FastSaying

Take down the walls.


Lauren Oliver

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I wonder if this is how people always get close: They heal each other's wounds; they repair the brok...
LAUREN OLIVER Everything looks stark and vivid and frozen, as though drawn precisely and outlined in ink - parents...
LAUREN OLIVER Grief is like sinking, like being buried. I am in water the tawny color of kicked-up dirt. Every bre...
LAUREN OLIVER Waste today, want tomorrow...
LAUREN OLIVER The rules of Panic are simple. Anyone can enter. But only one person will win.
LAUREN OLIVER He is my world and my world is him and without him there is no world.
LAUREN OLIVER Are you sure that being like everybody else will make you happy?"
"I don't know any other way."...
LAUREN OLIVER They haven't killed us yet," I say, and I imagine that one day I will fly a plane over Portland, ove...
LAUREN OLIVER This is what I want. This is the only thing I've ever wanted. Everything else—every single second ...
LAUREN OLIVER Alex loved books. He was the one who first introduced me to poetry. That's another reason I can't re...
LAUREN OLIVER No one can tell us no. No one can make us stop. We have picked each other, and the rest of the world...
LAUREN OLIVER The idea—the fact of it, the fact that he even noticed and thought about me for more than one seco...
LAUREN OLIVER It [death] isn't an infection, she said. She might be right. Then again, we've nested in the walls l...
LAUREN OLIVER Let us take the government walls down that are creating this digital divide,
BILLY TAUZIN Find the things that matter, and hold on to them, and fight for them, and refuse to let them go.
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 For all the people who have infected me with amor deliria nervosa in the past
- you know who yo...
LAUREN OLIVER I know the rules. I've been living here longer than you have."
He cracks a smile then. He nudge...
LAUREN OLIVER This is the strange way of the world, that people who simply want to love are instead forced to beco...
LAUREN OLIVER If you're ever wishing for things to go back to the way they were. You just have to look up
LAUREN OLIVER I told you," he whispers back. I can feel his breath just tickling the space behind my ear, making m...
LAUREN OLIVER But at the beginning of the night anything's possible.
LAUREN OLIVER That's Lauren Spillers. She's non-stop hustle up and down the court.
RACHAEL ACKERMAN We'll walk together holding hands, and kiss in broad daylight, and love each other as much as we wan...
LAUREN OLIVER It's quiet for a while, and then Rowan says; "We could talk now. We're alone out here. No walls." LAUREN DESTEFANO When the walls in your mind are brought down, the walls in your life will evaporate.
TEMITOPE IBRAHIM Everything has taken on a strange, distant quality - the sounds of running and shouting outside get ...
LAUREN OLIVER Of course we will take Oliver Kahn to the World Cup. There was never any intention to leave him behi...
ANDREAS KOEPKE Nothing brings down walls as surely as acceptance.
DEEPAK CHOPRA Bring Down The Walls

I will bring down the walls
that surround me today.
I will...
MUSE Oliver Twist.
ROMAN POLANSKI The mind is a powerful thing. It can take you through walls.
DENIS AVEY I spin around on the swivel chair and look up at the ceiling; Oliver being Oliver being Oliver being...
JOE DUNTHORNE Dancing is about expressing yourself, and the more walls you let down, the better.
AMY PURDY Everywhere he touches is fire. My whole body is burning up, the two of us becoming twin points of th...
LAUREN OLIVER We're having a hard time. We are getting down to bare walls.
LINDA NELSON They destroyed everything. My room, the walls in my room are down, everything is destroyed.
FABIOLA RIO Alyssa and Lauren were great tonight. Alyssa stepped up big-time on both sides of the ball and Laure...
CURT LLOYD Wanting to be happy is not stupid.
LAUREN DESTEFANO ...maybe hope isn't such a bad thing. Maybe its what keeps us together.
LAUREN DESTEFANO You can't be happy unless you're unhappy sometimes".
LAUREN OLIVER A good friend keeps your secrets for you. A best friend helps you keep your own secrets.
LAUREN OLIVER I don't know where to go. I don't know what comes now."
"Don't worry," Will said. "We'll figur...
LAUREN OLIVER We wanted the freedom to love. We wanted the freedom to choose. Now we have to fight for it.
LAUREN OLIVER I know that the whole point—the only point—is to
find the things that matter, and hold on t...
