't do Ramadan. I'm a total non-doer. I'm just sucking food and water and money out of the world, and all I'm giving back is, 'Hey, I'm really good at not-doing. Look at all the bad things I'm not doing! Now I'm going to tell you some jokes!'"

　　Colin glanced over and saw Hassan sipping Mountain Dew. Feeling that he should say something, Colin said,"That's a good spiritual revelation."

　　"I'm not done yet, fugger. I was just drinking. So but anyway, being funny is a way of not-doing. Sit around and make jokes and be Mr. Funnypants and just make fun of everyone else's attempts to do something. Make fun of you when you get back up and try to love yourself another Katherine. Or make fun of Hollis for falling asleep covered in her work every night. Or get on your case for shooting at the hornets' nest, when I didn’t shoot at all. So that's it. I'm going to start doing." Hassan finished his can of Mountain Dew, crumpled it, and dropped it beneath his feet. "See, I just did something. Usually," he said, "I would have thrown that shit in the backseat, where I wouldn't have to look at it and you'd have to clean it up the next time you had a date with a Katherine. But I'm leaving it here, so I remember to pick it up when we get to the Pink Mansion. God, someone should give me a Congressional Medal of Honor for Doing.”

　　Colin laughed. "You're still funny," Colin said. "And you have been doing stuff. You registered for college."

　　"Yeah, I'm getting there. Although — if I'm going to be an all-out, full-on doer," Hassan noted, faux morose, "I should probably register for three classes. It's a hard life, kafir.”

An Abundance of Katherines, P195-196
John Green
ISBN 978-0-14-241070-7

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Why Does Everything Have to be Funny

　　"Tell us a story about the old days in Gutshot," Lindsey said, and it became clear to Colin that this was not an occasion to be asking Hollis's four questions.

　　"I've been thinking on Dr. Dinzanfar. Before he started that tactilery, he owned the General Store. I was just a little thing, knee-high to a bird dog. And he's only got one eye, you know. Fought in the first War. Well one day, we was at the store and daddy gave me one red penny and I ran up to the counter there and I said, 'Doctor Dinzanfar, do you have any penny candy?' And he looked down at me, and he said, 'I'm sorry, Mabel. We don't have any penny candy in Gutshot. All we got is free candy.'" Mabel closed her eyes as they all let the story sink in a bit. She seemed almost asleep, her breathing slow and rhythmic, but then her eyes snapped open and she said, "Lindsey, I sure missed seeing you. I missed holding this hand."

　　And then Lindsey began crying in earnest. "Ms. Mabel, we gotta go, but I'm-a gonna come back later this week and see you again, I promise. I'm s — I'm sorry I haven't visited in so long."

　　"Well that's fine, sweetie. Don't you go gettin' upset about it. Next time you come, show up 'tween twelve-thirty and one and I'll give you my Jell-O. Sugar free, but it ain't bad." Mabel finally let go of Lindsey's hand, and Lindsey blew a kiss and left.

　　Colin and Hassan lingered behind to say good-bye, and when they got into the common room, they found Lindsey sobbing—death-cry-of-a-hyena sobbing. She disappeared into a bathroom, and Colin followed Hassan out the door. Hassan sat down on the curb. "I can’t handle that place," he said. "We're never going back in there."

　　"What’s wrong with it?"

　　"It's sad, and not in a funny way," Hassan said. "It's not the least bit fugging funny. And it's really getting to me."

　　"Why does everything have to be funny to you?" asked Colin. "So you don't have to ever really care about anything?"

　　"Dingleberries, Dr. Freud. I'm actually just going to issue a blanket dingleberries on all attempts to psychoanalyze me."

　　"Aye, aye, Cap'n Funnypants."

　　Lindsey showed up outside then, seeming to be fully recovered. "I'm fine and don't need to talk about it," she said, unprompted.

An Abundance of Katherines, P185-186
John Green
ISBN 978-0-14-241070-7

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Popularity is Complicated

　　"Um, why are we going out for dinner together?"

　　"Well, three reasons. First, because I've been thinking about our Theorem and I have a question. How does it work if you're g*y?"

　　"Huh?"

　　"Well it's all graph-going-up means boy dumps girl and graph-going-down means girl dumps boy, right? But what if they're both boys?"

