Quotes by Lauren Oliver

Lord, help us root our feet to the earthAnd our eyes to the roadAnd always remember the fallen angelsWho, attempting to soar,Were seared instead by the sun and, wings melting,Came crashing back to the sea.Lord, help root my eyes to the earthAnd stay my eyes to the roadSo I may never stumble.)

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.

Things change after you die, though, I guess because dying is the loneliest thing you can do.

Maybe before you die, its your ghosts you see.

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

Let me tell you something about dying: its not as bad as they says.its the coming-back-to-life part that hurts.

Two weeks until your cure she says finally. Sixteen days I say, but in my head Im counting: Seven days. Seven days until Im free and away from all these people and their sliding superficial lives brushing past one another gliding, gliding, gliding from life to death. For them theres hardly a change between the two.

It was all very strange, Mr. Gray thought, as he wiped the coffee canister clean with a sponge. Very, very mysterious. You were born; you lived a whole life; and at the end, you wound up in a coffee canister.Ah, well, he said out loud quietly. Thats just the way things are. Lifes a funny business. Death, he supposed, was the punch line.

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.

Its amazing how close I have been, all this time, to my old life. And yet the distance that divides me from it is vast.

Poetry isnt like any writing Ive ever heard before. I dont understand all of it, just bits of images, sentences that appear half-finished, all fluttering together like brightly colored ribbons in the wind.

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.

[S]hed realized that he had loved her only because she belonged to him.

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.

Heres one of the things I learned that morning: if you cross a line and nothing happens, the line loses meaning. Its like that old riddle about a tree falling in a forest, and whether it makes a sound if theres no one around to hear it. You keep drawing a line farther and farther away, crossing it every time. Thats how people end up stepping off the edge of the earth.

The details that are lifes special pattern, like how in handwoven rugs what really makes them unique are the tiny flaws in the stitching, little gaps and jumps and stutters that can never be reproduced. so many things become beautiful when you really look.

Sometimes I feel like if you just watch things, just sit still and let the world exist in front of you - sometimes I swear that just for a second time freezes and the world pauses in its tilt. Just for a second. And if you somehow found a way to live in that second, then you would live forever.

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.

My point is: maybe you can afford to wait. Maybe for you theres a tomorrow. Maybe for you theres one thousand tomorrows, or three thousand, or ten, so much time you can bathe in it, roll around it, let it slide like coins through your fingers. So much time you can waste it.But for some of us theres only today. And the truth is, you never really know.

Everyone just wasting time because they have so much of it to waste, minutes slipping by on whos with who and did you hear.