They're cynical, they crack jokes, and they sometimes get frustrated or depressed, but they've decided not to let their lives be the tale of their disease. In the book, the line about sad stories is an example of what Hazel and Ansel do all the time, which is defy expectations of them as stalwart martyrs to the generally terrible hand in life they've been dealt. One feels like a story about two teenagers living with a serious illness, and the other like the story of how one of those teenagers dies of one. The first confronts kids-with-cancer tropes, while the second, despite how it tries to position itself in the beginning, gives into them. But I feel like it's the divide between the novel, which I loved, and the movie, which left me a little cold, despite the reliable charms of Shailene Woodley as the terminally ill Hazel and relative newcomer Ansel Elgort as Gus, who's in remission when they meet. Weber would be insane to make sizable changes to source material that's so beloved. It's a small tweak in what's overall a very faithful adaptation of the book - director Josh Boone ( Stuck in Love) and screenwriters Scott Neustadter and Michael H. He was abrupt and cruel to them in person, but in the retelling, they make fun of him, and Hazel observes, 'You have a choice in this world, I believe, about how to tell sad stories. Or not exactly - later in the book, much later, Hazel and the love of her life, Augustus Waters, joke about an upsetting and disappointing meeting they had with one of their idols. It's not a line that's in John Green's wise, tragicomic novel, which starts off with Hazel describing her cancer-fueled depression. I like that version as much as the next girl does.

Nothing is too messed up that can't be fixed with a Peter Gabriel song.

'I believe we have a choice in this world about how to tell sad stories,' Hazel says at the beginning of the movie adaptation of The Fault in Our Stars.

The fault in our stars movie song