LAUREN OLIVER Quizá para ti hay un
mañana. Quizá para ti hay mil mañanas, o tres mil, o diez mil, tanto t...
LAUREN OLIVER And then, just at that moment, when I'm no longer sure if I'm dreaming or awake or walking some vall...
LAUREN OLIVER In a world without love, this is what people are to each other: values, benefits, and liabilities, n...
LAUREN OLIVER Sometimes I feel like if you just watch things, just sit still and let the world exist in front of y...
LAUREN OLIVER I guess that’s just part of loving people: You have to give things up. Sometimes you even have to ...
LAUREN OLIVER I love you. Remember. They cannot take it
LAUREN OLIVER Maybe you can afford to wait. Maybe for you there's a tomorrow. Maybe for you there's one thousand t...
LAUREN OLIVER I'd rather die my way than live yours.
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 I've learned to get really good at this - say one thing when I'm thinking about something else, act ...
LAUREN OLIVER I was a troubled teen and I was constantly looking for someone to throw me a rope. Those ropes are c...
LAUREN OLIVER You want something and you wait and wait and feel like it's taking forever to come. Then it happens ...
LAUREN OLIVER Promise me we'll stay together, okay?" His eyes are once again the clear blue of a perfectly transpa...
LAUREN OLIVER That’s when I realized that certain moments go on forever. Even after they’re over they still go...
LAUREN OLIVER My boyfriend's an idiot," I say as soon as he lurches away.

"A cute idiot," Ally c...
LAUREN OLIVER Everyone just wasting time because they have so much of it to waste, minutes slipping by on who's wi...
LAUREN OLIVER (I)f you do not believe that hearts can bloom suddenly bigger, and that love can open like a flower ...
LAUREN OLIVER Anger is useful only to a certain point. After that, it becomes rage, and rage will make you careles...
LAUREN OLIVER In my dream I know I am falling. But there is no up or down, no walls or sides or ceilings, just the...
LAUREN OLIVER Everyone is asleep. They've all been asleep for years. You seemed ... awake.' Alex is whispering now...
LAUREN OLIVER I vowed after that day that I would be your hero too, no matter how long it took
LAUREN OLIVER You can build walls all the way to the sky and I will find a way to fly above them. You can try to p...
LAUREN OLIVER It's so strange how life works: You want something and you wait and wait and feel like it's taking f...
LAUREN OLIVER What glitters may not be gold; and even wolves may smile; and fools will be led by promises to their...
LAUREN OLIVER Take it from me: If you hear the past speaking to you, feel it tugging up your back and runing its f...
LAUREN OLIVER And now I realize Lindsay's not fearless. She's terrified. She's terrified that people will find out...
LAUREN OLIVER It's not my fault I can't be like you, okay? I don't get up in the morning thinking the world is one...
LAUREN OLIVER This is what happens when you try to help people. You get screwed.
LAUREN OLIVER I used to think that's what love was: knowing someone so well he was like a part of you.
LAUREN OLIVER How is it possible, I think, to change so much and not be able to change anything at all?
LAUREN OLIVER Here's one of the things I learned that morning: if you cross a line and nothing happens, the line l...
LAUREN OLIVER As soon as I look up, his eyes click onto my face. The breath whooshes out of my body and everything...
LAUREN OLIVER Look, I'm not going to have sex with him just so he'll say that he loves me, you know?"

....
LAUREN OLIVER Popularity's a weird thing. You can't really define it, and it's not cool to talk about, but you kno...
LAUREN OLIVER Sometimes I'm afraid to go to sleep because of what I'm leaving behind.
LAUREN OLIVER I guess that's what saying good-bye is always like--like jumping off an edge. The worst part is maki...
LAUREN OLIVER The whole point of growing up is learning to stay on the laughing side.
LAUREN OLIVER Love: It will kill you and save you, both
LAUREN OLIVER With 'Delirium,' I had to spend time thinking about the political, social and religious stru...
LAUREN OLIVER I think I'm able to do so much because writing is what I love to do. So, often when I have free ...
LAUREN OLIVER With the cure, relationships are all the same, and rules and expectations are defined. Without the c...
LAUREN OLIVER I have a beautiful pair of Giuseppe Zanotti black pumps that make me feel like a model every time I ...
LAUREN OLIVER There are times I wish I was more conventional. I would get a husband and a baby and a big SUV in th...
LAUREN OLIVER I think dystopian futures are also a reflection of current fears.
