Lauren Oliver - Delirium (2011)

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

Lauren Oliver
Raven has lost deeply, again and again, and she, too, has buried herself. There are pieces of her scattered all over. Her heart is nestled next to a small set of bones buried beside a frozen river, which will emerge with the spring thaw, a skeleton ship rising out of the water.

Lauren Oliver
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.

Lauren Oliver
For the first time in a long time, I actually look at her. I've always thought Lena was pretty, but now it occurs to me that at some point - last summer? last year? - she became beautiful.

Lauren Oliver
I'm with Julian, I say at last. This, after all, is what I have chosen.

Lauren Oliver
All this time, I thought we were growing apart because I was leaving Lena behind. But really it was the reverse. She was learning to lie. She was learning to love.

Lauren Oliver
And even though I'm standing in the middle of the biggest crowd I've ever seen in my life, I suddenly feel very alone.

Lauren Oliver
We are always being pushed and squeezed down one road or another. We have no choice but to step forward, and then step forward again, and then step forward again; suddenly we find ourselves on a road we haven't chosen at all.

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
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
The idea—the fact of it, the fact that he even noticed and thought about me for more than one second—is huge and overwhelming, makes my legs go tingly and my hands feel numb.

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