How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
I went to Support Group for the same reason that I'd once allowed nurses with a mere eighteen months of graduate education to poison me with exotically named chemicals: I wanted to make my parents happy. (1.28)
Hazel may be a grumpy teen, but despite her griping and groaning, she still goes to Support Group. Why? Because her parents tell her to. She's always looking out for them, even when it makes the little time she has left on earth a little less awesome for her.
Quote #2
It occurred to me that the reason my parents had no money was me. I'd sapped the family savings with Phalanxifor copays, and Mom couldn't work because she had taken on the full-time profession of Hovering Over Me. (5.135)
Uh oh. Hazel's getting the guilt-bug pretty young. Does that mean that everything she does for her parents—going to Support Group, for example—is out of guilt?
Quote #3
"You are not a grenade, not to us. Thinking about you dying makes us sad, Hazel, but you are not a grenade. You are amazing. You can't know, sweetie, because you've never had a baby become a brilliant young reader with a side interest in horrible television shows" (6.98)
Hazel throws a pretty loaded (and depressing) metaphor at her parents, but Dad sets her straight.
Also, throughout the book we are hit over the head with the fact that no one but a fellow cancer kid can understand what Hazel, Augustus, and Isaac are going through. Here, we get another angle: no one but a fellow cancer parent can understand what Hazel's parents are feeling.