LAUREN OLIVER Memory is like that, too. We build careful bridges. But they're weaker than we think.
LAUREN OLIVER Sometimes day and night reverse. Sometimes up goes down and down goes up, and love turns into hate, ...
LAUREN OLIVER There's a metaphor in that somewhere—like all of life is about ending up somewhere you didn't expe...
LAUREN OLIVER The funny thing about almost-dying is that afterward everyone expects you to jump on the happy train...
LAUREN OLIVER I wish that photographs were physical spaces, like tunnels; that you could crawl inside them and go ...
LAUREN OLIVER Funny how things can stay the same forever and then change so quickly.
LAUREN OLIVER I said, I prefer the ocean when it's gray. Or not really gray. A pale, in-between color. It reminds ...
LAUREN OLIVER And when I wake up it's wonderful, like I've been carried quietly onto a calm, peaceful shore, and t...
LAUREN OLIVER I guess it's the same way trees grow around the very vines that are killing them, so they're strangl...
LAUREN OLIVER How do I know I can trust you?' she said finally.
'That's the thing about trust.' He crunched a...
LAUREN OLIVER I’ll tell you another secret, this one for your own good. You may think the past has something to ...
LAUREN OLIVER

More Lauren Oliver

You can't be happy unless you're unhappy sometimes".
LAUREN OLIVER A good friend keeps your secrets for you. A best friend helps you keep your own secrets.
LAUREN OLIVER I don't know where to go. I don't know what comes now."
"Don't worry," Will said. "We'll figur...
LAUREN OLIVER We wanted the freedom to love. We wanted the freedom to choose. Now we have to fight for it.
LAUREN OLIVER I know that the whole point—the only point—is to
find the things that matter, and hold on t...
LAUREN OLIVER Quizá para ti hay un
mañana. Quizá para ti hay mil mañanas, o tres mil, o diez mil, tanto t...
LAUREN OLIVER And then, just at that moment, when I'm no longer sure if I'm dreaming or awake or walking some vall...
LAUREN OLIVER In a world without love, this is what people are to each other: values, benefits, and liabilities, n...
LAUREN OLIVER Sometimes I feel like if you just watch things, just sit still and let the world exist in front of y...
LAUREN OLIVER I guess that’s just part of loving people: You have to give things up. Sometimes you even have to ...
LAUREN OLIVER I love you. Remember. They cannot take it
LAUREN OLIVER Maybe you can afford to wait. Maybe for you there's a tomorrow. Maybe for you there's one thousand t...
LAUREN OLIVER I'd rather die my way than live yours.
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 I've learned to get really good at this - say one thing when I'm thinking about something else, act ...
LAUREN OLIVER I was a troubled teen and I was constantly looking for someone to throw me a rope. Those ropes are c...
LAUREN OLIVER You want something and you wait and wait and feel like it's taking forever to come. Then it happens ...
LAUREN OLIVER Promise me we'll stay together, okay?" His eyes are once again the clear blue of a perfectly transpa...
LAUREN OLIVER That’s when I realized that certain moments go on forever. Even after they’re over they still go...
LAUREN OLIVER My boyfriend's an idiot," I say as soon as he lurches away.

"A cute idiot," Ally c...
LAUREN OLIVER Everyone just wasting time because they have so much of it to waste, minutes slipping by on who's wi...
LAUREN OLIVER (I)f you do not believe that hearts can bloom suddenly bigger, and that love can open like a flower ...
LAUREN OLIVER Anger is useful only to a certain point. After that, it becomes rage, and rage will make you careles...
LAUREN OLIVER In my dream I know I am falling. But there is no up or down, no walls or sides or ceilings, just the...
LAUREN OLIVER Everyone is asleep. They've all been asleep for years. You seemed ... awake.' Alex is whispering now...
LAUREN OLIVER I vowed after that day that I would be your hero too, no matter how long it took
LAUREN OLIVER You can build walls all the way to the sky and I will find a way to fly above them. You can try to p...
LAUREN OLIVER It's so strange how life works: You want something and you wait and wait and feel like it's taking f...
LAUREN OLIVER What glitters may not be gold; and even wolves may smile; and fools will be led by promises to their...
LAUREN OLIVER Take it from me: If you hear the past speaking to you, feel it tugging up your back and runing its f...
LAUREN OLIVER And now I realize Lindsay's not fearless. She's terrified. She's terrified that people will find out...
