Lauren Oliver Quotes

We've searched our database for all the quotes and captions related to Lauren Oliver. Here they are! All 100 of them:

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I love you. Remember. They cannot take it
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Lauren Oliver (Delirium (Delirium, #1))
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You can't be happy unless you're unhappy sometimes".
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Lauren Oliver (Delirium (Delirium, #1))
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So many things become beautiful when you really look.
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Lauren Oliver (Before I Fall)
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I'd rather die my way than live yours.
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Lauren Oliver (Delirium (Delirium, #1))
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I guess that’s just part of loving people: You have to give things up. Sometimes you even have to give them up.
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Lauren Oliver (Delirium (Delirium, #1))
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I guess that's what saying good-bye is always like--like jumping off an edge. The worst part is making the choice to do it. Once you're in the air, there's nothing you can do but let go.
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Lauren Oliver (Before I Fall)
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Love: It will kill you and save you, both
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Lauren Oliver (Delirium (Delirium, #1))
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Maybe you can afford to wait. Maybe for you there's a tomorrow. Maybe for you there's 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 you fingers. So much time you can waste it. But for some of us there's only today. And the truth is, you never really know.
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Lauren Oliver (Before I Fall)
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It's so strange how life works: You want something and you wait and wait and feel like it's taking forever to come. Then it happens and it's over and all you want to do is curl back up in that moment before things changed.
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Lauren Oliver (Delirium (Delirium, #1))
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Hate isn’t the most dangerous thing, he’d said. Indifference is.
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Lauren Oliver (Delirium (Delirium, #1))
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He who leaps for the sky may fall, it's true. But he may also fly.
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Lauren Oliver (Delirium (Delirium, #1))
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A good friend keeps your secrets for you. A best friend helps you keep your own secrets.
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Lauren Oliver (Before I Fall)
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It's funny, isn't it? When you are young you just want to be old, and then later you wish you could go back to being a kid.
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Lauren Oliver (Before I Fall)
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Love: a single word, a wispy thing, a word no bigger or longer than an edge. That's what it is: an edge; a razor. It draws up through the center of your life, cutting everything in two. Before and after. The rest of the world falls away on either side.
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Lauren Oliver (Delirium (Delirium, #1))
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I know that the whole pointβ€”the only pointβ€”is to find the things that matter, and hold on to them, and fight for them, and refuse to let them go.
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Lauren Oliver (Delirium (Delirium, #1))
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The deadliest of all deadly things: It kills you both when you have it and when you don’t.
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Lauren Oliver (Delirium (Delirium, #1))
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The most dangerous sicknesses are those that make us believe we are well
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Lauren Oliver (Delirium (Delirium, #1))
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Sometimes I'm afraid to go to sleep because of what I'm leaving behind.
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Lauren Oliver (Before I Fall)
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It's amazing how words can do that, just shred your insides apart. Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me - such bullshit.
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Lauren Oliver (Delirium (Delirium, #1))
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Here's another thing to remember: hope keeps you alive. Even when you're dead, it's the only thing that keeps you alive.
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Lauren Oliver (Before I Fall)
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I shiver, thinking how easy it is to be totally wrong about people-to see one tiny part of them and confuse it for the whole, to see the cause and think it's the effect or vice versa
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Lauren Oliver (Before I Fall)
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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.
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Lauren Oliver (Delirium (Delirium, #1))
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Hearts are fragile things. That's why you have to be so careful.
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Lauren Oliver (Delirium (Delirium, #1))
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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.
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Lauren Oliver (Pandemonium (Delirium, #2))
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The flip side of freedom is this: When you're completely free, you're also completely on your own.
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Lauren Oliver (Pandemonium (Delirium, #2))
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How is it possible, I think, to change so much and not be able to change anything at all?
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Lauren Oliver (Before I Fall)
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The whole point of growing up is learning to stay on the laughing side.
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Lauren Oliver (Before I Fall)
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I vowed after that day that I would be your hero too, no matter how long it took
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Lauren Oliver (Before I Fall)
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The last laugh, the last cup of coffee, the last sunset, the last time you jump through a sprinkler, or eat an ice-cream cone, or stick your tongue out to catch a snowflake. You just don't know.
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Lauren Oliver (Before I Fall)
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And you can't love, not fully, unless you are loved in return.
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Lauren Oliver (Requiem (Delirium, #3))
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Take it from me: If you hear the past speaking to you, feel it tugging up your back and runing its fingers up your spine, the best thing to do-the only thing-is run.
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Lauren Oliver (Delirium (Delirium, #1))
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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.
