Lauren Oliver
You see, we didn't know.Collection: Knows
Maybe it would be better if we didn't love. If we didn't lose, either. If we didn't get out hearts stomped on, shattered; if we didn't have to patch and repatch it until we're like Frankenstein monsters, all sewn together by who knows whatCollection: Heart
Why couldn't you let me have it? Why did you have to take it? Why did you always take everything?Collection: Let Me
Less than a month ago all of August still stretched before us - long and golden and reassuring, like an endless period of delicious sleep.Collection: Sleep
At the same time I know that it’s not really their fault, at least not completely. I did my part too. I did it on a hundred different days and in a thousand different ways, and I know it. But this makes the anger worse, not better.Collection: Different
You can try to pin me down with a hundred thousand arms, but I will find a way to resistCollection: Trying
This is what amazes me: that people are new every day. That they are never the same. You must always invent them, and they must always invent themselves, too.Collection: People
That's what time does: We stand stubbornly like rocks while it flows all around us, believing that we are immutable - and all the time we're being carved, and shaped, and whittled away.Collection: Believe
With the cure, relationships are all the same, and rules and expectations are defined. Without the cure, relationships must be reinvented every day, languages constantly decoded and deciphered. Freedom is exhausting.Collection: Expectations
Perfection is a promise, and a reassurance that we are not wrong.Collection: Perfection
I love you. Remember. And someday, I will find you again.Collection: Love You
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.Collection: Dancing
The second time my world exploded, it was also because of a word. A word that worked its way out of my throat and danced onto and out of my lips before I could think about it, or stop it. The question was: Will you meet me tomorrow? And the word was: Yes.Collection: Thinking
That's my favorite thing about him. I like to lie next to him when it's late, dark, and so quiet I can hear my own heartbeat. It's times like that when I'm sure that I'm in love.Collection: Lying
It will kill me, it will kill me, it will kill me. And I don't care.Collection: Care
There is so much fragility in kissing, in other people: It is all glass.Collection: Kissing
Droplets, droplets: we are all identical drips and drops of people, hovering, waiting to be tipped, waiting for someone to show us the way, to pour us down a path.Collection: People
When we get out of highschool we'll look back and know we did everything right, that we kissed the cutest boys and went to the best parties, got in just enough trouble, listened to our music too loud, smoked too many cigarettes, and drank too much and laughed too much and listened too little, or not al all.Collection: Party
....love and desire enjoy a symbiotic relationship, meaning that one cannot exist without the other. Desire is an enemy to contentment; desire is illness, a feverish brain. Who can be considered healthy who wants? The very word want suggests a lack, an impoverishment, and that is what desire is: an impoverishment of the brain, a flaw, a mistake.Collection: Mistake
Now I'd rather be infected with love for the tiniest sliver of a second than live a hundred years smothered by a lie.Collection: Lying
I hate skin; I hate bones and bodies. I want to curl up inside of him and be carried there forever.Collection: Hate
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. And there are many of us out there, more than you think. People who refuse to stop believing. People who refuse to come to earth. People who love in a world without walls, people who love into hate, into refusal, against hope, and without fear. I love you. Remember. They cannot take it.Collection: Strength
I've learned to get really good at this - say one thing when I'm thinking about something else, act like I'm listening when I'm not, pretend to be calm and happy when I'm really freaking out. It's one of the skills you perfect as you get olderCollection: Thinking
And I guess that's when it starts to hit me: the whole point is, you do what you can.Collection: Whole
So are you going to be my knight in shining armor or what?' Kent does a little bow. 'You know I can't resist a damsel in distress.Collection: Knights
It's surprisingly nice out here, peaceful and pretty-strange to be standing in the middle of a little garden while enclosed by the massive stone walls of the prison, like being at the exact center of a hurricane, and finding peace and silence in the middle of so much shrieking damage.Collection: Wall
That's the way I feel, at least: like there's a real me and a reflection of me, and I have no way of telling which is which.Collection: Real
Here's another thing to remember: hope keeps you alive. Even when you're dead, it's the only thing that keeps you alive.Collection: Alive
They say the cure is about happiness, but I understand now that it isn't, and it never was. It's about fear: fear of pain, fear of hurt, fear, fear, fear - a blind animal existence, bumping between walls, shuffling between ever-narrowing hallways, terrified and dull and stupid.Collection: Hurt
Because?' I prompt 'Because I'm sorry, but I can't help it, and I really need to kiss you right now.Collection: Sorry
Mice? Fine. Flying mice? Not so fine.Collection: Flying
It's funny how you can know your friends so well, but you still end up playing the same games with them.Collection: Games
As we're standing there I realize we're almost exactly the same height. We must look like the dark and light side of an Oreo cookie, and I think how just as easily it could have been the other way around. She could be blocking my path; I could be trying to slip around her into the dark.Collection: Block
In my dream I know I am falling. But there is no up or down, no walls or sides or ceilings, just the sensation of cold and darkness everywhere. I am so scared I could scream. But when I open my mouth, nothing happens. And I wonder if you fall forever and never touch down, is it really still falling? I think I will fall forever.Collection: Dream
Everything looks beautiful. The Book of Shhh says that deliria alters your perception, disables your ability to reason clearly, impairs you from making sound judgments. But it does not tell you this: that love will turn the whole world into something greater than itself.Collection: Beautiful
That's when I realized that certain moments go on forever. Even after they're over they still go on, even after you're dead and buried, those moments are lasting still, backward and forward, on into infinity. They are everything and everywhere all at once. They are the meaning.Collection: Forever
I wish I could close my eyes and be blown into dust and nothingness, feel all my thoughts disperse like dandelion fluff drifting off on the wind. But his hands keep pulling me back: into the alley, and Portland, and a world that has suddenly stopped making sense.Collection: Eye
Love, the deadliest of all things: It kills you both when you have it and when you don't. But that isn't it, exactly. The condemner and the condemned. The executioner; the blade; the last-minute reprieve; the gasping breath and the rolling sky above you and the thank you, thank you, thank you God. Love: It will kill you and save you, both.Collection: Sky
Eventually she came. She appeared suddenly, exactly like she'd done that day- she stepped into the sunshine, she jumped, she laughed and threw her head back, so her long ponytail nearly grazed the waistband of her jeans. After that, I couldn't think about anything else. The mole on the inside of her right elbow, like a dark blot of ink. The way she ripped her nails to shreds when she was nervous. Her eyes, deep as a promise. Her stomach, pale and soft and gorgeous, and the tiny dark cavity of her belly button. I nearly went crazy.Collection: Crazy
For all the people who have infected me with amor deliria nervosa in the past - you know who you are. For the people who will infect me in the future - I can't wait to see who you'll be. And in both cases: Thank you.Collection: Past
You should only fall in love with people who will fall in love with you back.Collection: Falling In Love
Popularity's a weird thing. You can't really define it, and it's not cool to talk about, but you know it when you see it. Like a lazy eye, or porn.Collection: Eye
People are like houses. They could open their doors. You could walk through their rooms and touch the objects hidden in their corners. But something--the structure, the wiring, the invisible mechanism that kept the whole thing standing--remai ned invisible, suggested only by the fact of its existing at all.Collection: Doors
I love you. Remember. They cannot take itCollection: Love
You came form different starts and you'll come to different ends.Collection: Different
Everything I see and touch reminds me of him, and so everything I see and touch is perfect.Collection: Perfect
I don't love you, Lena. Do you hear me? I never love you.Collection: Love You
I wonder if this is how people always get close: They heal each other's wounds; they repair the broken skin.Collection: People