LAUREN OLIVER It's not my fault I can't be like you, okay? I don't get up in the morning thinking the world is one...
LAUREN OLIVER This is what happens when you try to help people. You get screwed.
LAUREN OLIVER I used to think that's what love was: knowing someone so well he was like a part of you.
LAUREN OLIVER How is it possible, I think, to change so much and not be able to change anything at all?
LAUREN OLIVER Here's one of the things I learned that morning: if you cross a line and nothing happens, the line l...
LAUREN OLIVER As soon as I look up, his eyes click onto my face. The breath whooshes out of my body and everything...
LAUREN OLIVER Look, I'm not going to have sex with him just so he'll say that he loves me, you know?"

....
LAUREN OLIVER Popularity's a weird thing. You can't really define it, and it's not cool to talk about, but you kno...
LAUREN OLIVER Sometimes I'm afraid to go to sleep because of what I'm leaving behind.
LAUREN OLIVER I guess that's what saying good-bye is always like--like jumping off an edge. The worst part is maki...
LAUREN OLIVER The whole point of growing up is learning to stay on the laughing side.
LAUREN OLIVER Love: It will kill you and save you, both
LAUREN OLIVER With 'Delirium,' I had to spend time thinking about the political, social and religious stru...
LAUREN OLIVER I think I'm able to do so much because writing is what I love to do. So, often when I have free ...
LAUREN OLIVER With the cure, relationships are all the same, and rules and expectations are defined. Without the c...
LAUREN OLIVER I have a beautiful pair of Giuseppe Zanotti black pumps that make me feel like a model every time I ...
LAUREN OLIVER There are times I wish I was more conventional. I would get a husband and a baby and a big SUV in th...
LAUREN OLIVER I think dystopian futures are also a reflection of current fears.
LAUREN OLIVER Memory is like that, too. We build careful bridges. But they're weaker than we think.
LAUREN OLIVER Sometimes day and night reverse. Sometimes up goes down and down goes up, and love turns into hate, ...
LAUREN OLIVER There's a metaphor in that somewhere—like all of life is about ending up somewhere you didn't expe...
LAUREN OLIVER The funny thing about almost-dying is that afterward everyone expects you to jump on the happy train...
LAUREN OLIVER I wish that photographs were physical spaces, like tunnels; that you could crawl inside them and go ...
LAUREN OLIVER Funny how things can stay the same forever and then change so quickly.
LAUREN OLIVER I said, I prefer the ocean when it's gray. Or not really gray. A pale, in-between color. It reminds ...
LAUREN OLIVER And when I wake up it's wonderful, like I've been carried quietly onto a calm, peaceful shore, and t...
LAUREN OLIVER I guess it's the same way trees grow around the very vines that are killing them, so they're strangl...
LAUREN OLIVER How do I know I can trust you?' she said finally.
'That's the thing about trust.' He crunched a...
LAUREN OLIVER I’ll tell you another secret, this one for your own good. You may think the past has something to ...
LAUREN OLIVER Maybe before you die, it's your ghosts you see.
LAUREN OLIVER I wonder if this is how people always get close: They heal each other's wounds; they repair the brok...
LAUREN OLIVER It was a bird. A bird struggling through stickiness: a bird coated in paint, floundering in its nest...
LAUREN OLIVER Everywhere he touches is fire. My whole body is burning up, the two of us becoming twin points of th...
LAUREN OLIVER Most of the time - 99 percent of the time - you just don't know how and why the threads are looped t...
LAUREN OLIVER Why do you flirt with Mr. Daimler? He's a perv, you know."
I'm so surprised by the question it ...
LAUREN OLIVER ...I've never really had a party before."
"Why did you have one now?" I say, just to keep him t...
LAUREN OLIVER And then, just at that moment, when I'm no longer sure if I'm dreaming or awake or walking some vall...
LAUREN OLIVER I’ve never really had a party before.” “Why did you have one now?” I say, just to keep him t...
LAUREN OLIVER Chance. Stupid, dumb, blind chance. Just a part of the strange mechanism of the world, with its fits...
LAUREN OLIVER She liked the word ineffable because it meant a feeling so big or vast that it could not be e...
LAUREN OLIVER The rules of Panic are simple. Anyone can enter. But only one person will win.
LAUREN OLIVER Her fierce and fearful friend --who loved country music and cherry Pop Tarts and singing in public a...
