Lauren Oliver

“I didn’t know it would be like this,” he says in a whisper. And then: “I’m scared.”

“The Wilds aren’t safe anymore,”

“Stop!” His voice rings out sharply, hard as a slap. He releases me and I stumble backward. “Alex is dead, do you hear me? All of that—what we felt, what it meant—that’s done now, okay? Buried. Blown away.”“Alex!”He has started to turn away; now he whirls around. The moon lights him stark white and furious, a camera image, two-dimensional, gripped by the flash. “I don’t love you, Lena. Do you hear me? I never loved you.”The air goes. Everything goes. “I don’t believe you.” I’m crying so hard, I can hardly speak. He takes one step toward me. And now I don’t recognize him at all. He has transformed entirely, turned into a stranger. “It was a lie. Okay? It was all a lie. Craziness, like they always said. Just forget about it. Forget it ever happened.”

“I was glad when the Invalids were executed. Some people complained that lethal injection was too humane for convicted terrorists, but I thought it sent a powerful message: We are not the evil ones. We are reasonable and compassionate. We stand for fairness, structure, and organization.It’s the other side, the uncureds, who bring the chaos.”

“My anger is ebbing away now, replace with a crazy grief for the stupid, dumb, trysting animal, who was running too fast and didn't look where it was going and still -even after its leg was scissored in the trap- believed it might escape. Stupid, stupid, stupid.”

“Live free or die.”

“You don't know shit about me, I don't know shit about you. You don't even know shit about you.”

“The old Lena is dead,”

“I don't love you, Lena. Do you hear me? I never love you.”

“Alex is dead, do you hear me? All of that-what we felt, what it meant- that's done now, okay? Buried. Blown away.”

“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.”

“In one of the tents, Julian is sleeping. And in another: Alex”

“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.”

“I was glad when the invalids were executed”

“That is what Alex is now: a shadow-boy”

“Mama, Mama, put me to bedI won’t make it home, I’m already half-deadI met an Invalid, and fell for his artHe showed me his smile, and went straight for my heart.”

“I put my forehead on his collarbone, place one hand on his chest. Its rhythm reassures me: He is real, and he is now.”

“I do know you.” I’m still crying, swallowing back spasms in my throat,struggling to breathe. This is a nightmare and I will wake up. This is amonster-story, and he has come back to me a terror-creation, patched together,broken and hateful, and I will wake up and he will be here, andwhole, and mine again. I find his hands, lace my fingers through his evenas he tries to pull away. “It’s me, Alex. Lena. Your Lena. Remember? Remember37 Brooks, and the blanket we used to keep in the backyard—”“Don’t,” he says. His voice breaks on the word.“And I always beat you in Scrabble,” I say. I have to keep talking, andkeep him here, and make him remember. “Because you always let me win.And remember how we had a picnic one time, and the only thing we couldfind from the store was canned spaghetti and some green beans? And yousaid to mix them—”“Don’t.”“And we did, and it wasn’t bad. We ate the whole stupid can, we were sohungry. 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.”

“That is the rule of the Wilds: You must be bigger and stronger and tougher. You must hurt or be hurt.”

“Who knows? Maybe they’re right. Maybe we are driven crazy by our feelings. Maybe love is a disease, and we would be better off without it. But we have chosen a different road. And in the end that is the point of escaping the cure: We are free to choose.We are even free to choose the wrong thing.”

“The question was: Will you meet me tomorrow? And the word was: Yes.”

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

“It will kill me, it will kill me, it will kill me. And I don't care.”

“Mistake, mistake, mistake. A strange word: stinging, somehow.”

“There is a nocturna for every single person in the world! And each night the nocturni sip dreams from the River of Knowledge, and fly out into the world, and deliver them to their humans.”

“They looked like butterflies, except that they had the long, pointed beaks of hummingbirds, and they seemed to be made out of darkness and air.”

“There is so much fragility in kissing, in other people: It is all glass.”

“It won't matter if nobody ever thinks I'm pretty (although sometimes I wish, just for a second, that somebody would)”

“I'm not ugly but I'm not pretty either. Everything is in-between. I have eyes that aren't green or brown, but a muddle. I'm not thin but I'm not fat either. the only thing you could definitely say about me is that: I'm short”

“I am growing stronger. I am a stone being excavated by the slow passage of water; I am wood charred by a fire.”

“The first time I saw you, at the Governor, I handn't been to watch the birds at the border in years. But that's what you reminded me of. You were jumping up, and you were yelling something, and your hair was coming loose from your ponytail, and you were so fast..." He shakes his head. "Just a flash, and then you were gone, Exactly like a bird.”

“I think of Lindsay in the bathroom of Rosalita’s, and wonder how many people are clutching secrets like little fists, like rocks sitting in the pits of their stomachs. All of them, maybe.”

“If I could make it better I would,” he says. In some ways it’s a stupid, obvious thing to say, but the way he said it, so honest and simple like it’s the truest thing there is, makes the tears prick in my eyes. (Before I Fall)”

“Sometimes, in periods of oppression and mass insanity, the most decisive form of resistance is simply the decision to not engage.”

“She liked that word: we. It sounded warm and open, like a hug.”

“is the most deadly of all evils, you can die of love or lack of it.”

“That’s when you realize the most of it—life, the relentless mechanism of existing—isn’t about you. It doesn’t include you at all. It will thrust onward even after you’ve jumped the edge. Even after you’re dead.”

“But for now, the future, like the past, means nothing. For now, there is only a homestead built of trash and scraps, at the edge of a broken city, just beyond a towering city dump; and our arrival-hungry, and half-frozen, to a place of food and water and walls that keep out the brutal winds. This, for us, is heaven.”

“I know some of you areThinking maybe I deserved it.But before you start pointingFringers, let me ask youIs what I did really so bad?So bad I deserved to die?So bad I deserved to die like that?Is what I did really much worseThen what anybody else does?Is it really so much worseThan what you do?”

“The sparrows jumped before they knew how to fly, and they learned to fly only because they had jumped”

“Music doesn't have a body, but that's real...”

“Po flickered. "Thank you?" it repeated. "What is that?"Liesl thought. "It means, You were wonderful," she said. "It means, I couldn't have done it without you.”

“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.”

“Alex.”

“It is a beautiful world for the people who get to play the fist.”

“You can’t go home again” ─ isn’t necessarily that places change but people do.”

“Fridays are the hardest in some ways: you’re so close to freedom.”

“And you should hear the music. Incredible, amazing music, like nothing you've ever heard, music that almost takes your head off, you know? That makes you want to scream and jump up and down and break stuff and cry...”

“Si l’amour conduit à la folie,Alors je veux perdre la raison.Si l’amour est une maladie,Alors je veux être contaminée.Si l’amour est la vérité,Alors je préfère une seule seconde de cette vieQu’une éternité de mensonges.”

“Welcome to the resistance, Lena,' he whispers to me. 'I'll try to make this quick.”