　　"It doesn't matter. You just assign a position to each person. Instead of being 'b' and 'g', it could just as easily be 'b1' and 'b2.' That’s how algebra works."

　　"Which would explain my C-minus. Okay. Thank God. I was really worried that it would only help the straights, and that's not much of a Theorem. Reason two is I’m trying to get Hollis to like me, and she likes you, so if I like you, she'll like me." Colin was looking at her, confused. "C-minus in algebra; A-plus in coolology. See, popularity is complicated, yo. You have to spend a lot of time thinking about liking; you have to really like being liked, and also sorta like being disliked." Colin listened intently, nibbling the inside of his thumb. Listening to Lindsey talk about popularity made him feel a little bit of the mysterium tremendum. "Anyway," she went on, "I need to find out what's going on with her selling land. That guy Marcus built this cookie-cutter house subdivision south of Bradford. I mean, it's vomitous. Hollis would never stand for that shit.'

　　"Oh, okay," Colin said, feeling a bit like a pawn.

　　……

An Abundance of Katherines, P138
John Green
ISBN 978-0-14-241070-7

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How Something That isn't There Can Hurt You

　　He remained convinced that romantic behavior was basically monotonous and predictable, and that therefore one could write a fairly straightforward formula that would predict the collision course of any two people. But he was worried that he might not be enough of a genius to make the connections. He just couldn't imagine a way to correctly predict the other Katherines without screwing up the ones he'd already gotten down pat. And for some reason, his feared lack of genius made him miss K-19 more than he had since his face was pressed flat against his bedroom carpet. The missing piece in his stomach hurt so much — and eventually he stopped thinking about the Theorem and wondered only how something that isn't there can hurt you.

An Abundance of Katherines, P101
John Green
ISBN 978-0-14-241070-7

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But It Never Stops Hurting

　　And yet, that's what happened. It didn't seem willful at first — it was just a series of odd coincidences. It just kept happening: he'd meet a Katherine, and like her. She'd like him back. And then it would end. And then, after it ceased being mere coincidence, it just became two streaks — one (dating Katherines) he wished to keep, and one (getting dumped by them) he wished to break. But it proved impossible to divorce one cycle from the other. It just kept happening to him, and after a while it felt almost routine. Each time, he’d cycle through feelings of anger, regret, longing, hope, despair, longing, anger, regret. The thing about getting dumped generally, and getting dumped by Katherines in particular, was how utterly monotonous it was.

　　That's why people grow weary of listening to Dumpees obsess over their troubles: getting dumped is predictable, repetitive, and boring. They want to stay friends; they feel smothered; it's always them and it's never you; and afterward, you're devastated and they're relieved; it's over for them and just starting for you. And to Colin's mind, at least, there was a deeper repetition: each time, Katherines dumped him because they just didn't like him. They each came to precisely the same conclusion about him. He wasn't cool enough or good-looking enough or as smart as they'd hoped — in short, he didn’t matter enough. And so it happened to him again and again, until it was boring. But monotony doesn't make for painlessness. In the first century CE, Roman authorities punished St. Apollonia by crushing her teeth one by one with pliers. Colin often thought about this in relationship to the monotony of dumping: we have thirty-two teeth. After a while, having each tooth individually destroyed probably gets repetitive, even dull. But it never stops hurting.

An Abundance of Katherines, P95-96
John Green
ISBN 978-0-14-241070-7

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Finding Pleasure in Others' Pain

　　And yes, again, that was it exactly. A retyper and not a writer. A prodigy and not a genius. It was so quiet then that he could hear Princess breathing, and he felt the missing piece inside him. "I just want to do something that matters. Or be something that matters. I just want to matter."

　　Lindsey didn't answer right away, but she leaned in toward Colin and he could smell her fruity perfume, and then she lay down next to him on her back, the crown of her head just brushing against his shorts. "I think we're opposites, you and me," she said finally. "Because personally I think mattering is a piss-poor idea. I just want to fly under the radar, because when you start to make yourself into a big deal, that's when you get shot down. The bigger a deal you are, the worse your life is. Look at, like, the miserable lives of famous people."

　　"Is that why you read Celebrity Living?"

　　Lindsey nodded. "Yeah. Totally — there's a word in German for it. God, it's on the tip of — a . . ."

　　"Schadenfreude," Colin said. Finding pleasure in others' pain.

