Lauren Oliver

“I’ve never really had a party before.” “Why did you have one now?” I say, just to keep him talking. He gives a half laugh. “I thought if I had a party, you would come.”

“That’s a funny thing: you think, when awful things happen, everything else just stops, like you would forget to pee and eat and get thirsty, but it’s not really true. It’s like you and your body are two separate things, like your body is betraying you, chugging on, idiotic and animal, craving water and sandwiches and bathroom breaks while your world falls apart.”

“Lindsay calls them the Pugs: pretty from far away, ugly up close.”

“At the same time I know that it’s not really their fault, at least not completely. I did my part too. I did it on a hundred different days and in a thousand different ways, and I know it. But this makes the anger worse, not better.”

“whatever I was writing, I was always trying to write my way back to you.”

“—And you completely blow me away and rip my world up and everything else, and then you go back to ignoring me.” “I blew you away?” I squeak out before I can stop myself. He stares at me steadily. “You blew everything away.”

“The secret is,” I say, whispering right into his ear, “that yours was the best kiss I’ve ever had in my life.”“But I’ve never kissed you,” he whispers back. Around us the rain sounds like falling glass. “Not since third grade, anyway.” I smile, but I’m not sure if he can see it.“Better get started, then,” I say, “because I don’t have much time.”

“Juliet!' I whip around but not quickly enough. She's swallowed by the crowd, the gap that allowed her to break for the door closing just as quickly as it opened, a shifting Tetris pattern of bodies...”

“my wild, uncured, erratic, incomprehensible heart.”

“And in that moment, the wordless thing passed between us, the thing that wasn't quite love but was so close I could believe in it sometimes.”

“A small part of me was glad. There's always relief in giving up.”

“But that's the problem with love - it acts on you, works through you, resists your attempts to control.”

“There is no before. There is only now, and what comes next.”

“We wanted the freedom to love. We wanted the freedom to choose. Now we have to fight for it.”

“And you can't love, not fully, unless you are loved in return.”

“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.”

“This is what amazes me: that people are new every day. That they are never the same. You must always invent them, and they must always invent themselves, too.”

“With the cure, relationships are all the same, and rules and expectations are defined. Without the cure, relationships must be reinvented every day, languages constantly decoded and deciphered. Freedom is exhausting.”

“Stupid how the mind will try to distract itself.”

“Perfection is a promise, and a reassurance that we are not wrong.”

“Yes, the world was very strange. But you had to walk through. That was the trick. You had to keep walking through, always, with your chin held high, the way she had passed through the tunnels of the underworld, with only the dim light of the lumpen to guide her. That was the other trick, the other truth: Light would come to you from unexpected places.”

“For a moment the mole let his disappointment show on his snout. Then he grunted, "You're much smarter than you smell." Liza let out a whoop of satisfaction and chose not to worry too much about what stupidity smelled like.”

“Liza made a sudden decision. "I'll be your friend," she announced. she had trouble speaking the words but was glad once she had spoken them. She did not really want to be friends with an enormous rat of questionable sanity, but it seemed the right thing to say.”

“It was strange how once you saw a rat wearing clothes, it became slightly disgusting to imagine the animal naked.”

“Prodigies! Geniuses! Artists! The lumer-lumpen are some of the most sensitive, the most brilliant, the wisest creatures on the earth or inside of it. There is more wisdom in the head of a lumpen than you will find in all the libraries of the world...If only they could speak...”

“Who taught you to go around falling on rats ans squishing on hats? Terrible, terrible. Must always be mindful of your manners.”

“I love you. Remember. And someday, I will find you again.”

“That's the easy thing about falling: there is only one choice after that.”

“But from the beginning, I knew that in a world where destiny was dead, I was destined, forever, to love him. Even though he didn't - though he couldn't - ever love me back.”

“Is it possible to tell the truth in a society of lies? Or must you always, of necessity, become a liar?”

“This was what being cured was like: like being in a fishbowl, circling always inside the same glass.”

“That’s what made it sofrightening to the lawmakers: Love obeysno laws other than its own.”

