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.
Lauren OliverThings would get difficult again. But that was okay too. The bravery was in moving forward, no matter what.
Lauren OliverTwo weeks until your cure" she says finally. "Sixteen days" I say, but in my head I'm counting: Seven days. Seven days until I'm free and away from all these people and their sliding superficial lives brushing past one another gliding, gliding, gliding from life to death. For them there's hardly a change between the two.
Lauren OliverThis is the language of the world beforeโa world of chaos and confusion and happiness and despairโbefore the blitz turned streets to grids, cities to prisons, and hearts to dust.
Lauren OliverWe 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 Oliver