Lauren Oliver Quotes

282 Sourced Quotes

It's amazing how words can do that, just shred your insides apart. Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me - such bullshit.

Lauren Oliver
Still, the vivid green of the grass-where the grass is actually managing to assert itself through the dirt-seems out of place. This seems like a place where the sun should never shine: a place on the edge, at the limit, a place completely removed from time and happiness and life.

Lauren Oliver
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.

Lauren Oliver
I put my forehead on his collarbone, place one hand on his chest. Its rhythm reassures me: He is real, and he is now.

Lauren Oliver
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.

Lauren Oliver
I'm not the Hana everyone told me I would be after my cure.

Lauren Oliver
Po flickered. "Thank you?" it repeated. "What is that?" Liesl thought. "It means, You were wonderful," she said. "It means, I couldn't have done it without you.

Lauren Oliver
He's speaking in the tone of voice that everyone uses when they're about to break you apart. Gentle—kind, even—like they can make the news sound better just by speaking in a lullaby voice.

Lauren Oliver
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.

Lauren Oliver
Most people don't want to be saved. Besides, if you keep bailing everybody out, they'll never learn to paddle on their own.

Lauren Oliver
Step on a crack, you'll break your mama's back. Step on a stone, you'll end up all alone. Step on a stick, you're bound to get the Sick. Watch where you tread, you'll bring out all the dead. - A common children's playground chant, usually accompanied by jumping rope or clapping.

Lauren Oliver
We're on the other side of the fence now, Lena,' she says, tiredly, as she passes. "Don't you get it? You can't tell me what to feel.

Lauren Oliver
I remember Lena's expression when he knocked on the door; and how Alex had looked at her when she finally let him into the storeroom. I remember exactly what he was wearing, too, and the mess of his hair, the sneakers with their blue-tinged laces. His right shoe was untied. He didn't notice. He didn't notice anything but Lena.

Lauren Oliver
What glitters may not be gold; and even wolves may smile; and fools will be led by promises to their deaths.

Lauren Oliver
I feel a flash of grief so intense it almost makes me cry out: not for what I lost, but for the chances I missed.

Lauren Oliver
It's as though the words are trapped, buried under past fears, past lives, like fossils compressed under layers of dirt.

Lauren Oliver
Despite the fact that Raven and Tack are often fighting, it's impossible to imagine one without the other. They are like two plants that have grown around each other - they strangle and squeeze and support at the same time.

Lauren Oliver
Something aches at the very core of me, something ancient and deep and stronger than words: the filament that joins each of us to the root of existence, that ancient thing unfurling and resisting and grappling, desperately, for a foothold, a way to stay here, breathe, keep going.

Lauren Oliver
This is what we are made for: promises, pledges, and sworn oaths of obedience.

Lauren Oliver
It won't matter if nobody ever thinks I'm pretty (although sometimes I wish, just for a second, that somebody would)

Lauren Oliver
Sometimes I feel as though there are two me's, one coasting directly on top of the other: the superficial me, who nods when she's supposed to nod and says what she's supposed to say, and some other, deeper part, the part that worries and dreams... Most of the time they move along in sync and I hardly notice the split, but sometimes it feels as though I'm two whole different people and I could rip apart at any second.

Lauren Oliver
I'd rather die on my own terms than live on theirs. I'd rather die loving Alex than live without him.

Lauren Oliver
The worst is knowing I can't tell anybody what's happening -or what's happened- to me. Not even my mom.

Lauren Oliver
And you can't love, not fully, unless you are loved in return.

Lauren Oliver
And you should hear the music. Incredible, amazing music, like nothing you've ever heard, music that almost takes your head off, you know? That makes you want to scream and jump up and down and break stuff and cry...

Lauren Oliver
That's when you really lose people, you know.When the pain passes.

Lauren Oliver
It was unfair that people could pretend to be one thing when they were really something else. That they would get you on their side and then do nothing but fail, and fail, and fail again. People should come with warnings, like cigarette packs: involvement would kill you over time.

Lauren Oliver
This is the strange way of the world, that people who simply want to love are instead forced to become warriors.

Lauren Oliver
I don't know whether these feelings - this thing growing inside of me - is something horrible and sick or the best thing that's ever happened to me. Either way, I can't stop it. I've lost control. And the truly sick thing is that despite everything, I'm glad.

Lauren Oliver
But that's the beauty of life: time is yours to keep and to change. Just a few minutes can be sufficient to carve a new road, a new track. Just a few minutes, and the void is kept at bay. You will live forever with that new road inside of you, stretching away to a place suggested, barely, on the horizon. For the shortest time, shorter than the shortest second's breath, you get to stand up to infinity. But eventually, and always, infinity wins.

Lauren Oliver