LAUREN OLIVER Things change after you die, though, I guess because dying is the loneliest thing you can do.
LAUREN OLIVER Of all the miracles Po had seen in the time and space of its death, Po thought this--the absorption ...
LAUREN OLIVER Find the things that matter, and hold on to them, and fight for them, and refuse to let them go.
LAUREN OLIVER Do the other kids make fun of you? For how you talk?'
'Sometimes.'
'So why don't you do so...
LAUREN OLIVER It’s for the best. But no matter how many times I repeat it, the strange, hollow feeling in my sto...
LAUREN OLIVER Mama, Mama, help me get home
I'm out in the woods, I am out on my own.
I found me a werewo...
LAUREN OLIVER Las buenas amigas guardan los secretos; las amigas íntimas te ayudan a no contarlos.
LAUREN OLIVER Could it be? Samantha Kingston? Home? On a Friday?”
I roll my eyes. “I don’t know. Did y...
LAUREN OLIVER I thought the Invalids were beasts; I thought they would rip me apart. But these people saved me, an...
LAUREN OLIVER Then someone knocks on the door, very clearly, four times. I pull away from Lena quickly.
"What...
LAUREN OLIVER That's when I realized that certain moments go on forever. Even after they're over they still go on,...
LAUREN OLIVER There is only what you want and what happens. There is only grabbing on and holding tight in the dar...
LAUREN OLIVER The secret is,” I say, whispering right into his ear, “that yours was the best kiss I’ve ever ...
LAUREN OLIVER Most of us won't see one another after graduation, and even if we do it will be different. We'll<...
LAUREN OLIVER But maybe happiness isn't in the choosing. Maybe it's in the fiction, in the pretending: that wherev...
LAUREN OLIVER Now, after so many years, I understand what the Coldness was and where it came from—this sense tha...
LAUREN OLIVER You can’t go home again” ─ isn’t necessarily that places change but people do.
LAUREN OLIVER Sometimes I feel as though there are two me's, one coasting directly on top of the other: the superf...
LAUREN OLIVER And for a moment―for a split second―everything else falls away, the whole pattern and order of m...
LAUREN OLIVER It's like a razor blade edging its way through my organs, shredding me, all I can think is: It will ...
LAUREN OLIVER Snapshots, moments, mere seconds: as fragile and beautiful and hopeless as a single butterfly, flapp...
LAUREN OLIVER I know that life isn't life if you just float through it. I know that the whole point- the only poin...
LAUREN OLIVER It's the way he says my name: like music.
LAUREN OLIVER One of the strangest things about life is that it will chug on, blind and oblivious, even as your pr...
LAUREN OLIVER Now I'd rather be infected with love for the tiniest sliver of a second than live a hundred years sm...
LAUREN OLIVER He is my world and my world is him and without him there is no world.
LAUREN OLIVER My heart is drumming in my chest so hard it aches, but it's the good kind of ache, like the feeling ...
LAUREN OLIVER And now I know why they invented words for love, why they had to: It's the only thing that can come ...
LAUREN OLIVER It's amazing how words can do that, just shred your insides apart. Sticks and stones may break my bo...
LAUREN OLIVER The most dangerous sicknesses are those that make us believe we are well
LAUREN OLIVER He who leaps for the sky may fall, it's true. But he may also fly.
LAUREN OLIVER Hate isn’t the most dangerous thing, he’d said. Indifference is.
LAUREN OLIVER Love: a single word, a wispy thing, a word no bigger or longer than an edge. That's what it is: an e...
LAUREN OLIVER I came to find you last night," Lena says more quietly. "When I knew there was going to be a raid......
LAUREN OLIVER I feel a flash of grief so intense it almost makes me cry out: not for what I lost, but for the chan...
LAUREN OLIVER Hana?" Lena says softly. "Are you okay?"
That single stupid question breaks me. All the metal f...
LAUREN OLIVER I thought you were dead,” I say. “It almost killed me.”
“Did it?” His voice is neutra...
LAUREN OLIVER You see, even then, I knew. It wasn't a trick. It wasn't a show. Sometimes day and night reverse. So...
LAUREN OLIVER I shiver, thinking about how easy it is to be totally wrong about people-- to see one tiny part of t...
LAUREN OLIVER I think of Lindsay in the bathroom of Rosalita’s, and wonder how many people are clutching secrets...
LAUREN OLIVER [S]he'd realized that he had loved her only because she belonged to him.