　　"Right! So, anyway," Lindsey went on, "take staying here. Hollis always tells me that nothing really good will ever happen to me if I stay in Gutshot; and maybe that's true. But nothing really bad will ever happen, either, and I'll take that bargain any day.”

An Abundance of Katherines, P94
John Green
ISBN 978-0-14-241070-7

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She Never Liked Me Much, But She Sure Loved Me

　　"Mary and I got married in 1944," Starnes went on, "when I was supposed to go off to the war." And Colin thought that Starnes might benefit from a lesson from his eleventh-grade English teacher Mr. Holtsclaw, who taught them about transitions. Colin couldn’t tell a story to save his life, admittedly, but at least he'd heard of transitions. Still, it was fun to listen to Starnes. "Anyway, I didn't go off to the war because I shot off two of my toes because I'm a coward. I'm an old man so I can tell you that frankly. I wasn't afraid of war, you know. War never scared me. I just didn't want to go all the way-hell over there to fight one. I had a reputation after that — I pretended I shot myself by accident, but everyone knew. I never did lose that reputation, but now most everyone is dead, and y'all ain't got any stories from them, so you have to believe mine by default: They were cowards, too. Everyone is.

　　"But we got married and oh Lord we sure loved each other. Always did till the very end. She never liked me much, but she sure loved me, if you know what I'm saying." Colin glanced at Hassan, who glanced back, his eyes wide in horror. They both feared they knew exactly what Starnes was saying. "She died in 1997. Heart attack. She was nothing but good and I was nothing but bad, but then she died, and I didn't."

　　He showed them pictures then; they crowded around his La-Z-Boy as his wrinkled hands flipped slowly through a photo album thick with memories. The oldest pictures were faded and yellowing, and Colin thought about how even in pictures of their youth, old people look old. He watched as the pictures moved to a crisp black-and-white and then to the bland color of Polaroids, watched as children were born and then grew up, as hair fell out and was replaced by wrinkles. And all the while Starnes and Mary stayed in the pictures together, from their wedding to their fiftieth anniversary. I will have that, Colin thought. I will have it. I will. With Katherine. But I won't be only that, he resolved. I will leave behind something more than one photo album where I always look old.

An Abundance of Katherines, P83-84
John Green
ISBN 978-0-14-241070-7

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Why He Couldn't Tell Good Stories

　　When you spend your entire life in and around the city of Chicago, as it turns out, you fail to fully apprehend certain facets of rural life. Take, for example, the troubling case of the rooster. To Colin's mind, the rooster crowing at dawn was nothing more than a literary and cinematic trope. When an author wanted a character to be awoken at dawn, Colin figured the author just used the literary tradition of the crowing rooster to make it happen. It was, he thought, just like how authors always wrote things in ways other than how they actually happened. Authors never included the whole story; they just got to the point. Colin thought the truth should matter as much as the point, and he figured that was why he couldn't tell good stories.

An Abundance of Katherines, P70
John Green
ISBN 978-0-14-241070-7

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Terse People

　　The moment Colin sat down, Hollis asked Hassan, “Would you like to say grace?”

　　“Sure thing.” Hassan cleared his throat. “Bismillah.” Then he picked up his fork.

　　“That’s it?” Hollis wondered.

　　“That’s it. We are a terse people. Terse, and also hungry.”

An Abundance of Katherines, P62
John Green
ISBN 978-0-14-241070-7

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Don't Have A Right to go and Think Anything Odd

　　“Have I mentioned today that you should go to college?” Colin asked.

　　Hassan rolled his eyes. "Right, I know. I mean, just look where academic excellence got you."

　　Colin couldn’t think of a comeback. "Well, but you should this year. You can't just not go forever. You don't even have to register until July fifteenth." (Colin had looked this up.)

　　"I actually can not go forever. I've said it before and I'll say it again: I like sitting around on my ass, watching TV, and getting fatter. It's my life's work, Singleton. That's why I love road trips, dude. It’s like doing something without actually doing anything. Anyway, my dad didn't go to college, and he's rich as balls.”

　　Colin wondered just how rich balls were, but only said, "Right, but your dad doesn't sit on his ass, either. He works, like, a hundred hours a week."

　　"True. True. And it's all thanks to him that I don't have to go to work or college."

