Lauren Oliver Quotes (81 Quotes)




    You have to go forward: It's the only way. You have to go forward no matter what happens. This is the universal law.




    Everytime he brushes me with his fingers, time seems to tether for a second, like it is in danger of dissolving. The whole world is dissolving, I decide, except for us. Us.

    I wish I could close my eyes and be blown into dust and nothingness, feel all my thoughts disperse like dandelion fluff drifting off on the wind. But his hands keep pulling me back: into the alley, and Portland, and a world that has suddenly stopped making sense.

    Less than a month ago all of August still stretched before us - long and golden and reassuring, like an endless period of delicious sleep.


    Feelings aren't forever. Time waits for no one, but progress waits for man to enact it.


    Like I've been sketched by an amateur artist: if you don't look too closely, it's all right, but start focusing and all the smudges and mistakes become really obvious.

    Suicide. A sideways word, a word that people whisper and mutter and cough: a word that must be squeezed out behind cupped palms or murmured behind closed doors. It was only in dreams that I heard the word shouted, screamed.




    Summer explodes into Portland. In early June the heat was there but not the color--the green were still pale and tentative, the morning had a biting coolness--but by the last week of school everything is Technicolor and splash, outrageous blue skies and purple thunderstorms and ink-black night skies and red flowers as brights as spots of blood.





    A string of bright white buildinh, glistening like teeth over the slurping mouth of the ocean.


    I'd rather die on my own terms than live on theirs. I'd rather die loving Alex than live without him.

    Maybe this is the secret to talking to boys--maybe you just have to be angry all the time.

    That's when you realize that 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.



    If you hear the past speaking to you, feel it tugging at your back and running its fingers up your spine, the best thing to do - the only thing - is to run.


    The ideaùthe fact of it, the fact that he even noticed and thought about me for more than one secondùis huge and overwhelming, makes my legs go tingly and my hands feel numb.

    And now I know why they invented words for love, why they had to: It's the only thing that can come close to describing what I feel in that moment, the baffling mixture of pain and pleasure and fear and joy, all running sharply through me at once.

    HeÆs speaking in the tone of voice that everyone uses when theyÆre about to break you apart. Gentleùkind, evenùlike they can make the news sound better just by speaking in a lullaby voice.

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

    My heart is drumming in my chest so hard it aches, but it's the good kind of ache, like the feeling you get on the first real day of autumn, when the air is crisp and the leaves are all flaring at the edges and the wind smells just vaguely of smoke - like the end and the beginning of something all at once.


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


    It affects your mind so that you cannot think clearly, or make rational decisions about your own well-being.

    My stomach gets that hollowed-out feeling. It's amazing how words can do that, just shred your insides apart.


    And there it is: Even though weÆre standing in the same patch of sun-drenched pavement, we might as well be a hundred thousand miles apart.

    Human beings, in their natural state, are unpredictable, erratic, and unhappy. It is only once their animal instincts are controlled that they can be responsible, dependable, and content.

    ItÆs us against them, three against countless thousands. But for some reason, and even though itÆs absurd, at that moment I feel pretty damn good about our odds.

    No guy in his right mind would ever choose me when there are people like Hana in the world: It would be like settling for a stale cookie when what you really want is a big bowl of ice cream, whipped cream and cherries and chocolate sprinkles included.

    There's that confidence again, that semi-infuriating easiness of his, the tilt of his head and the smile. but today it's not infuriating. Today I like it, feel like it's somehow rubbing off on me, like if I was around him enough I would never feel awkward or frightened or insecure.

    As soon as I look up, his eyes click onto my face. The breath whooshes out of my body and everything freezes for a second, as though IÆm looking at him through my camera lens, zoomed in all the way, the world pausing for that tiny span of time between the opening and closing of the shutter.

    I feel an overwhelming rush of sadness... I'm just struck with a sense of time passing so quickly, rushing forward. One day I'll wake up and my whole life will be behind me, and it will seem to have gone as quickly as a dream.

    It's a miracle I was able to get out of the house today. It's a miracle I'm even wearing pants, a double miracle I remembered to wear shoes.

    No wonder the regulators decided on segregation of boys and girls: Otherwise, it would have been a nightmare, this feeling angry and self-conscious and confused and annoyed all the time.


    More Lauren Oliver Quotations (Based on Topics)


    Time - Emotions - People - Love - World - Happiness - Pain - Mind - Dreams - Thought & Thinking - Fire - Sense & Perception - Sign & Symbol - Literature - Sadness - Butterflies - Winter - Joy & Excitement - Reasoning - View All Lauren Oliver Quotations

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