LAUREN OLIVER Recently I've been having the fantasy more and more" the one where Tack and I run away, disappear un...
LAUREN OLIVER Normal is a word invented by boring people to make them feel better about being boring.
LAUREN OLIVER Is it possible to tell the truth in a society of lies? Or must you always, of necessity, become a li...
LAUREN OLIVER Lies are just stories, and stories are all that matter. We all tell stories. Some are more truthful ...
LAUREN OLIVER Live free or die.
LAUREN OLIVER If you're ever wishing for things to go back to the way they were. You just have to look up
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 do...
LAUREN OLIVER That’s when you realize the most of it—life, the relentless mechanism of existing—isn’t abou...
LAUREN OLIVER The sparrows jumped before they knew how to fly, and they learned to fly only because they had jumpe...
LAUREN OLIVER I shiver, thinking how easy it is to be totally wrong about people-to see one tiny part of them and ...
LAUREN OLIVER Here's another thing to remember: hope keeps you alive. Even when you're dead, it's the only thing t...
LAUREN OLIVER So many things become beautiful when you really look.
LAUREN OLIVER That's all I want. Just you and me. Always.
LAUREN OLIVER Hearts are fragile things. That's why you have to be so careful.
LAUREN OLIVER The deadliest of all deadly things: It kills you both when you have it and
when you don’t.
LAUREN OLIVER I run for I don't know how long. Hours, maybe, or days. Alex told me to run. So I run. You have to u...
LAUREN OLIVER Yeah, but our choices are limited. We choose from a list that they chose for us." She said.
"We...
LAUREN OLIVER Everything in me feels fluttering and free, like I could take off from the ground at any second. Mus...
LAUREN OLIVER I think 'Voldemort' is definitely the scariest villain.
LAUREN OLIVER Finishing books - and leaving the world you've created - is always a kind of emotionally wrenchi...
LAUREN OLIVER 'Requiem' has been controversial because people don't feel I gave it closure.
LAUREN OLIVER Time becomes a stutter-the space between drumbeats, splintered into fragments, and also endlessly lo...
LAUREN OLIVER I wonder idly how long i can go without sleep before I flip my shit and start running down the stree...
LAUREN OLIVER But you can build a future out of anything. A scrap, a flicker. The desire to go forward, slowly, on...
LAUREN OLIVER Most of the time-- 99 percent of the time-- you just don't know how and why the threads are looped t...
LAUREN OLIVER You don't reach points in life at which everything is sorted out for us. I believe in endings th...
LAUREN OLIVER I love to sleep. I'm an excellent, excellent sleeper.
LAUREN OLIVER Someday all the wilds will be razed, and we will be left with a concrete landscape, a land of pretty...
LAUREN OLIVER Do you want any breakfast, Sam?” my mom asks. I never eat breakfast at home, but my mom still asks...
LAUREN OLIVER It amazes me how easy it is for things to change, how easy it is to start off down the same road you...
LAUREN OLIVER Are you sure that being like everybody else will make you happy?"
"I don't know any other way."...
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 i think of all the thousands of billions of steps and missteps and chances and coincidences that hav...
LAUREN OLIVER And there it is: Even though we’re standing in the same patch of sun-drenched pavement, we might a...
LAUREN OLIVER No one had ever told her this basic fact: not everyone got to be loved.
LAUREN OLIVER And you can't love, not fully, unless you are loved in return.
LAUREN OLIVER The flip side of freedom is this: When you're completely free, you're also completely on your own.
LAUREN OLIVER It's funny, isn't it? When you are young you just want to be old, and then later you wish you could ...
LAUREN OLIVER This is the past: It drifts, it gathers. If you are not careful, it will bury you. This is half the ...
LAUREN OLIVER I don’t like that smell,” Julian says quietly. If he were less well trained, and less careful, h...
LAUREN OLIVER This is the world we live in, a world of safety and happiness and order, a world without love.
...
LAUREN OLIVER The devil stole into the Garden of Eden.

He carried with him the disease— amor deliria ...
LAUREN OLIVER It’s hard not to be afraid while I’m still uncured, though so far the deliria hasn’t touched m...
LAUREN OLIVER Things weren’t always as good as they are now. In school we learned that in the old days, the dark...
LAUREN OLIVER For all the people who have infected me with amor deliria nervosa in the past
- you know who yo...