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Lauren Oliver (Delirium (Delirium, #1))
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That's all I want. Just you and me. Always.
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Lauren Oliver (Delirium (Delirium, #1))
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He is my world and my world is him and without him there is no world.
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Lauren Oliver (Delirium (Delirium, #1))
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I used to think that's what love was: knowing someone so well he was like a part of you.
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Lauren Oliver (Before I Fall)
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I wonder if this is how people always get close: They heal each other's wounds; they repair the broken skin.
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Lauren Oliver (Pandemonium (Delirium, #2))
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Now I'd rather be infected with love for the tiniest sliver of a second than live a hundred years smothered by a lie.
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Lauren Oliver (Delirium (Delirium, #1))
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If you’re smart, you care. And if you care, you love.
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Lauren Oliver (Pandemonium (Delirium, #2))
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Everyone is asleep. They've all been asleep for years. You seemed ... awake.' Alex is whispering now. He closes his eyes, opens them again.'I'm tired of sleeping.
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Lauren Oliver (Delirium (Delirium, #1))
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How can someone have the power to shatter you to dust--and also to make you feel so whole?
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Lauren Oliver (Requiem (Delirium, #3))
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This is what happens when you try to help people. You get screwed.
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Lauren Oliver (Before I Fall)
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Mama, Mama, help me get home I'm out in the woods, I am out on my own. I found me a werewolf, a nasty old mutt It showed me its teeth and went straight for my gut. Mama, Mama, help me get home I'm out in the woods, I am out on my own. I was stopped by a vampire, a rotting old wreck It showed me its teeth and went straight for my neck. Mama, Mama, put me to bed I won't make it home, I'm already half-dead. I met an Invalid, and fell for his art He showed me his smile, and went straight for my heart. -From "A Child's Walk Home," Nursery Rhymes and Folk Tales
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Lauren Oliver (Delirium (Delirium, #1))
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I run for I don't know how long. Hours, maybe, or days. Alex told me to run. So I run. You have to understand. I am no one special. I am just a single girl. I am five feet two inches tall and I am in-between in every way. But I have a secret. You can build walls all the way to the sky and I will find a way to fly above them. You can try to pin me down with a hundred thousand arms, but I will find a way to resist. And there are many of us out there, more than you think. People who refuse to stop believing. People who refuse to come to earth. People who love in a world without walls, people who love into hate, into refusal, against hope,and without fear. I love you. Remember. They cannot take it.
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Lauren Oliver (Delirium (Delirium, #1))
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It's the way he says my name: like music.
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Lauren Oliver (Delirium (Delirium, #1))
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But you can build a future out of anything. A scrap, a flicker. The desire to go forward, slowly, one foot at a time. You can build an airy city out of ruins.
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Lauren Oliver (Pandemonium (Delirium, #2))
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Snapshots, moments, mere seconds: as fragile and beautiful and hopeless as a single butterfly, flapping on against a gathering wind.
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Lauren Oliver (Delirium (Delirium, #1))
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You can build walls all the way to the sky and I will find a way to fly above them. You can try to pin me down with a hundred thousand arms, but I will find a way to resist. And there are many of us out there, more than you think. People who refuse to stop believing. People who refuse to come to earth. People who love in a world without walls, people who love into hate, into refusal, against hope, and without fear. I love you. Remember. They cannot take it.
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Lauren Oliver (Delirium (Delirium, #1))
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He who jumps may fall, but he may also fly. It’s time to jump.
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Lauren Oliver (Requiem (Delirium, #3))
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And I guess that's when it starts to hit me: the whole point is, you do what you can.
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Lauren Oliver (Before I Fall)
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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.
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Lauren Oliver (Requiem (Delirium, #3))
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It's not my fault I can't be like you, okay? I don't get up in the morning thinking the world is one big, shiny, happy place, okay? That's just not how I work. I don't think I can be fixed.
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Lauren Oliver (Before I Fall)
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It's like a razor blade edging its way through my organs, shredding me, all I can think is: It will kill me, it will kill me, it will kill me. And I don't care.
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Lauren Oliver (Delirium (Delirium, #1))
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I know that life isn't life if you just float through it. I know that the whole point- the only point- is to find the things that matter and hold onto them and fight for them and refuse to let them go.
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Lauren Oliver (Delirium (Delirium, #1))
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It amazes me how easy it is for things to change, how easy it is to start off down the same road you always take and wind up somewhere new. Just one false step, one pause, one detour, and you end up with new friends or a bad reputation or a boyfriend or a breakup. It's never occurred to me before; I've never been able to see it. And it makes me feel, weirdly, like maybe all of these different possibilities exist at the same time, like each moment we live has a thousand other moments layered underneath it that look different.
