Why couldn't you let me have it? Why did you have to take it? Why did you always take everything?
Lauren OliverThat is the rule of the Wilds: You must be bigger and stronger and tougher. You must hurt or be hurt.
Lauren OliverThe house, the pond, the tree-it was all both overwhelmingly familiar and different from what she remembered-smaller and shabbier, somehow. It was like waking up to find that your reflection in the mirror had aged overnight, or had sprouted a new mole: You were forced to admit that things changed, whether you gave them permission to or not.
Lauren OliverPeople are like houses. They could open their doors. You could walk through their rooms and touch the objects hidden in their corners. But something--the structure, the wiring, the invisible mechanism that kept the whole thing standing--remai ned invisible, suggested only by the fact of its existing at all.
Lauren Oliver