　　Colin had no response to that. But he just didn't get Hassan's apathy. What is the point of being alive if you don't at least try to do something remarkable? How very odd, to believe God gave you life, and yet not think that life asks more of you than watching TV.

　　Although then again, when you have just gone on a road trip to escape the memory of your nineteenth Katherine and are traipsing through south-central Tennessee on your way to see the grave of a dead Austro-Hungarian Archduke, maybe you don't have a right to go and think anything odd.

An Abundance of Katherines, P32-33
John Green
ISBN 978-0-14-241070-7

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The Echo of His Character and Passions, His Mistakes and Weaknesses

　　“Maybe we don’t need to see the Archduke,” said Hassan.

　　“We’re on a road trip. It’s about adventure,” Colin mimicked.

　　“Do you think the people of Gutshot, Tennessee, have ever seen an actual, living Arab?”

　　“Oh, don’t be so paranoid.”

　　“Or for that matter do you think they’ve ever seen a Jew-fro?”

　　Colin thought that over for a moment, and then said, “Well, the woman at Hardee’s was nice to us.”

　　“Right, but the woman at Hardee’s called Gutshot ‘the sticks,’” Hassan said, imitating the woman’s accent. “I mean, if Hardee’s is urban, I’m not sure I want to see rural.” Hassan rolled on with his diatribe, and Colin laughed and smiled at all the right places, but he just kept driving, calculating the odds that the Archduke, who died in Sarajevo more than ninety years before, and who’d randomly popped into Colin’s brain the previous night, would end up between Colin and wherever he was heading. It was irrational, and Colin hated thinking irrationally, but he couldn’t help but wonder whether perhaps being in the presence of the Archduke might reveal something to Colin about his missing piece. But of course the universe does not conspire to put you in one place rather than another, Colin knew. He thought of Democritus: “Everywhere man blames nature and fate, yet his fate is mostly but the echo of his character and passions, his mistakes and weaknesses.”15

　　And so it was not fate, but Colin Singleton’s character and passions, his mistakes and weaknesses, that finally brought him to Gutshot, Tennessee — POPULATION 864, as the roadside sign read. At first, Gutshot looked like everything that came before it, only with a better-paved road. On each side of the Hearse, fields of squat, luminously green plants stretched out into a gray forever, broken up only by the occasional horse pasture, barn, or stand of trees. Eventually, Colin saw before him on the side of the road a two-story cinder-block building painted a ghastly pink.

　　“I think that’s Gutshot,” he said, nodding toward the building.

　　……

An Abundance of Katherines, P28-29
John Green
ISBN 978-0-14-241070-7

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Unfortunate Majority

　　…… As Colin had explained to Hassan countless times, there's a stark difference between the words prodigy and genius.

　　Prodigies cn very quickly learn what other people have already figured out; geniuses discover that which no one has ever previously discovered. Prodigies learn; geniuses do. The vast majority of child prodigies don't become adult geniuses. Colin was almost certain that he was among that unfortunate majority.

An Abundance of Katherines, P10
John Green
ISBN 978-0-14-241070-7

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It's in the Job Description

　　"I wanna have a Eureka moment," he said, the way another kid might have expressed longing for a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle.

　　She pressed the back of her hand to his cheek and smiled, her face so closed to his that he could smell coffee and makeup. "Of course, Colin Baby. Of course you will."

　　But mothers lie. It's in the job description.

An Abundance of Katherines, P4
John Green
ISBN 978-0-14-241070-7

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梦中梦

完美的梦醒来忘光光

我梦见我在睡觉，睡梦中又做了一个梦，
那个梦又梦见我在睡觉又不断在做梦。
慢慢地，我从一个一个梦中逐渐醒来，
好久以后，我以为我已经回到现实，
才发现我还是在梦中。
梦中梦清醒太遥远，所以今天我又迟到了，
这也是一场梦吗？

≪我不是完美小孩≫ 68页
几米 作品
ISBN 978-7-5110-1956-1

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都不一样

完美的异类混在人群中

我看见的风景跟你看见的一样美丽吗？
我听见的音乐跟你听到的一样悦耳吗？
我闻到的香气跟你闻到的一样芬芳吗？

以前以为所有人都会跟我一样，
现在才明白，原来每个人都不一样。

≪我不是完美小孩≫ 60页
几米 作品
ISBN 978-7-5110-1956-1

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