Quotes by Lauren Oliver

But those are just words, and words are just stories, and eventually, always, stories come to an end.

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

I dont know which is worse: that Im home and so much is different, or that Im home and so much feels the same.

The butterflies are working their way up from my stomach into my head, making me feel dizzy, and I try to calm myself by imagining the ocean outside, its ragged breathing, the seagulls turning pinwheels in the sky.It will be over soon, I tell myself. It will be over soon and then you’ll go home, and you’ll never have to think about the evaluation again.

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

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.

Every choice is limited. Thats life.

I vowed after that day that I would be your hero too, no matter how long it took

And then, just at that moment, when Im no longer sure if Im dreaming or awake or walking some valley in between where everything you wish for comes true, I feel the flutter of his lips on mine.

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

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.

—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.

Let me show you

People are stubborn and stupid. Theyre irrational. theyre destructive. thats the point, isnt it? Thats the whole reason for the cure. People will no longer destroy their own lives. They wont be capable of it.

When she was little, shed liked to pretend that stars were really lights anchoring distant islands, as if she wasnt looking up but only out across a dark sea. She knew the truth now but still found stars comforting, especially in their sameness. A sky full of burning replicas.

Amazingly, I can still see the stars: whole galaxies blooming from nothing - pink and purple suns, vast silver oceans, a thousand white moons.

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

She lives for this-the fight, the battle for survival. She actually enjoys it.

That was the problem with the outside world, the human world. The whole thing was made up puzzles, of a language she didnt quite speak.

And then, just at that moment, when Im no longer sure if Im dreaming or awake or walking some valley in between where everything you wish for comes true, I feel the flutter of his lips on mine, but its too late, Im slipping, Im gone, hes gone, and the moment curls away and back on itself like a flower folding up for the night.