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Lauren Oliver (Before I Fall)
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That's when I realized that certain moments go on forever. Even after they're over they still go on, even after you're dead and buried, those moments are lasting still, backward and forward, on into infinity. They are everything and everywhere all at once. They are the meaning.
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Lauren Oliver (Before I Fall)
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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.
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Lauren Oliver (Delirium (Delirium, #1))
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That's the way I feel, at least: like there's a real me and a reflection of me, and I have no way of telling which is which.
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Lauren Oliver (Before I Fall)
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Love, the deadliest of all deadly things. It kills you. Alex. When you have it. Alex. And when you don't. Alex.
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Lauren Oliver (Pandemonium (Delirium, #2))
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That's the thing about best friends. That's what they do. They keep you from spinning off the edge.
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Lauren Oliver (Before I Fall)
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i think of all the thousands of billions of steps and missteps and chances and coincidences that have brought me here. Brought you here, and it feels like the biggest miracle in the world.
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Lauren Oliver (Before I Fall)
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Popularity's a weird thing. You can't really define it, and it's not cool to talk about, but you know it when you see it. Like a lazy eye, or porn.
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Lauren Oliver (Before I Fall)
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The past is nothing but a weight. It will build inside of you like a stone.
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Lauren Oliver (Delirium (Delirium, #1))
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This is the strange way of the world, that people who simply want to love are instead forced to become warriors.
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Lauren Oliver (Requiem (Delirium, #3))
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That's the thing: We didn't really care. A world without love is also a world without stakes.
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Lauren Oliver (Pandemonium (Delirium, #2))
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I'd rather die on my own terms than live on theirs. I'd rather die loving Alex than live without him.
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Lauren Oliver (Delirium (Delirium, #1))
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This is what amazes me: that people are new every day. That they are never the same. You must always invent them, and they must always invent themselves, too.
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Lauren Oliver (Requiem (Delirium, #3))
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Find the things that matter, and hold on to them, and fight for them, and refuse to let them go.
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Lauren Oliver (Delirium (Delirium, #1))
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So are you going to be my knight in shining armor or what?' Kent does a little bow. 'You know I can't resist a damsel in distress.
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Lauren Oliver (Before I Fall)
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We wanted the freedom to love. We wanted the freedom to choose. Now we have to fight for it.
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Lauren Oliver (Requiem (Delirium, #3))
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There are some losses we never get over.
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Lauren Oliver (Requiem (Delirium, #3))
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Here's one of the things I learned that morning: if you cross a line and nothing happens, the line loses meaning. It's like that old riddle about a tree falling in a forest, and whether it makes a sound if there's no one around to hear it. You keep drawing a line farther and farther away, crossing it every time. That's how people end up stepping off the edge of the earth. You'd be surprised at how easy it is to bust out of orbit, to spin out to a place where no one can touch you. To lose yourself--to get lost. Or maybe you wouldn't be surprised. Maybe some of you already know. To those people, I can only say: I'm sorry.
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Lauren Oliver (Before I Fall)
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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
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Lauren Oliver (Delirium (Delirium, #1))
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That's when you really lose people, you know.When the pain passes.
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Lauren Oliver (Delirium (Delirium, #1))
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I need him to know that I came for him. I need him to know that somehow, at some point in the tunnels, I began to love him.
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Lauren Oliver (Pandemonium (Delirium, #2))
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Everyone you trust, everyone you think you can count on, will eventually disappoint you.
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Lauren Oliver (Delirium (Delirium, #1))
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We all need mantras, I guess - stories we tell ourselves to keep us going.
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Lauren Oliver (Pandemonium (Delirium, #2))
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I'll find you," he says, watching me with the eyes I remember. "I won't let you go again
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Lauren Oliver (Requiem (Delirium, #3))
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Live free or die.
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Lauren Oliver (Requiem (Delirium, #3))
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But it does not tell you this: that love will turn the whole world into something greater than itself.
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Lauren Oliver (Delirium (Delirium, #1))
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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.
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Lauren Oliver (Delirium (Delirium, #1))
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I want to know." His words are a whisper, barely audible. "I want to know with you.
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Lauren Oliver (Pandemonium (Delirium, #2))
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But...books are so much more. Some of them are webs; you can feel your way along their threads, but just barely, into strange and dark corners. Some of them are balloons bobbing up through the sky: totally self-contained, and unreachable, but beautiful to watch. And some of them―the best ones―are doors.
