Lauren Oliver

“Maybe, the hope said. Maybe.”

“...and for a second I feel an overwhelming sense of joy, and I think she's done it, she's flying, and time seems to stop with her glittering in the air like a beautiful bird. But then time resumes, and the air doesn't hold her...”

“Liberty in acceptance; peace in enclosure; happiness in renunciation.”

“Love, the deadliest of all deadly things.”

“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 can admit, now, that I must have loved Lena. Not in an Unnatural way, but my feelings for her must have been a kind of sickness. How can someone have the power to shatter you to dust--and also to make you feel so whole?”

“It seem absurd to me that they don't know, haven't felt any change or tremor, even as my life has been completely turned upside down.”

“Words that mean nothing, really, just sound intoned into vastness and darkness, little scrabbling attempts to latch onto something when we're falling.”

“Amor deliria nervosa isn't a disease of love. It's a disease of selfishness.”

“Quiet through the grave go I; or else beneath the graves I lie”

“I just wanted you to be safe," my mother says. "Do you understand that? Safe, and happy. Anything I could do... even if it meant I couldn't be with you...”

“...the past: It drifts, it gathers. If you are not careful, it will bury you. This is half the reason for the cure: It clean-sweeps; it makes the past, and all its pain, distant, like the barest impression on sparkling glass.”

“You do not know what will happen if you take down the walls; you cannot see through to the other side, don’t know whether it will bring freedom or ruin, resolution or chaos. It might be paradise, or destruction. Take down the walls.”

“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.”

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

“For a second, I feel a sense of overwhelming grief: for how things change, for the fact that we can never go back. I'm not certain of anything anymore. I don't know what will happen--”

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

“We are all punished for the lives we have chosen, in one way or another.”

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

“Guilt requires absolution”

“The memories seem like snapshots from someone else’s life.”

“They couldn’t have known that even this was a lie—that we never really choose, not entirely. 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.But maybe happiness isn’t in the choosing. Maybe it’s in the fiction, in the pretending: that wherever we have ended up is where we intended to be all along.”

“it occurs to me that there is so much I never knew about him--his past, his role in the resistance, what his life was like in the Wilds, before he came to Portland, and I feel a flash of grief so intense it almost makes me cry out: not for what I lost, but for the chances I missed.”

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

“I start to follow her, and Alex grabs my hand."I'll find you," he says, watching me with the eyes I remember. "I won't let you go again."I don't trust myself to speak. Instead I nod, hoping that he understands me. He squeezes my hand."Go," he says.”

“There's always some relief in giving up.”

“Because I think you're right. You can make a difference." He told me experiences were kind of like fate, and fate usually came in the form of a test. He told me fate liked to be worshiped. It liked to see us fall on out knees before it offered to help us up..." ♥”

“Take down the walls.Otherwise you must live closely, in fear, building barricades against the unknown, saying prayers against the darkness, speaking verse of terror and tightness.Otherwise you may never know hell, but you will not find heaven, either. You will not know fresh air and flying.”

“And suddenly I am blindingly angry at Raven--for her lectures, and her stubbornness, and for thinking that the way that you help people is by driving them against a wall, by beating them down until they fight back.”

“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.”

“He has left nothing except for a note, which I find neatly folded under one of my sneakers.The Story of Solomon is the only way I know how to explain.And then, in smaller letters:Forgive me.”

“It's a bummer in some ways, since she never surprises me by making up my sheets anymore, or leaving folded laundry or a new sundress on my bed like she did when I was in middle school. But at least I know she's not rooting through my drawers while I'm at school, looking for drugs or sex toys or whatever.”

“The last thing I need is to morph into one of those people who's always wearing black and doodling guns and bombs on her notebook.”

“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.”

“The first one, we’ll name Blue.”

“That’s what you do for family.Anything.”

“Only humans are unpredictable.”

“Lies are just stories, and stories are all that matter. We all tell stories. Some are more truthful than others, maybe, but in the end the only thing that counts is what you can make people believe.”

“His secret name, which belongs to me, and to him, and to no one else.”

“There are no happy endings, only breaks in the regular action.”

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

“Raven looks at me. “What about you, Lena?”I can feel Alex’s eyes on me. My mouth is so dry; the sun is so blinding. I look away, toward the hundreds and hundreds of people who have been driven out of their homes, out of their lives, to this place of dust and dirtiness, all because they wanted the power to feel, to think, to choose for themselves. They couldn’t have known that even this was a lie—that we never really choose, not entirely. 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.But maybe happiness isn’t in the choosing. Maybe it’s in the fiction, in the pretending: that wherever we have ended up is where we intended to be all along.Coral shifts, and moves her hand to Alex’s arm.“I’m with Julian,” I say at last. This, after all, is what I have chosen.”

“Don't you get that yet? You don't know shit about me, I don't know shit about you. You don't even know shit about you.”

“A veces pienso que las personas están en lo cierto sobre todo, la gente del otro lado en Zombilandia. Tal vez sería mejor si no pudiéramos amar. Si no pudiéramos perdernos. Si no pudieran pisotear nuestros corazones, destrozarlos; si no tuviéramos que remendarlo como monstros Frankenstein, todo cosido junto y ligado por no ser que. Si solo pudiéramos flotar, como la nieve.Eso es Zombilandia: frio, calma, silencio. Es el mundo después de una nevada, la paz que viene con ella, el silencio sordo y el sentido de que nada en el mundo se mueve. Es hermoso, a su modo. Tal vez es mejor así.Pero como alguien que ha visto el verano -grandes explosiones de gris y el cielo iluminado como una explosión de electricidad a la puesta del sol, un montón de flores y viento que huele a miel- elegiría la nieve?”

“Yo pensé que nunca volvería a ver de nuevo el cielo. Cualquier cosa, cualquier cosa es posible, si puedes ver el cielo.”

“¿Cómo la amé?Déjame contar las maneras.Las pecas en su nariz, como la sombra de una sombra; la forma en que ella se mordía el labio inferior cuando estaba pensando, la forma en que su cola de caballo se balanceaba cuando ella caminaba y cómo cuando corría se veía como si hubiera nacido para ir rápido, cómo encajaba perfectamente contra mi pecho, su olor y el tacto de sus labios y su piel, que estaba siempre cálida, y cómo ella sonreía.Como si tuviera un secreto. Cómo inventaba siempre palabras durante el Scrabble. Hyddyn (música secreta). Grof (comida de cafetería). Quaw (El sonido que hace un pato bebé). Como eructó a su manera el alfabeto una vez, y me reí tanto que escupí refresco por la nariz. Y cómo me miraba como si pudiera salvarla de todo lo malo en el mundo.Esta era mi secreto: Ella fue la que me salvó.”

“Me dije que si estaba viva iba a seguir adelante, me olvidaría, sería feliz de nuevo. Intenté decirme a mí mismo que era lo que quería para ella.Sabía que nunca volvería a verla. Pero la esperanza llegó, no importa cuán duro y rápido traté de sacarla fuera. Al igual que estas hormigas coloradas diminutas que solíamos tener en Portland. No importaba lo rápido que las mataran, siempre había más, un flujo constante de ellas, resistentes, siempre multiplicándose.Tal vez , la esperanza, dijo. Tal vez”

“En el silencio y la oscuridad, me hice más fuerte.”

“Déjame decirte algo sobre morir: no es tan malo como dicen.Es traer de vuelta a la vida partes que hieren.”

“I feel a flash of grief so intense it almost makes me cry out: not for what I lost, but for the chances I missed.”