Lauren DeStefano
Kettle thingies. Yum.Collection: Kettles
There was a desperate undercurrent to our marriage--a feeling of being in a dream from which I couldn't seem to awaken. A nagging sense that my life, laid out so neatly like the clothes Deirdre left on my divan, was no longer my own.Collection: Dream
She's been conned, ruined, left for dead, and she's not going to forgive any of it. She will soldier on, if only out of spite.Collection: Soldier
When we were first married, I thought he must have been the most heartless, hateful man I'd ever known, but he was just as much a prisonor as I was. Where Vaughn imprisoned me with walls, he imprisoned his son with ignorance.Collection: Wall
I was born into a world that was already dying; I belong to it.Collection: Dying
The seeds are tiny, unborn things, and I resent them. They'll be planted and they'll grow into exactly what they're meant to be.Collection: Tiny
Don't you miss it?" I say. "Being free." He laughs.Collection: Laughing
I've done it all before, I tell myself, and I can do it again. Trust is the strongest weapon.Collection: Done
Rhine. The river that, somewhere out there, has broken free.Collection: Rivers
Tell freedom I said hello.' 'If I happen to see it, I will.Collection: Hello
None of the wives mention the security guards by the door, who will probably tackle us to the ground if we try to leave without our husbands.Collection: Husband
I can almost see what Gabriel meant when he asked, 'What has the free world got that you can’t get here?' Almost. Freedom, Gabriel. That’s what you can’t get here.Collection: Gabriel
I can hear my brother's voice in my head. Your problem is that you're too emotional. But how can I not be emotional, Rowan? How can I not care?Collection: Brother
I want to make a world more magical than my own. I don't care if it makes sense, I don't care if it's ridiculed or if, rather than a neat round planet that goes around forever, it ends with a cliff that falls off into nothing. I want to have my eyes wide open, and I want to see this room and at the same time, not this room.Collection: Fall
You’re insane, you know that?” he says. “It’s the only thing keeping me afloat,” I say.Collection: Insane
I lost everyone I loved," I tell him. I wait for him to look at me, and then I add, "The day I met you.Collection: Waiting
Everyone should remember being born. It doesn't seem fair that we only remember dying.Collection: Dying
I used to have only one name; it used to mean something.Collection: Mean
But there’s no such thing as free. There are only different and more horrible ways to be enslaved.Collection: Different
Love unrequited is violent. He loves you so much that he's turned it into hate.Collection: Hate
Don't forget how you got here. Don't Forget.Collection: Forget
Good night, sweetheart," he says. "Good bye, sweetheart," I say. And it's so casual, so innocent that he doesn't suspect a thing.Collection: Good Night
Before I can process what’s happening, Deirdre has opened her hands and Linden has taken the ring from her and slipped it onto my finger. “Rhine Ashby,” he says. “My wife.Collection: Taken
Life is much different from the days when there were lilies in my mother’s garden, and all my secrets fit into a paper cup.Collection: Mother
A party in the orange grove. The pain on Linden's face is immediate. I am unwavering. He has cost me more pain than I will ever be able to repay.Collection: Pain
In the distance I see a lighthouse. The light washes over us and continues on its rotation. This time, I don't know where the light will guide us.Collection: Distance
I liked just being with you. I liked the way you breathed when you were asleep. I liked when you took the champagne glass from my hand. I liked how your fingers were always too long for your gloves.Collection: Glasses
I think, in this strange world of beautiful things, there may be some humanity after all.Collection: Beautiful
I figured it out eventually," she says. She's sitting on the edge of the gurney again; her features slowly materialize as my vision clears. "It's momentum." "What?" I whisper. The feeling returning to my lips, spreading out to my fingertips and toes. "Momentum," she repeats. "You can't just stand there if you want something to fly. You have to run.Collection: Running
I wish I had a memory of that first violent shove, the shock of cold air, the sting of oxygen into new lungs. Everyone should remember being born. It doesn't seem fair that we only remember dying.Collection: Memories
She's beautiful and graceful, and she is very compassionate and loyal when you aren't responsible for the murder of her family.Collection: Beautiful
It taught that there are three versions of things: the one I see in my mind, and the one that carries onto the paper, and then what it ultimately becomes.Collection: Mind
I stare at her collarbone that's framed with lace, the hollow of her throat, her shoulders that rise with each rise with the weight of her next breath. We're fragile things. Our bones show through our skin. What would any god want with us?Collection: Skins
and I've always known it, the way I love a song I hear for the first time, even before I know all the words, the way I love my favorite color, and the way that the train would speed past my bedroom when it was very quiet and I'd feel it in my stomach rushing through me. I love you in a way that I've never felt needed to be said.Collection: Song
Forget who you are and what you think is there, and you'll discover things that don't exist to be known.Collection: Thinking
There is a dark place calling to me, but I will not go just yet. I know I can't return from it.Collection: Dark
You have a way of looking at things. You make it seem as though everything's going to be okay. I can't imagine a more dangerous thing to have than hope like yours.Collection: Way
She would do anything, anything to belong to his son after a lifetime of belonging to no one at all.Collection: Son
My worries always lead to dungeons; I can't imagine a worse thing than to be imprisoned for the rest of one's life, especially with so few years to enjoy what little there is.Collection: Years
Vaughn is talking about the heat, and his voice is so excited that it breaks into whispers at times. He loves his madness the way a bird loves the sky.Collection: Talking
I should not have loved my daughter as I did. Not in this world in which nothing lives for long. You children are flies. You are roses. You multiply and die.Collection: Daughter
But instead of tears, when I press my face against the pillow, a horrible, primal scream comes out of me. It's unlike anything I thought myself capable of. Rage, unlike anything I've ever known.Collection: Tears
In another time, in another place, I wonder who they might have been.Collection: Might
What have you done? What have you given up?' So many things, Cecily. More than you know.Collection: Done
The trick was looking past the illusion, because the exit was never as far away as it seemed.Collection: Past
The thing about hope is that it doesn't go away even when it serves no purpose.Collection: Going Away
I like the idea of something greater than us. We destroy things with our curiosity. We shatter with our best intentions. We are no closer to perfection than we were one hundred years ago, or five hundred.Collection: Years
I don't know if it was love or an illusion. I don't know if there's ever a way to be certain.Collection: Way
But I know all the things you're too sweet to know.Collection: Sweet