Lauren DeStefano
So many of the things I've wanted are the things I've been taught to fear.Collection: Taught
I miss something I never even had.Collection: Missing
She has the majesty of hurricanes and explosions.Collection: Majesty
Home?' I say. It's a word that can mean anywhere and nowhere.Collection: Home
Hope, that risky, illustrious thing. It should have gone extinct by now, but we keep it alive.Collection: Should Have
I don’t have too many books, I have too little shelving.Collection: Book
He sits next to me, careful to avoid my hair that's splayed out around my head like blood. A bullet to the forehead, boom, blond waves everywhere.Collection: Hair
I wanted so badly to tell him, but something about that entire night seemed so beautiful, so bizarre, that I didn't trust it with my secrets.Collection: Beautiful
I wonder what it’s like for her, looking so much like a dead girl.Collection: Girl
When we're alive, life consumes us. But when we die, all of the color and the motion is gone so quickly, it's as though it can no longer stand to be wasted on us.Collection: Color
It's quiet for a while, and then Rowan says; "We could talk now. We're alone out here. No walls." "There are always walls." I say.Collection: Wall
Humans are the absolute worst thing to happen to this planet.Collection: Planets
He looks at me, and I don't know what he sees. I used to think it was Rose. But she's not here with us now, in this room. It's just him and me, and the books. I feel like our lives are in those books. I feel like all the words on the pages are for us.Collection: Book
We destroy things with our curiosity. We shatter with our best intentionsCollection: Curiosity
Things will get worse before they get better.Collection: Things Will Get Better
We figure out what death means when we're born, practically, and we live our whole lives in some kind of weird denial about it.Collection: Mean
He says one word, nodding into the daylight. "Look." It's an astounding word. It's a gift.Collection: Looks
I want to make the world into something better so that he can be okay.Collection: World
It was a terrible decision, and I confess I'd make it again.Collection: Decision
A feeling can't kill you.Collection: Feelings
The months fall to shards at my feet.Collection: Fall
I see an ocean that’s spilled out of a wineglass, its body clear and sparkling and folding over itself. I see a ribbon of sand.Collection: Ocean
I start trying to stay unconscious. The problem with this is that no amount of willpower can change the reality.Collection: Reality
We can change so many times in our lives. We're born into a family, and it's the only life we can imagine, but it changes. Buildings collapse. Fires burn. And the next second we're someplace else entirely, going through different motions and trying to keep up with this new person we've become.Collection: Fire
Bet you never eat, he says. Bet you drink up the oxygen like it's butter. Bet you can go for days on nothing but thoughts.Collection: Oxygen
I'm suddenly finding it hard to know the difference between nightmares and consciousness.Collection: Differences
The sullen boy sitting before me is not my husband, and the girl he is fretting over isn't me, will never be me.Collection: Girl
I don't dare touch her. Loss is a knowledge I'm sorry to have. Perhaps the only thing worse than experiencing it, is watching it replay anew in someone else--all the awful stages picking up like a chorus that has to be sung.Collection: Sorry
It's never right to give up on someone.Collection: Giving Up
My head is my favorite swimming pool.Collection: Swimming
There is no choice for him but to believe. He has nothing left to give in offering.Collection: Believe
There's a hazy smile on her lips that won't go away, and her hair is a mess. It's like a brushfire filled with casualties.Collection: Hair
A strange thing, words. Once they're said, it's hard to imagine they're untrue.Collection: Strange
For males twenty-five is the fatal age. For women it's twenty. We are all dropping like flies.Collection: Age
When I was 11 or 12, I was really bored with everything on my summer reading list. It was all happy, middle-grade kinds of books. I was getting frustrated, because I liked to read. My mother went to the library and got me a copy of 'The Other Side of Midnight' by Sidney Sheldon. It was my first adult book.Collection: Summer
It's the silence I imagine in the rest of the world, the silence of an endless ocean and uninhabitable island, a silence that can be seen from space.Collection: Ocean
Love is not enough to keep any of us alive.Collection: Love Is
He gathers me up and I'm weightless before he sets me on the railing. He's the only thing keeping me from falling back, out of the reach of daylight. I'm not afraid of falling. I don't fear the sky beyond the train tracks like I did before. I can go anywhere just so long as it's with him.Collection: Fall
Real’ is a dirty word in this place.Collection: Real
Fate, I think, is a thief.Collection: Fate
The only characters I ever don't like are ones that leave no impression on me. And I don't write characters that leave no impression on me.Collection: Writing
who once had dreams of saving the world, now laughs at anyone who tries.Collection: Dream
I shake my head, watching snow tumble and swirl from an all-white sky. The world seems so clean if you only look upCollection: Sky
She smiles at our husband as she moves, and he blushes, overcome by her beauty. But I know what her smile really means...Her smile is her revenge.Collection: Husband
I wonder if she has figured out that I'll never love Linden, especially not in the way she does, and that he'll never love anyone the way he loves her. I wonder if she realizes, despite all her efforts to train me, that I can never take her place.Collection: Effort
There's nothing here to say good-bye to. There's no dancing girl. No mischievous smile. She's gone, off with her sisters, broken free, escaped. And if she were here now, she would say, "Go.Collection: Girl
The world seems so clean if you only looked up.Collection: Inspiration
Times like this, when she slips her hand into mine and holds on tight, and our husband becomes just a shadow in the doorway.Collection: Husband
My sisters were in that van.Collection: My Sister