Lauren Oliver Quotes

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I remember a story I once heard about drowning: that when you fall into cold water it's not that you drown right away but that the cold disorients you and makes you think that down is up and up is down, so you may be swimming, swimming, swimming for your life in the wrong direction, all the way toward the bottom until you sink. That's how I feel, as though everything has been turned around.

Lauren Oliver
It's going to be okay. Words that mean nothing. really, just sounds intoned into vastness and darkness, little scrabbling attempts to latch on to something when we're falling.

Lauren Oliver
We'll walk together holding hands, and kiss in broad daylight, and love each other as much as we want to, and no one will ever try to keep up apart.

Lauren Oliver
Amazingly, i'd actually forgotten that i'm supposed to be plain. i'm so used to alex telling me i'm beautiful. i'm so used to feeling beautiful around him. a hollow opens up in my chest. this is what life will be like without him: everything will become ordinary again. i'll become ordinary again.

Lauren Oliver
I keep having the urge to cross my hands over my chest, to cover up my breasts, to hide. I'm suddenly aware of how pale I look in the sunshine, and how many moles I have spotting up and down my chest, and I just know he's looking at me thinking i'm wrong or deformed. But the he breathes, 'Beautiful' and when his eyes meet mine I know that he really, truly means it.

Lauren Oliver
A good friend keeps your secrets for you. A best friend helps you keep your own secrets.

Lauren Oliver
The priests and the scientists are right about one thing: At our heart, at our base, we are no better than animals.

Lauren Oliver
The sparrows jumped before they knew how to fly, and they learned to fly only because they had jumped

Lauren Oliver
This is the past: It drifts, it gathers. If you are not careful, it will bury you.

Lauren Oliver
As soon as I look up, his eyes click onto my face. The breath whooshes out of my body and everything freezes for a second, as though I'm looking at him through my camera lens, zoomed in all the way, the world pausing for that tiny span of time between the opening and closing of the shutter.

Lauren Oliver
Rainstorms are incredible: falling shards of glass, the air full of diamonds.

Lauren Oliver
I'm so tired after dinner I fall asleep with my clothes on, almost as soon as my head hits the pillow, and so I forget to ask God, in my prayers, to keep me from waking up.

Lauren Oliver
I was glad when the Invalids were executed. Some people complained that lethal injection was too humane for convicted terrorists, but I thought it sent a powerful message: We are not the evil ones. We are reasonable and compassionate. We stand for fairness, structure, and organization. It's the other side, the uncureds, who bring the chaos.

Lauren Oliver
I need him to know that I came for him. I need him to know that somehow, at some point in the tunnels, I began to love him.

Lauren Oliver
Mary bring out your umbrella - The sun shines down on this fine, fine day But the ashes raining down forever Are going to turn your hair to gray. Mary keep your oars a-steady Sail away on the rising flood Keep your candle at the ready Red tides can't be told from blood. - "Miss Mary" (a common child's clapping game, dating from the time of the blitz), from Pattycake and Beyond: A History of Play

Lauren Oliver
He's stuck with me and I'm stuck with him. We're stuck. That's what growing up is all about, I guess.

Lauren Oliver
Hate isn't the most dangerous thing, he'd said. Indifference is.

Lauren Oliver
That is the rule of the Wilds: You must be bigger and stronger and tougher. You must hurt or be hurt.

Lauren Oliver
But how could anyone who's ever seen a summer - big explosion of green and skies lit up electric with splashy sunsets, a riot of flowers and wind that smells like honey - pick the snow?

Lauren Oliver
Everything I see and touch reminds me of him, and so everything I see and touch is perfect.

Lauren Oliver
He who leaps for the sky may fall, it's true. But he may also fly.

Lauren Oliver
And we did, and it wasn't bad. We ate the whole stupid can, we were so hungry. And when it started to get dark you pointed to the sky, and told me there was a star for every thing you loved about me. I'm gasping, feeling as though I am about to drown; I'm reaching for him blindly, grabbing at his collar.

Lauren Oliver
Old words; words that nearly brought me to my knees. Live free or die

Lauren Oliver
And how she looked at me like I could save her from everything bad in he world. This was my secret: she was the one who saved me

Lauren Oliver
But hope got in, no matter how hard and fast I tried to stomp it out. Like these tiny fire ants we used to get in Portland. No matter how fast you liked them, there were always more, a steady stream of them, resistant, ever-multiplying. Maybe, the hope said. Maybe.

Lauren Oliver
It's a miracle I was able to get out of the house today. It's a miracle I'm even wearing pants, a double miracle I remembered to wear shoes.

Lauren Oliver
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.

Lauren Oliver
We should be protected from the people who will leave us in the end, from all the people who will disappear or forget us.

Lauren Oliver
It's like a razor blade edging its way through my organs, shredding me, all I can think is: It will kill me, it will kill me, it will kill me. And I don't care.

Lauren Oliver
Promise me we'll stay together, okay? His eyes are once again the clear blue of a perfectly transparent pool. They are eyes to swim in, to float in, forever. "You and me". "I promise". I say. behind us the door creaks open, and I turn around, expecting Raven, just as a voice cuts through the air: "Don't believe her.

Lauren Oliver