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.




    Every single floorboard quivers and shudders under my feet, and I start mentally bargaining with the house: If I make it to the front door without waking up Aunt Carol, I swear to God IÆll never slam another door. IÆll never call you ôan old piece of turdö again.

    I remember love. It's what I have to keep on reminding myself. It's funny how you can forget everything except people loving you. Maybe that's why humans find it so hard getting over love affairs. It's not the pain they're getting over, it's the love.



    We should be protected from the people who will leave us in the end, from all the people who will disappear or forget us.


    I said, I prefer the ocean when it's gray. Or not really gray. A pale, in-between color. It reminds me of waiting for something good to happen.

    I've been so used to thinking of what the borders are keeping out that I haven't considered that they're also penning us in.

    Snapshots, moments, mere seconds: as fragile and beautiful and hopeless as a single butterfly, flapping on against a gathering wind.

    We stand there for a moment, looking at each other, and in that instant I feel our connection so strongly it's as though it achieves physical existence, becomes a hand all around us, cupping us together, protecting us. This is what people are always talking about when they talk about god: this feeling, of being held and understood and protected. feeling this way seems about as close to saying a prayer as you could get...

    Everything I see and touch reminds me of him, and so everything I see and touch is perfect.

    I want to be healed and whole and perfect again, like a misshapen slab of iron that comes out of the fire glowing, glittering, razor-sharp.

    I've learned to get really good at this - say one thing when I'm thinking about something else, act like I'm listening when I'm not, pretend to be calm and happy when I'm really freaking out. It's one of the skills you perfect as you get older

    Sometimes I feel as though there are two me's, one coasting directly on top of the other: the superficial me, who nods when she's supposed to nod and says what she's supposed to say, and some other, deeper part, the part that worries and dreams... Most of the time they move along in sync and I hardly notice the split, but sometimes it feels as though I'm two whole different people and I could rip apart at any second.


    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.


    More Lauren Oliver Quotations (Based on Topics)


    Time - Emotions - People - Love - World - Happiness - Pain - Mind - Dreams - Thought & Thinking - Fire - Sense & Perception - War & Peace - Instinct - Poetry - Brain - God - Past - Autumn - View All Lauren Oliver Quotations

    More Lauren Oliver Quotations (By Book Titles)


    - Delirium

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