Lauren Oliver Quotes

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.

That's the thing about faith. It works.

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.

Amor deliria nervosa: It affects your mind so that you cannot think clearly, or make rational decisions about your own well-being. Symptom number twelve.

Love is a kind of possession. It’s a poison.

Everytime he brushes me with his fingers, time seems to tether for a second, like it is in danger of dissolving. The whole world is dissolving, I decide, except for us. Us.

I want to be healed and whole and perfect again, like a misshapen slab of iron that comes out of the fire glowing, glittering, razor-sharp.

There are more of us than you think.

My stomach gets that hollowed-out feeling. It's amazing how words can do that, just shred your insides apart.

The sun has just risen, weak and watery-looking, like it had just spilled itself over the horizon and is too lazy to clean itself up.

No wonder the regulators decided on segregation of boys and girls: Otherwise, it would have been a nightmare, this feeling angry and self-conscious and confused and annoyed all the time.

I’m sorry for everything.” Then he turns and pushes back into the woods, and he’s gone.

If singing were a feeling it would be this, this light, this lifting, like laughing.

Fear. Blame. Don't forget. Mom. I love you. -Lauren Oliver, Delerium

i feel like a curtain has dropped away and i'm seeing people for who they really are, different, and sharp, and unknowable.

"Kent?" I say, and my voice seems to have to rise from inside the fog, taking forever to get from my brain to my mouth. "Yeah?" "Promise you'll stay here with me?" I say. "I promise," he whispers.

Somewhere in the endless spinning of eternity that one, tiny, fraction of a second where our lips met is lost forever.

This is the language of the world before—a world of chaos and confusion and happiness and despair—before the blitz turned streets to grids, cities to prisons, and hearts to dust.

I’m not the Hana everyone told me I would be after my cure.

Over the past week, I’ve accepted that I will never love Julian as much as I loved Alex. But now that idea is overwhelming, like a wall between us. I will never love Julian like I love Alex.

The Story of Solomon is the only way I know how to explain. And then, in smaller letters: Forgive me.

The old Lena is dead.

The whole point of growing up is learning to stay on the laughing side.

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.

Here's another thing to remember: hope keeps you alive. Even when you're dead, it's the only thing that keeps you alive.

My boyfriend's an idiot," I say as soon as he lurches away."A cute idiot," Ally corrects me."That's like saying 'a cute mutant.' Doesn't exist.

Requiem has been controversial because people dont feel I gave it closure.

My parents were pretty liberal, but they were still parents. I definitely had my teenage rebellion.

This was what true fear was--that you could never know other people, not completely. That you were always just guessing blind.

I think of the quietness of Julian's voice as he said I love you, the steadiness of his rib cage rising and falling against my back, as we sleep.I love you, Julian. But the words don't come.

No one can tell us no. No one can make us stop. We have picked each other and the rest of the world can go to hell.

Why couldn't you let me have it? Why did you have to take it? Why did you always take everything?

You must hurt, or be hurt.

I will make a pact with you: I will do it if you will do it, always and forever. Take down the walls.

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

There's always some relief in giving up.

A room full of words that are nearly the truth but not quite, each note fluttering off the steam of its rose like a broken butterfly wing.

Things That Don't Matter When You've Lived the Same Day Six Times and Died on at Least Two of Them: Lunch meats and their relative coolness.

like I am Alice in the Wonderland and have gotten too big for the room.

You see, we didn't know.

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

And I guess that's when it starts to hit me: the whole point is, you do what you can.

When he speaks again, I can tell that he's smiling. "So I guess we saved each other.

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.

I don't know how i stay on my feet, why i don;t just shatter into dust right there, why my heart keeps beating when i want it so badly to stop

Amazing how hope lives. Without air or water, with hardly anything at all to nurture it.

Maybe, the hope said. Maybe.

Each step is more difficult than the last; the heaviness fills me and turns my limbs to stone. You must hurt or be hurt.

I'm starved for different light, a different sun,different sky.

But it's not about knowing. It is simply about going forward.