Lauren DeStefano

“Even the human race can't claim to be natural anymore. We are fake, dying things. How fitting that I would end up in this sham of a marriage.”

“A party in the orange grove. The pain on Linden's face is immediate. I am unwavering. He has cost me more pain than I will ever be able to repay.”

“Poor kid,' Jenna says, and rolls her eyes toward me for a moment. Then she returns to her book. 'She doesn't even understand what kind of place this is.”

“And if I have to die trying, I will get out of here.”

“My worries always lead to dungeons; I can't imagine a worse thing than to be imprisoned for the rest of one's life, especially with so few years to enjoy what little there is.”

“On tiptoes the redhead wouldn't even reach my shoulders; she is clearly too young to be a bride. And the willowy girl is too forlorn. And I am too unwilling.Yet here we are.”

“...our parents' death broke his sense of wonder. My left-brained brother, who once had dreams of saving the world, now laughs at anyone who tries.”

“For males twenty-five is the fatal age. For women it's twenty. We are all dropping like flies.”

“Love is not enough to keep any of us alive.”

“Real’ is a dirty word in this place.”

“But instead of tears, when I press my face against the pillow, a horrible, primal scream comes out of me. It's unlike anything I thought myself capable of. Rage, unlike anything I've ever known.”

“It's the silence I imagine in the rest of the world, the silence of an endless ocean and uninhabitable island, a silence that can be seen from space.”

“Because even if the lie is beautiful, the truth is what you face in the end.”

“It's best to let her go," he says.No, no, that's wrong. It's never right to give up on someone.”

“You’re insane, you know that?” he says. “It’s the only thing keeping me afloat,” I say.”

“Love unrequited is violent. He loves you so much that he's turned it into hate.”

“My head is my favorite swimming pool.”

“But there’s no such thing as free. There are only different and more horrible ways to be enslaved.”

“Momentum,' She repeats. 'You can't just stand there if you want something to fly. You have to run.”

“It's never right to give up on someone.”

“There was a desperate undercurrent to our marriage--a feeling of being in a dream from which I couldn't seem to awaken. A nagging sense that my life, laid out so neatly like the clothes Deirdre left on my divan, was no longer my own.”

“Once upon a time there were two parents, two children, and a brick house with lilies in the yard. The parents died, the lilies wilted. One child disappeared. Then the other.”

“I'll tell you something about true love. There's no science to it. It's as natural as the sky.”

“There's a hazy smile on her lips that won't go away, and her hair is a mess. It's like a brushfire filled with casualties.”

“There's a sort of dead passion in him. A spark that, had he more years to live, would be a wildfire.”

“...maybe hope isn't such a bad thing. Maybe it's what keeps us together.”

“Do you know what my father used to say?" I ask her. "He used to say that songs had a heart. A crescendo that can make all your blood rush from your head to your toes.”

“The only characters I ever don't like are ones that leave no impression on me. And I don't write characters that leave no impression on me.”

“And then I wonder, does my brother think of me this way? We entered this world together, one after the other, beats in a pulse. But I will be first to leave it. That's what I've been promised. When we were children, did he dare to imagine an empty space beside him where I then stood giggling, blowing soap bubbles through my fingers? When I die, will he be sorry that he loved me? Sorry that we were twins? Maybe he already is.”

“I should not have loved my daughter as I did. Not in this world in which nothing lives for long. You children are flies. You are roses. You multiply and die.”

“He kissed back, all the pages spread out around us like riddles waiting to be solved. Let them wait. Let my genes unravel, my hinges come loose. If my fate rests in the hands of a madman, let death come and bring its worse. I'll take the ruined craters of laboratories, the dead trees, this city with ashes in the oxygen, if it means freedom. I'd sooner die here than live a hundred years with wires in my veins.”

“Before I can process what’s happening, Deirdre has opened her hands and Linden has taken the ring from her and slipped it onto my finger.“Rhine Ashby,” he says.“My wife.”

“Tell freedom I said hello.”

“Suddenly the clouds seem high above us. They’re moving over us in an arch, circling the planet. They have seen abysmal oceans and charred, scorched islands. They have seen how we destroyed the world. If I could see everything, as the clouds do, would I swirl around this remaining continent, still so full of color and life and seasons, wanting to protect it? Or would I just laugh at the futility of it all, and meander onward, down the earth’s sloping atmosphere?”

“Did you tell freedom hello for me?”

“Tell me about yourself.""Myself?" He looks confused."Yes," I say, patting the mattress."You know all there is to know," he says, sitting beside me."Not true," I say. "Where were you born? What's your favourite season? Anything.""Here. Florida," he says. "I remember a woman in a red dress with curly brown hair. Maybe she was my mother, I'm not sure. And summer. What about you?" The last part is said with a smile. He smiles so infrequently that I consider each one a trophy.”

“So how long do you think it’ll be?” he says. “Before the next hurricane comes along to take you home.”“Can I tell you my biggest fear?” I say.“Yes. Tell me.”“That it will be a very windless four years.”

“who once had dreams of saving the world, now laughs at anyone whotries.”

“The trick was looking past the illusion, because the exit was never as far away as it seemed.”

“I shake my head, watching snow tumble and swirl from an all-white sky. The world seems so clean if you only look up”

“Fall has always been my favorite season. The time when everything bursts with its last beauty, as if nature had been saving up all year for the grand finale.”

“I always knew I was an excellent liar; I just didn't know that I had it in me to fool myself.”

“She smiles at our husband as she moves, and he blushes, overcome by her beauty. But I know what her smile really means...Her smile is her revenge.”

“I wonder if she has figured out that I'll never love Linden, especially not in the way she does, and that he'll never love anyone the way he loves her. I wonder if she realizes, despite all her efforts to train me, that I can never take her place.”

“There's nothing here to say good-bye to. There's no dancing girl. No mischievous smile. She's gone, off with her sisters, broken free, escaped. And if she were here now, she would say, "Go.”

“As I go, I hear her screaming my name, in a brutal, bloody way, like she's being murdered, which maybe she is. But slowly. It will take her six years to die.”

“The world seems so clean if you only looked up.”

“Times like this, when she slips her hand into mine and holds on tight, and our husband becomes just a shadow in the doorway.”

“My sisters were in that van.”

“Fate, I think, is a thief.”