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.
Lauren OliverIt's funny, isn't it? When you are young you just want to be old, and then later you wish you could go back to being a kid.
Lauren OliverThe ideaโthe fact of it, the fact that he even noticed and thought about me for more than one secondโis huge and overwhelming, makes my legs go tingly and my hands feel numb.
Lauren OliverI screamed until my voice dried up in my throat. We all did. All of us in Ward Six, all of us forgotten, left to rot.
Lauren OliverThere were days I asked for it-prayed for it when I went to sleep. The belief that I would see you again, that I could find you-the hope for it-was the only thing that kept me going.
Lauren OliverSometimes I think maybe they were right all along, the people on the other side in Zombieland. Maybe it would be better if we didn't love. If we didn't lose either. If we didn't get our hearts stomped on, shattered: if we didn't have to patch and repatch until we're like Frankenstein monsters, all sewn together and bound up by who knows what. If we could just float along, like snow. But how could anyone who's ever seen a summer - big explosions of green and skies lit up electric with splashy sunsets, a riot of flowers and wind that smells like honey - pick the snow?
Lauren Oliver