Lauren Oliver Quotes

I don't understand how everything changes, how the layers of your life get buried. Impossible. At some point, at some time, we must all explode.

Mama, Mama, help me get home I'm out in the woods, I am out on my own. I found me a werewolf, a nasty old mutt It showed me its teeth and went straight for my gut. Mama, Mama, help me get home I'm out in the woods, I am out on my own. I was stopped by a vampire, a rotting old wreck It showed me its teeth and went straight for my neck. Mama, Mama, put me to bed I won't make it home, I'm already half-dead. I met an Invalid, and fell for his art He showed me his smile, and went straight for my heart. -From "A Child's Walk Home," Nursery Rhymes and Folk Tales

Then I think of the dark, and the lights, and the roaring, and Juliet, and before I can think of anything else, I fight the final few steps to the door and step out into the cold, where the rain is still coming down like shards of moonlight, or like steel.

I was glad when the invalids were executed

She liked that word: we. It sounded warm and open, like a hug.

Hearts are fragile things. That's why you have to be so careful.

I love you. They can't take it away.

When he speaks again, I can tell that he's smiling. "So I guess we saved each other.

That’s a funny thing: you think, when awful things happen, everything else just stops, like you would forget to pee and eat and get thirsty, but it’s not really true. It’s like you and your body are two separate things, like your body is betraying you, chugging on, idiotic and animal, craving water and sandwiches and bathroom breaks while your world falls apart.

It was all very strange, Mr. Gray thought, as he wiped the coffee canister clean with a sponge. Very, very mysterious. You were born; you lived a whole life; and at the end, you wound up in a coffee canister. "Ah, well," he said out loud quietly. "That's just the way things are. Life's a funny business." Death, he supposed, was the punch line.

This is what amazes me: that people are new every day. That they are never the same. You must always invent them, and they must always invent themselves, too.

Snapshots, moments, mere seconds: as fragile and beautiful and hopeless as a single butterfly, flapping on against a gathering wind.

Could it be? Samantha Kingston? Home? On a Friday?” I roll my eyes. “I don’t know. Did you do a lot of acid in the sixties? Could be a flashback.” “I was two years old in 1960. I came too late for the party.” He leans down and pecks me on the head. I pull away out of habit. “And I’m not even going to ask how you know about acid flashbacks.” “What’s an acid flashback?” Izzy crows. “Nothing,” my dad and I say at the same time, and he smiles at me.

I feel an overwhelming rush of sadness... I'm just struck with a sense of time passing so quickly, rushing forward. One day I'll wake up and my whole life will be behind me, and it will seem to have gone as quickly as a dream.

Because I think you're right. You can make a difference." He told me experiences were kind of like fate, and fate usually came in the form of a test. He told me fate liked to be worshiped. It liked to see us fall on out knees before it offered to help us up..." ♥

His secret name, which belongs to me, and to him, and to no one else.

At a certain point your brain stops to rationalize things. At a certain point it gives up, shuts off, shuts down.

I just want to be normal, like everybody else." "Are you sure that being like everybody else will make you happy?

Time and space recede and blast away like a universe expanding forever outward, and leaving only darkness and the two of us on its periphery, darkness and breathing and touch.

Don't worry about what you're writing or whether it's good or even whether it makes sense.

For the first time in a long time, I actually look at her. I've always thought Lena was pretty, but now it occurs to me that at some point - last summer? last year? - she became beautiful.

Still, the vivid green of the grass-where the grass is actually managing to assert itself through the dirt-seems out of place. This seems like a place where the sun should never shine: a place on the edge, at the limit, a place completely removed from time and happiness and life.

This was what true fear was--that you could never know other people, not completely. That you were always just guessing blind.

It's funny how you can know your friends so well, but you still end up playing the same games with them.

i suppose that's the secret, if you're ever wishing for things to back the way they were. You just have to look up.

An itchy feeling began to work its way through my body, as though a thousand mosquitoes were circulating through my blood, biting me from the inside, making me want to scream, jump, squirm. I ran.

anything, anything is possible, if you can just see the sky.

Sarah: "Not bad. You look almost human." Lena: "Thanks." Sarah: "I said almost." Lena: "Well, then, almost thanks.

I'd rather die on my own terms than live on theirs. I'd rather die loving Alex than live without him.

Each step is more difficult than the last; the heaviness fills me and turns my limbs to stone. You must hurt or be hurt.

The first time I saw you, at the Governor, I handn't been to watch the birds at the border in years. But that's what you reminded me of. You were jumping up, and you were yelling something, and your hair was coming loose from your ponytail, and you were so fast..." He shakes his head. "Just a flash, and then you were gone, Exactly like a bird.

For all the people who have infected me with amor deliria nervosa in the past - you know who you are. For the people who will infect me in the future - I can't wait to see who you'll be. And in both cases: Thank you.

He’s speaking in the tone of voice that everyone uses when they’re about to break you apart. Gentle—kind, even—like they can make the news sound better just by speaking in a lullaby voice.

Stupid how the mind will try to distract itself.

He's stuck with me and I'm stuck with him. We're stuck. That's what growing up is all about, I guess.

He looked at me like I was beautiful.

Every choice is limited. That's life.

I didn't realize then what a privilege that was: to be bored with your best friend; to have time to waste.

Rainstorms are incredible: falling shards of glass, the air full of diamonds.

I wonder if it's ever really possible to know the truth about someone else, or if the best we can do is just stumble into each other, heads down, hoping to avoid collision. I...wonder how many people are clutching secrets like little fists, little rocks sitting in the pits of their stomachs. All of them, maybe.

That's when you realize that most of it-life, the relentless mechanism of existing-isn't about you. It doesn't include you at all. It will thrust onward even after you've jumped the edge. Even after you're dead.

I’m sorry for everything.” Then he turns and pushes back into the woods, and he’s gone.

I don't know where to go. I don't know what comes now." "Don't worry," Will said. "We'll figure something out." Liesl managed to smile at him. She liked that word: *we*. It sounded warm and open, like a hug.

If he were less well trained, and less careful, he would say hate. But he can’t say it; it is too close to passion, and passion is too close to love, and love is amor deliria nervosa, the deadliest of all deadly things: It is the reason for the games of pretend, for the secret selves, for the spasms in the throat.

I wish I could close my eyes and be blown into dust and nothingness, feel all my thoughts disperse like dandelion fluff drifting off on the wind. But his hands keep pulling me back: into the alley, and Portland, and a world that has suddenly stopped making sense.

I wonder whether she was sorry for leaving us behind.

Sometimes I feel like she deserves a best friend who is just a little more special.

It's like a razor blade edging its way through my organs, shredding me, all I can think is: It will kill me, it will kill me, it will kill me. And I don't care.