Lauren Oliver Quotes

282 Sourced Quotes

My former people were not totally wrong. Love is a kind of possession. It's a poison. And if Alex no longer loves me, I can't bear to think that he might love somebody else.

Lauren Oliver
Anger is useful only to a certain point. After that, it becomes rage, and rage will make you careless.

Lauren Oliver
I thought the Invalids were beasts; I thought they would rip me apart. But these people saved me, and gave me the softest place to sleep, and nursed me back to health, and haven't asked for anything in return. The animals are on the other side of the fence: monsters wearing uniforms. They speak softly, and tell lies, and smile as they're slitting your throat.

Lauren Oliver
Let me tell you something about dying: it's not as bad as they says. it's the coming-back-to-life part that hurts.

Lauren Oliver
For a second I think about how easy it would be to pass back to the other side, to walk straight into the laboratories and offer myself up to the surgeons. You were right; I was wrong. Get it out.

Lauren Oliver
The most dangerous sicknesses are those that make us believe we are well.

Lauren Oliver
We wanted the freedom to love. We wanted the freedom to choose. Now we have to fight for it.

Lauren Oliver
And now I know why they invented words for love, why they had to: It's the only thing that can come close to describing what I feel in that moment, the baffling mixture of pain and pleasure and fear and joy, all running sharply through me at once.

Lauren Oliver
For a moment, my heart aches for him. I should never have asked him to join me here; I should never have asked him to cross.

Lauren Oliver
Quiet through the grave go I; or else beneath the graves I lie

Lauren Oliver
Take it from me: If you hear the past speaking to you, feel it tugging up your back and runing its fingers up your spine, the best thing to do-the only thing-is run.

Lauren Oliver
Unhappiness is bondage; therefore, happiness is freedom. The way to find happiness is through the cure. Therefore, it is only through the cure that one finds freedom.

Lauren Oliver
But that's the problem with love - it acts on you, works through you, resists your attempts to control.

Lauren Oliver
Of all the systems of the body - neurological, cognitive, special, sensory - the cardiological system is the most sensitive and easily disturbed. The role of society must be to shelter these systems from infection and decay, or else the future of the human race is at stake. Like a summer fruit that is protected from insect invasion, bruising, and rot by the whole mechanism of modern farming; so must we protect the heart.

Lauren Oliver
It's amazing how close I have been, all this time, to my old life. And yet the distance that divides me from it is vast.

Lauren Oliver
But now I give in, let the anger surge. I'm sick of people acting like this world, this other world is the normal one, while I'm the freak. It's not fair; like all the rules have suddenly changed and somebody forgot to tell me.

Lauren Oliver
I've been trying so hard not to think his name, not to even breathe the idea of him

Lauren Oliver
The first time I saw you, at the Governor, I handn't been to watch the birds at the border in years. But that's what you reminded me of. You were jumping up, and you were yelling something, and your hair was coming loose from your ponytail, and you were so fast..." He shakes his head. "Just a flash, and then you were gone, Exactly like a bird.

Lauren Oliver
No guy in his right mind would ever choose me when there are people like Hana in the world: It would be like settling for a stale cookie when what you really want is a big bowl of ice cream, whipped cream and cherries and chocolate sprinkles included.

Lauren Oliver
Things change after you die, though, I guess because dying is the loneliest thing you can do.

Lauren Oliver
Please understand. Please forgive me. I prayed every day for you to be alive, until hope became painful. Don't hate me. I still love you.

Lauren Oliver
This is pretty much the answer to every problem you encounter in suburbia: plant a tree, and hope you don't see anyone's privates.

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