We are such small, stupid things. For most of my life I thought of nature as the stupid thing: Blind, animal, destructive. We, the humans, were clean and smart and in control: we had wrestled the rest of the world into submission, battered it down, pinned it to a glass slide and the pages of The Bool of Shhh.
Lauren OliverAll of you, wherever you are: in your spiny cities, or your one-bump towns. Find it, the hard stuff, the links of metal and chink, the fragments of stone filling your stomach. And pull, and pull, and pull. I will make a pact with you: I will do it if you will do it, always and forever. Take down the walls.
Lauren OliverWhen Iโm running, thereโs always this split second when the pain is ripping through me and I can hardly breathe and all I see is color and blurโand in that split second, right as the pain crests, and becomes too much, and thereโs a whiteness going through me, I see something to my left, a flicker of color [โฆ]โand I know then, too, that if I only turn my head heโll be there, laughing, watching me, and holding out his arms. I donโt ever turn my head to look, of course. But one day I will. One day I will, and heโll be back, and everything will be okay. And until then: I run.
Lauren Oliver