Lauren Oliver - Delirium (2011)

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There were days I asked for it-prayed for it when I went to sleep. The belief that I would see you again, that I could find you-the hope for it-was the only thing that kept me going.

Lauren Oliver
If Cassie was invalidated because she caught the disease, or because Fred suspected her of it, I can only imagine what he will do to me and to my family if he discovers that the cure did not work perfectly.

Lauren Oliver
Funny how time heals. Like that bullet in my ribs. It's there, I know it's there, but I can barely feel it at all anymore.

Lauren Oliver
It's an incredible thing, how you can feel so taken care of by someone and yet feel, also, like you would die or do anything just for the chance to protect him back.

Lauren Oliver
And even if she isn't—even if by some miracle, she survived the escape and has been squeezing out a living in the Wilds—she would never join forces with the resisters. She would never be violent or vengeful. Not Lena, who used to practically faint when she pricked a finger, who couldn't even lie to a teacher about being late. She wouldn't have the stomach for it.

Lauren Oliver
Welcome to the free world. We give people the power to choose. They can even choose the wrong thing. Beautiful, isn't it?

Lauren Oliver
Most things, even the greatest movements on earth, have their beginnings in something small. An earthquake that shatters a city might begin with a tremble, a breath. Music begins with a vibration... And God created the whole universe from an atom no bigger than a thought.

Lauren Oliver
There is nothing else for people to do. They do not think. They feel no passion, no hatred, no sadness; they feel nothing but fear, and a desire to control. So they watch, and poke, and pry.

Lauren Oliver
People themselves are full of tunnels: winding, dark spaces and caverns; impossible to know all the places inside of them. Impossible even to imagine.

Lauren Oliver
And in that moment, the wordless thing passed between us, the thing that wasn't quite love but was so close I could believe in it sometimes.

Lauren Oliver
And once at Hana's house, when we stole some blackberry liqueur from her parents' liquor cabinet and drank until the ceiling started spinning overhead. Hana was laughing and giggling, but I didn't like it, didn't like the sweet sick taste in my mouth or the way my thoughts seemed to break apart like a mist in the sun.

Lauren Oliver
In my head I try and reach back, through the fence, past the smoke; I try and grab his hand and pull. Alex, come back. There is nothing to do but sink. The hours close around me, encase me completely, like a tomb.

Lauren Oliver
I wonder if this is how people always get close: They heal each other's wounds; they repair the broken skin.

Lauren Oliver
He Is looking at me through the smoke, across the fence. He never takes his eyes off me. His hair Is a crown of leaves, of thorns, of flames. His eyes are blazing with light, more light than all the lights in every city in the whole world, more light than we could ever invent If we had ten thousand billion years.

Lauren Oliver
Of course. That's what people do in a disordered world, a world of freedom and choice: they leave when they want. They disappear, they come back, they leave again. And you are left to pick up the pieces on your own.

Lauren Oliver
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.

Lauren Oliver
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.

Lauren Oliver
This is what I want. This is the only thing I've ever wanted. Everything else—every single second of every single day that has come before this very moment, this kiss—has meant nothing.

Lauren Oliver
I am now officially married to Fred Hargrove. Nothing will ever be the same.

Lauren Oliver
People are like ants: Just a few of them give all the orders. And most of them spend their lives getting squashed.

Lauren Oliver
The kidnapping, the kiss. I brought him here, after all. I rescue him an pulled him into this new life, a life of freedom and feeling.

Lauren Oliver
Are you sure that being like everybody else will make you happy?" "I don't know any other way." "Let me show you." And then we're kissing. Or at least, I think we're kissing—I've only seen it done a couple of times, quick closed-mouth pecks at weddings or on formal occasions. 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.

Lauren Oliver
And for a moment―for a split second―everything else falls away, the whole pattern and order of my life, and a huge joy crests in my chest. I am no one, and I owe nothing to anybody, and my life is my own.

Lauren Oliver
My first kiss. A new kind of kiss, like the new kind of music still playing, softly, in the distance - wild and arrhythmic, desperate. Passionate.

Lauren Oliver
He is no longer mine to lose, but the grief is there, a gnawing sense of disbelief.

Lauren Oliver
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.

Lauren Oliver
Like I've been sketched by an amateur artist: if you don't look too closely, it's all right, but start focusing and all the smudges and mistakes become really obvious.

Lauren Oliver
For a second I feel a rush of sadness: for the horizons that vanish behind us, for the people we leave behind, the tiny-doll selves that get stored away and ultimately buried.

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