At a certain point your brain stops to rationalize things. At a certain point it gives up, shuts off, shuts down.
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 OliverAnger is useful only to a certain point. After that, it becomes rage, and rage will make you careless.
Lauren OliverNothing has ever been so painful or delicious as being so close to him and being unable to do anything about it: like eating ice cream so fast on a hot day you get a splitting headache.
Lauren OliverTime becomes a stutter-the space between drumbeats, splintered into fragments, and also endlessly long, as long as soaring guitar notes that melt into one another, as full as the dark mass of bodies around me. I feel like the air downstairs has gone to liquid, to sweat and smell and sound, and I have broken apart in it. I am wave: I am pulled into the everything. I am energy and noise and a heartbeat going boom, boom, boom, echoing the drums.
Lauren Oliver