Anonymous
I don’t know why people are always singling teenage girls out for this supposed sin; it strikes me as awfully sexist, as if no teenage boy or adult has ever used a quote without being fully aware of its context.
Like, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen adults on their facebook pages write, “Be the change you wish to see in the world. -Gandhi,” without having read the book in which Gandhi actually wrote that. I know they haven’t read that book, incidentally, because Gandhi never actually said or wrote that.
People who have not read the entire Bible regularly quote the Bible; people regularly reblog GIFs of Doctor Who episodes they have not yet actually seen; etc.
I have also quoted without reading the source material. For instance, I am quite fond of the William Carlos Williams line “Time is a storm in which we are all lost,” but I have no idea of its context. Does that make me a teenage girl?
Obviously, I hope lots of people read The Fault in Our Stars, and I hope that if there’s a movie, it will bring a lot of new people to the book. But if people just watch and enjoy the movie, or enjoy a quote they come across on tumblr, I’m thrilled about that.