LAUREN OLIVER That’s a funny thing: you think, when awful things happen, everything else just stops, like you wo...
LAUREN OLIVER She knew that this day, this feeling, couldn't last forever. Everything passed; that was partly why ...
LAUREN OLIVER I’ll tell you another secret, this one for your own good. You may think the past has something to ...
LAUREN OLIVER Everything looks stark and vivid and frozen, as though drawn precisely and outlined in ink - parents...
LAUREN OLIVER Everything has taken on a strange, distant quality - the sounds of running and shouting outside get ...
LAUREN OLIVER His eyes are the color of honey. These are the eyes I remember from my dreams.
LAUREN OLIVER We'll walk together holding hands, and kiss in broad daylight, and love each other as much as we wan...
LAUREN OLIVER Nothing has ever been so painful or delicious as being so close to him and being unable to do anythi...
LAUREN OLIVER His eyes are blazing with light, more light than all the lights in every city in the whole world, mo...
LAUREN OLIVER I know the rules. I've been living here longer than you have."
He cracks a smile then. He nudge...
LAUREN OLIVER They haven't killed us yet," I say, and I imagine that one day I will fly a plane over Portland, ove...
LAUREN OLIVER ....love and desire enjoy a symbiotic relationship, meaning that one cannot exist without the other....
LAUREN OLIVER This is what I want. This is the only thing I've ever wanted. Everything else—every single second ...
LAUREN OLIVER I wish I could close my eyes and be blown into dust and nothingness, feel all my thoughts disperse l...
LAUREN OLIVER Alex loved books. He was the one who first introduced me to poetry. That's another reason I can't re...
LAUREN OLIVER I told you," he whispers back. I can feel his breath just tickling the space behind my ear, making m...
LAUREN OLIVER This is the strange way of the world, that people who simply want to love are instead forced to beco...
LAUREN OLIVER Who knows? Maybe they’re right. Maybe we are driven crazy by our feelings. Maybe love is a disease...
LAUREN OLIVER How can someone have the power to shatter you to dust--and also to make you feel so whole?
LAUREN OLIVER My heart shoots into my throat every time I think I see his loping walk, or catch sight of some flop...
LAUREN OLIVER i feel like a curtain has dropped away and i'm seeing people for who they really are, different, and...
LAUREN OLIVER I want to help you,' I say to Juliet, though I know that I can't make her understand, not like this....
LAUREN OLIVER And a face above mine, white and beautiful, eyes as large as the moon. You saved me. A hand o...
LAUREN OLIVER Be honest: Are you surprised that I didn't realize sooner? Are you surprised that it took me so long...
LAUREN OLIVER So are you going to be my knight in shining armor or what?'

Kent does a little bow. 'You ...
LAUREN OLIVER I'm not with Rob," I say quickly. "Not anymore."
"You're not?" He's staring at me so intensely...
LAUREN OLIVER That's the thing about best friends. That's what they do. They keep you from spinning off the edge.
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...
LAUREN OLIVER I've never really thought about it before, but it's a miracle how many kinds of light there are in t...
LAUREN OLIVER And I guess that's when it starts to hit me: the whole point is, you do what you can.
LAUREN OLIVER The last laugh, the last cup of coffee, the last sunset, the last time you jump through a sprinkler,...
LAUREN OLIVER The butterflies are working their way up from my stomach into my head, making me feel dizzy, and I t...
LAUREN OLIVER No one can tell us no. No one can make us stop. We have picked each other, and the rest of the world...
LAUREN OLIVER For a second we just stand there in silence. Then, suddenly, Alex is back,
easy and smiling aga...
LAUREN OLIVER The idea—the fact of it, the fact that he even noticed and thought about me for more than one seco...
LAUREN OLIVER What does it feel like to be infected?"
"I-- I can't describe it." I force the words out. Can't...
LAUREN OLIVER I’m used to a feeling of doubleness, of thinking one thing and having to do another, a constant tu...
LAUREN OLIVER This is the past: It drifts, it gathers. If you are not careful, it will bury you.
LAUREN OLIVER I wonder what Lena is doing now. I always wonder what Lena is doing. Rachel, too: both my girls, my ...
LAUREN OLIVER The dagger pin is all I have left. It is comfort and pain, both, because it reminds me of all I’ve...
LAUREN OLIVER This is how Tack and Raven work: It’s their private language of push and return, argument and conc...
LAUREN OLIVER