Lauren DeStefano
Every generation has a macabre notion that wars, government prohibition, natural disasters or mankind itself could be the downfall of society and the world as a whole.Collection: Government
Most dystopian, classic and contemporary, paints a future world that puts a twist on present society - a future world that could plausibly happen.Collection: Future
It was my fifth grade teacher who introduced the idea that writing could be more than a hobby for me.Collection: Teacher
Fall has always been my favorite season. The time when everything bursts with its last beauty, as if nature had been saving up all year for the grand finale.Collection: Fall
We accept gods that don't speak to us. We accept gods that would place us in a world filled with injustices and do nothing as we struggle. It's easier than accepting that there's nothing out there at all, and that, in our darkest moments, we are truly alone.Collection: Struggle
We'll squeeze every second that we can from our lives, because we're young, and we have plenty of years to grow. We'll grow until we're braver. We'll grow until our bones ache and our skin wrinkles and our hair goes white, and until our hearts decide, at last, that it's time to stop.Collection: Heart
Time was our very first king. We all live our lives to the aggressive ticking of the clock. We don't question that our lives are a grid of seconds; even our pulses oblige. No succeeding king can hope to hold this kind of power.Collection: Kings
Words like 'unputdownable' and 'irresistible' are simply not enough for Cat Winters's In the Shadow of Blackbirds. Days after finishing this story, it remains the first thought I have in the morning, and the thing that haunts me until I sleep.Collection: Morning
Set fire to the broken pieces; start anew.Collection: Fire
I think she's brave. I think that nobody has ever believed what she could be capable of. All her life, nobody was listening.Collection: Thinking
When I am writing anything in general, I just want to tell the story that exists in my head; I don't try to write a parable or make a point.Collection: Writing
The madness of youth made me unafraid.Collection: Youth
I have always been fascinated by the ocean, to dip a limb beneath its surface and know that I'm touching eternity, that it goes on forever until it begins here again.Collection: Ocean
We writers are resilient souls.Collection: Soul
You can't be afraid. You can be sad if you like. You can be angry. But it's the fear that'll freeze you in place.Collection: Like You
I always knew I was an excellent liar; I just didn't know that I had it in me to fool myself.Collection: Liars
Childhood is a long, long road, from which that dark whispering forest of death seems an impossible destination.Collection: Dark
We are stronger than we've credited ourselves to be. We have been the victims and the witnesses. We have said a lifetime of good-byes.Collection: Bye
And if I have to die trying, I will get out of here.Collection: Trying
They never exhale, the trees; on a very windy day, they rustle and inhale, and then the leaves and the branches all tremble as though something means to strangle the life from them. The sky watches on. The world is filled with anticipation, as if to wonder if this day will be a great day, or a horrible day, or the last day.Collection: Mean
You've been captive for so long that you don't even realize you want freedom anymore.Collection: Long
Suddenly the clouds seem high above us. They’re moving over us in an arch, circling the planet. They have seen abysmal oceans and charred, scorched islands. They have seen how we destroyed the world. If I could see everything, as the clouds do, would I swirl around this remaining continent, still so full of color and life and seasons, wanting to protect it? Or would I just laugh at the futility of it all, and meander onward, down the earth’s sloping atmosphere?Collection: Ocean
I'll tell you something about true love. There's no science to it. It's as natural as the sky.Collection: Sky
Even the human race can't claim to be natural anymore. We are fake, dying things. How fitting that I would end up in this sham of a marriage.Collection: Race
It is the face of a girl who has seen the world, who realizes that it hates her, and who hates it in return.Collection: Girl
Maybe it is desperation. Maybe we can't let things fall apart without trying. We can't let go of the people we love.Collection: Letting Go
Cure" is one of the most precious words in the English language. It's a short word. A clean and simple word. But it isn't so easy a thing as it sounds. There are questions like: How will this affect us in ten years? In twenty? What will it do to our children? Our children's children?Collection: Children
I watch the ashes swim around like dandelion puffs, making swirls where bodies and walls once stood.Collection: Wall
Living in a place like this, she must have learned how to see all the monsters that can hide a person.Collection: Monsters
Lovers are weapons, but love is a wound.Collection: Love Is
Maybe what frightens us about the edge isn't our fear of morality, but the thoughts it leads us to have.Collection: Morality
Ah, love. That’s what the world has lost. There’s no more love, only the illusion of it.Collection: World
I wanted to be rid of him," he says. He raises my chin with his thumb. "But not if it meant being rid of you. I climbed in beside you, and you put your head in my lap. You can't think I would have left you like that." "Look what it got you," I say. "Tea in bed and you here in front of me," he says. "It was a terrible decision, and I confess I'd make it again.Collection: Thinking
Someday I'll tell you all of it," I say. "I'd like that," he says. "No," I say. "I promise you won't.Collection: Promise
I nod like I'm not at all unnerved by this new cold side to him. Not cruel like his father. Not warm like the husband who sought me out on quiet nights. Something in between. This Linden has never woven his fingers through mine, never chosen me from a line of weary Gathered girls, never said he loved me in a myriad of coloured lights. We are nothing to each other.Collection: Girl
We were his disposable things. Brought to him like cattle. Stripped of what made us sisters or daughters or children. There was nothing that he could take from us—our genes, our bones, our wombs—that would ever satisfy him. There was no other way that we would be free.Collection: Daughter
There’s a limit to how much living can be done in a life without freedom.Collection: Done
It isn’t a perfect place. There are no perfect places. But nobody cares about perfection when there are sand castles to build and kites to chase, children that are being born, old hearts that are giving in.Collection: Children
She’s a commodity in a sea of broken girls.Collection: Girl
Every star has been set in the sky. We mistakenly think they were put there for us.Collection: Stars
I had this feeling like the solution to everything would be down there if only I could dig through all those clouds.Collection: Clouds
I never wanted to live forever," she says. "I just wanted enough time.Collection: Life
Poor kid,' Jenna says, and rolls her eyes toward me for a moment. Then she returns to her book. 'She doesn't even understand what kind of place this is.Collection: Book
There is warmth shooting through my broken body where there should be pain, and I put my arms around the back of his neck and I hold on to him. I hold on because you never know in this place when something good will be taken away.Collection: Pain
It doesn't matter how much his mother loves him; love is not enough to keep any of us alive.Collection: Mother
He kissed back, all the pages spread out around us like riddles waiting to be solved. Let them wait. Let my genes unravel, my hinges come loose. If my fate rests in the hands of a madman, let death come and bring its worse. I'll take the ruined craters of laboratories, the dead trees, this city with ashes in the oxygen, if it means freedom. I'd sooner die here than live a hundred years with wires in my veins.Collection: Mean
And then I wonder, does my brother think of me this way? We entered this world together, one after the other, beats in a pulse. But I will be first to leave it. That's what I've been promised. When we were children, did he dare to imagine an empty space beside him where I then stood giggling, blowing soap bubbles through my fingers? When I die, will he be sorry that he loved me? Sorry that we were twins? Maybe he already is.Collection: Brother
Do you know what my father used to say?" I ask her. "He used to say that songs had a heart. A crescendo that can make all your blood rush from your head to your toes.Collection: Song
...maybe hope isn't such a bad thing. Maybe it's what keeps us together.Collection: Together
There's a sort of dead passion in him. A spark that, had he more years to live, would be a wildfire.Collection: Passion