“De har ljugit om allt - om stängslet, om de ogiltigas existens och dessutom om en miljon andra saker. De har sagt att razziorna görs för vår egen säkerhets skull. De har sagt att kontrollanternas enda intresse är att bevara lugn och ordning. De har sagt att kärlek är en sjukdom. De har sagt att man dör av den till slut. För allra första gången inser jag att också det måste vara en lögn.”

“Han säger: "Låt mig få visa dig."Och sedan kysser vi varandra. Eller jag tror åtminstone att vi kysser varandra - jag har bara sett det göras ett par gånger, snabba pickanden med stängda munnar, på bröllop eller vid högtidliga tilldragelser. Men det här liknar ingenting jag någonsin har sett eller föreställt mig eller ens drömt. Det här är som musik eller dans, fast bättre än båda. Hans mun är aningen öppen så jag öppnar min också. Hans läppar är mjuka, samma mjuka tryck som den tyst envisa rösten i mitt huvud som upprepar ordet ja.Värmen bara växer inom mig, vågor av ljus välver sig och bryts och får mig att känna mig som om jag sväver. Han trär fingrarna genom mitt hår, kupar handen om nacke och bakhuvud, rör den fjäderlätt över axlarna, och utan att tänka eller vilja det hittar mina händer till hans bröst, rör sig över hudens hetta, skulderbladens ben som liknar vingspetsar, käkens krökning, nätt och jämnt täckt av skäggstubb - allt så underligt och obekant, och överdådigt ljuvligt nytt. Mitt hjärta trummar så hårt att det värker i bröstet, men det är den goda sortens smärta, som känslan man får den första riktiga höstdagen när luften är frisk och klar och löven krullar sig i kanterna och vinden doftar svagt av rök - som slutet och början av något på en och samma gång. Jag kan svära på att jag känner hans hjärta dunka ett svar under min hand, ett omedelbart eko av mitt eget hjärta, som om våra kroppar talade med varandra.”

“Är du säker på att du blir lycklig av att vara som alla andra?" En tyst viskning; hans andedräkt mot mitt öra och min hals, hans mun som nuddar min hud. Och då tänker jag att jag kanske redan är död. Kanske bet hunden mig och jag blev slagen i huvudet och allt det här är bara en dröm - resten av världen har försvunnit. Bara han. Bara jag. Bara vi.”

“Första gången jag såg dig, vid Guvernören, hade jag inte varit och sett på fåglarna vid gränsen på många år. Men det var dem du påminde mig om. Du hoppade upp och du skrek något, och ditt hår höll på att lossna ur hästsvansen, och du var så snabb..." Han skakar på huvudet. "Som en blixt, och sedan var du borta. Precis som en fågel.”

“Det är underligt hur livet fungerar: man vill ha något och man väntar och väntar och det känns som en evighet. Sedan händer det och allt är över och det enda man vill är att krypa tillbaka in i den där stunden innan allt förändrades.”

“Du vet väl att man inte kan bli lycklig om man inte är olycklig ibland?”

“I have the urge to lay my hand on his shoulder and say, 'I understand.' But the words seem stupid. We can never understand. We can only try, fumbling our way through the tunneled places, reaching for light.”

“This is not what I wantef. This is not why I came to the Wilds, why Alex wanted me to come: not to turn my back and bury the people I care about, and build myself hard and careless on top of their bodies, as Raven does. This is what Zombies do.”

“Ya sabes que no puedes ser feliz a menos que seas desgraciada alguna vez, ¿verdad? – me dice susurrando, y su voz es áspera como si acabara de llorar”

“The walls are covered -crammed- with writing. No. Not writing. They are covered with a single four-letter word that has been inscribed over and over, on every available surface. Love.”

“But this isn’t like anything I’ve ever seen, or imagined, or even dreamed: This is like music or dancing but better than both.”

“It is war now, and armies need symbols.”

“I've been alone with him countless times, but this feels different. Here there are no eyes waiting to catch us, no voices waiting to shout at us, no hands ready to tear us apart--- just miles and miles of space. It's exciting and terrifying at the same time.”

“I love you. They can't take it away.”

“Sometimes I feel like she deserves a best friend who is just a little more special.”

“I wonder if this is how people get close: They heal each other's wounds.”

“I'm sorry,Lena”

“If you're ever wishing for things to go back to the way they were. You just have to look up.”