Lauren DeStefano
Tell me about yourself." "Myself?" He looks confused. "Yes," I say, patting the mattress. "You know all there is to know," he says, sitting beside me. "Not true," I say. "Where were you born? What's your favourite season? Anything." "Here. Florida," he says. "I remember a woman in a red dress with curly brown hair. Maybe she was my mother, I'm not sure. And summer. What about you?" The last part is said with a smile. He smiles so infrequently that I consider each one a trophy.Collection: Summer
Did you tell freedom hello for me?Collection: Inspiration
Tell freedom I said hello.Collection: Hello
Even things that aren't broken can be fixed.Collection: Broken
On tiptoes the redhead wouldn't even reach my shoulders; she is clearly too young to be a bride. And the willowy girl is too forlorn. And I am too unwilling. Yet here we are.Collection: Girl
It's best to let her go," he says. No, no, that's wrong. It's never right to give up on someone.Collection: Giving Up
Because even if the lie is beautiful, the truth is what you face in the end.Collection: Beautiful
His three wives are huddled together on the bare mattress, one of them dying; when we're together, we form an alliance he can't touch. He's scared to even try.Collection: Wife
Fate,' I said, 'Is a theif.Collection: Fate
Gabriel's voice can reach me anywhere. Even in a hurricane.Collection: Voice
And everywhere girls, tumbling from trees like orange blossoms and hitting the earth with sickening thuds. They crack open.Collection: Girl
No matter how lonely it makes me, and no matter how wide and horrific the loneliness, at least I remember who I am.Collection: Lonely
Write words you’re willing to burn at the stake for. Write words you’d believe in even if the rest of the world didn’t.Collection: Believe
You can try to please everyone and risk accomplishing nothing, or go for your dreams and risk pissing a few people off.Collection: Dream
Linden just wants to protect her, is what I want to say. She's all he has. I left him. I'm at arms reach, but I've left him.Collection: Want
Sometimes we don't know how afraid we are until we've reached a strange door and we don't know what will be on the other side.Collection: Doors
Momentum,' She repeats. 'You can't just stand there if you want something to fly. You have to run.Collection: Running
Eventually I realize that I am holding on to him just as tightly as he holds on to me. And here we are: two small dying things, as the world ends around us like falling autumn leaves.Collection: Love
I think he's beginning to understand, and understanding is a horrible thing.Collection: Thinking
To die trying would be better than to die without purpose.Collection: Trying
I've loved you since the day I stole the atlas for you," Gabriel says, because he thinks I'm asleep.Collection: Thinking
There are so many of us, so many girls. The world wants us for our wombs or our bodies, or it doesn't want us at all.Collection: Girl
There's a world out there that nobody has bothered to promise her.Collection: Promise
Give me time" "For you, always.Collection: Giving
I think humans have always been desperate. I think it has always been about doing something awful if it might help, when the only other option is death. Maybe that's what being a parent is supposed to feel like.Collection: Thinking
Maybe hope isn't the most dangerous thing a person can have. Maybe love is.Collection: Love Is