Lauren Oliver Quotes

The priests and the scientists are right about one thing: At our heart, at our base, we are no better than animals.

The first one, we’ll name Blue.

How is it possible, I think, to change so much and not be able to change anything at all?

For a second I feel a rush of sadness: for the horizons that vanish behind us, for the people we leave behind, the tiny-doll selves that get stored away and ultimately buried.

Grief is like sinking, like being buried.

So far I've seen the life studies packet used as (1) an umbrella, (2) a makeshift towel, (3) a pillow, and now this. I have never actually seen anyone study with it, which either means that everyone who graduates from Thomas Jefferson will be totally unprepared for life or that certain things can't be learned in bullet-point format.

I think of Grace and feel a sharp pain in my chest.

Mama, Mama, put me to bed I won’t make it home, I’m already half-dead I met an Invalid, and fell for his art He showed me his smile, and went straight for my heart.

Because if it weren’t for me, Lena and Alex would never have been caught at all. I told on them. I was jealous.

We wanted the freedom to love. We wanted the freedom to choose. Now we have to fight for it.

You have to learn that people are always listening.

Are you sure that being like everybody else will make you happy?" "I don't know any other way." "Let me show you." And then we're kissing. Or at least, I think we're kissing—I've only seen it done a couple of times, quick closed-mouth pecks at weddings or on formal occasions. But this isn't like anything I've ever seen, or imagined, or even dreamed: this is like music or dancing but better than both.

Here's another thing to remember: hope keeps you alive. Even when you're dead, it's the only thing that keeps you alive.

There is so much fragility in kissing, in other people: It is all glass.

Despite the fact that Raven and Tack are often fighting, it's impossible to imagine one without the other. They are like two plants that have grown around each other - they strangle and squeeze and support at the same time.

Do the other kids make fun of you? For how you talk?' 'Sometimes.' 'So why don't you do something about it? You could learn to talk differently, you know.' But this is my voice. How would you be able to tell when I was talking?

The old Lena is dead.

Alex is dead, do you hear me? All of that-what we felt, what it meant- that's done now, okay? Buried. Blown away.

...into hate, into refusal, against hope and without fear

We all need mantras, I guess - stories we tell ourselves to keep us going.

I keep having the urge to cross my hands over my chest, to cover up my breasts, to hide. I'm suddenly aware of how pale I look in the sunshine, and how many moles I have spotting up and down my chest, and I just know he's looking at me thinking i'm wrong or deformed. But the he breathes, 'Beautiful' and when his eyes meet mine I know that he really, truly means it.

And when we are with Alex, I might as well not be there. They speak in a language of whispers and giggles and secrets; their words are like a fairy-tale tangle of thorns, which place a wall between us.

I didn’t know it would be like this,” he says in a whisper. And then: “I’m scared.

Lindsay calls them the Pugs: pretty from far away, ugly up close.

You can try to pin me down with a hundred thousand arms, but I will find a way to resist

The rules of Panic are simple. Anyone can enter. But only one person will win.

That is what Alex is now: a shadow-boy

Love: a single word, a wispy thing, a word no bigger or longer than an edge.

Love obeys no laws other than its own.

So many things become beautiful when you really look.

Who knows? Maybe they’re right. Maybe we are driven crazy by our feelings. Maybe love is a disease, and we would be better off without it. But we have chosen a different road. And in the end that is the point of escaping the cure: We are free to choose. We are even free to choose the wrong thing.

A good friend keeps your secrets for you. A best friend helps you keep your own secrets.

And when I wake up it's wonderful, like I've been carried quietly onto a calm, peaceful shore, and the dream, and its meaning, has broken over me like a wave and is ebbing away now, leaving me with a single, solid certainty. I know now.

The sun has just risen, weak and watery-looking, like it had just spilled itself over the horizon and is too lazy to clean itself up.

The salt blowing off the sea makes the air feel textured and heavy.

It was a bird. A bird struggling through stickiness: a bird coated in paint, floundering in its nest, splashing color everywhere. Red. Red. Red. Dozens of them: black feathers coated thickly with crimson-colored paint, fluttering among the branches. Red means run.

Feelings aren't forever. Time waits for no one, but progress waits for man to enact it.

But this isn’t like anything I’ve ever seen, or imagined, or even dreamed: This is like music or dancing but better than both.

I need to live my life in the light of their deaths. I need to live.

i feel like a curtain has dropped away and i'm seeing people for who they really are, different, and sharp, and unknowable.

You have to understand. I am no one special. I am just a single girl. I am five feet two inches tall and I am in-between in every way. But I have a secret. You can build walls all the way to the sky and I will find a way to fly above them. You can try to pin me down with a hundred thousand arms, but I will find a way to resist.

I know what the problem is, of course. The disorientation, the distraction, the difficulty focusing - all classic Phase One signs of deliria. But I don't care. If pneumonia felt this good I'd stand out in the snow in the winter with bare feet and no coat, or march into the hospital and kiss pneumonia patients

No one can tell us no. No one can make us stop. We have picked each other and the rest of the world can go to hell.

The most dangerous sicknesses are those that make us believe we are well

Summer explodes into Portland. In early June the heat was there but not the color--the green were still pale and tentative, the morning had a biting coolness--but by the last week of school everything is Technicolor and splash, outrageous blue skies and purple thunderstorms and ink-black night skies and red flowers as brights as spots of blood.

You should only fall in love with people who will fall in love with you back.