Quotes by Lauren Oliver

“It was so strange, the way that life moved forward: the twists and the dead ends, the sudden opportunities. She supposed if you could predict or foresee everything that was going to happen, you’d lose the motivation to go through it all. The promise was always in the possibility.”

“There are so many things I want to tell her, so many things she doesnt know; like how I remember when she first came home from the hospital, a big pink blob with a perma-smile, and she used to fall asleep while grabbing on to my pinter finger; how I sued to give her piggyback rides up and down the beach on Cape Cod, and she would tub on my ponytail to direct me one way or the other; how soft and furry her head was when she was first born; that the first time you kiss someone youll be nervous, and it will be weird, and it wont be as good as you want it to be, and thats okay; how you should only fall in love with people who will fall in love back... I feel an ache in my throat, but i manage to smile. Two conflicting desires go through me at the same time, each as sharp as a razor blade: I want to see you grow up and Dont ever change.”

“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)”

“But maybe happiness isnt in the choosing. Maybe its in the fiction, in the pretending: that wherever we have ended up is where we intended to be all along.”

“Find the things that matter, and hold on to them, and fight for them, and refuse to let them go.”

“In my dream I know I am falling. But there is no up or down, no walls or sides or ceilings, just the sensation of cold and darkness everywhere. I am so scared I could scream. But when I open my mouth, nothing happens. And I wonder if you fall forever and never touch down, is it really still falling? I think I will fall forever.”

“Of all the miracles Po had seen in the time and space of its death, Po thought this--the absorption of another, the carrying of it--was the most bewildering and remarkable of all. Whenever Bundle separated again, Po was left with an ache of sadness that reminded the ghost of the body it had left behind.”

“And for a moment―for a split second―everything else falls away, the whole pattern and order of my life, and a huge joy crests in my chest. I am no one, and I owe nothing to anybody, and my life is my own.”

“Id rather die on my own terms than live on theirs. Id rather die loving Alex than live without him.”

“Nothing has ever been so painful or delicious as being so close to him and being unable to do anything about it: like eating ice cream so fast on a hot day you get a splitting headache.”

“And you cant love, not fully, unless you are loved in return.”

“God bless Dunkin Donuts.”

“I love you. Remember. They cannot take it”

“And suddenly its all so ridiculously and stupidly clear I feel like laughing. This is what I want. This is the only thing ive ever wanted. Everything else---every single second of every single day that has come before this very moment, this kiss---has meant nothing.”

“He is my world and my world is him and without him there is no world.”

“Maybe before you die, its your ghosts you see.”

“Now Id rather be infected with love for the tiniest sliver of a second than live a hundred years smothered by a lie.”

“I guess that’s just part of loving people: You have to give things up. Sometimes you even have to give them up.”

“They say that just before you die your whole life flashes before your eyes, but thats not how it happened for me.”

“His eyes are blazing with light, more light than all the lights in every city in the whole world, more light than we could ever invent if we had ten thousand billion years.”