Author John Green is often attributed as the writer of the quotation, "I'm in love with cities I've never been to and people I've never met," which is credited to his book Paper Towns.
But in a new video on John Green's YouTube channel, he talks about finding out that the quote isn't even in his book and how the internet had led him to believe otherwise:
"So yeah, when I started seeing the quote a few years ago, I just assumed that it was in Paper Towns — people kept sourcing it as being from Paper Towns."
Turns out it wasn't — the actual author of the quotation is Melody Truong, a fan of John Green who often posted his quotes on her Tumblr.
"So, and just to be clear, we've been selling a poster with a quotation attributed to me that was in fact written by a 13-year-old Nerdfighter."
John is retroactively paying Melody royalties from sales of the poster.
As John notes, "But I think a very misattributed author...failing to notice the misattribution in question speaks to how screwed up credit and sourcing and copyright are on the internet."