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Lauren Oliver (Pandemonium (Delirium, #2))
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Who knows? Maybe they’re right. Maybe we are driven crazy by our feelings. Maybe love is a disease, and we would be better off without it. But we have chosen a different road. And in the end that is the point of escaping the cure: We are free to choose. We are even free to choose the wrong thing.
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Lauren Oliver (Requiem (Delirium, #3))
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This is what hatred is. It will feed you and at the same time turn you to rot.
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Lauren Oliver (Pandemonium (Delirium, #2))
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Everything looks beautiful. The Book of Shhh says that deliria alters your perception, disables your ability to reason clearly, impairs you from making sound judgments. But it does not tell you this: that love will turn the whole world into something greater than itself.
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Lauren Oliver (Delirium (Delirium, #1))
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I told you," he whispers back. I can feel his breath just tickling the space behind my ear, making my hair prick up on my neck. "I like you." "You don't know me," I say quickly. "I want to, though.
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Lauren Oliver (Delirium (Delirium, #1))
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Be honest: Are you surprised that I didn't realize sooner? Are you surprised that it took me so long to even /think/ the word -- death? Dying? Dead? Do you think I was being stupid? Naive? Try not to judge. Remember that we're the same, you and me. I thought I would live forever too.
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Lauren Oliver (Before I Fall)
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I've never really thought about it before, but it's a miracle how many kinds of light there are in the world, how many skies: the pale brightness of spring, when it feels like the hole world's blushing; the lush, bright boldness of a July noon; purple storm skies and a green queasiness just before lightning strikes and crazy multicolored sunsets that look like someone's acid trip.
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Lauren Oliver (Before I Fall)
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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.
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Lauren Oliver (Delirium (Delirium, #1))
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They say the cure is about happiness, but I understand now that it isn't, and it never was. It's about fear: fear of pain, fear of hurt, fear, fear, fear - a blind animal existence, bumping between walls, shuffling between ever-narrowing hallways, terrified and dull and stupid.
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Lauren Oliver (Delirium (Delirium, #1))
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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.
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Lauren Oliver (Before I Fall)
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One of the strangest things about life is that it will chug on, blind and oblivious, even as your private world - your little carved-out sphere - is twisting and morphing, even breaking apart. One day you have parents; the next day you're an orphan. One day you have a place and a path. The next day you're lost in the wilderness. And still the sun rises and clouds mass and drift and people shop for groceries and toilets flush and blinds go up and down. 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.
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Lauren Oliver (Delirium (Delirium, #1))
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Are you sure that being like everybody else will make you happy?" "I don't know any other way." "Let me show you." And then we're kissing. Or at least, I think we're kissingβ€”I've only seen it done a couple of times, quick closed-mouth pecks at weddings or on formal occasions. But this isn't like anything I've ever seen, or imagined, or even dreamed: this is like music or dancing but better than both.
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Lauren Oliver (Delirium (Delirium, #1))
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How did I love her? Let me count the ways. The freckles on her nose like the shadow of a shadow; the way she chewed on her lower lip when she walked and how when she ran she looked like she was born going fast and how she fit perfectly against my chest; her smell and the touch of her lips and her skin, which was always warm, and how she smiled. Like she had a secret. How she always made up words during Scrabble. Hyddym (secret music). Grofp (cafeteria food). Quaw (the sound a baby duck makes). How she burped her way through the alphabet once, and I laughed so hard I spat out soda through my nose. And how she looked at me like I could save her from everything bad in the world. This was my secret: she was the one who saved me.
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Lauren Oliver (Requiem (Delirium, #3))
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Grief is like sinking, like being buried. I am in water the tawny color of kicked-up dirt. Every breath is full of choking. There is nothing to hold on to, no sides, no way to claw myself up. There is nothing to do but let go. Let go. Feel the weight all around you, feel the squeezing of your lungs, the slow, low pressure. Let yourself go deeper. There is nothing but bottom. There is nothing but the taste of metal, and the echoes of old things, and days that look like darkness.
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Lauren Oliver (Pandemonium (Delirium, #2))
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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...
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Lauren Oliver (Delirium (Delirium, #1))
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I'm not with Rob," I say quickly. "Not anymore." "You're not?" He's staring at me so intensely I can see the stripes of gold alternating with the green in his eyes like spokes of a wheel. I shake my head. "That's a good thing." He's still staring at me like that, like he's the first and last person who will ever stare at me. "Because..." His voice trails off, and his eyes travel slowly down to my lips, and there's so much heat roaring through my body I swear I'm going to pass out. "Because?" I prompt him, surprised I can still speak. "Because I'm sorry, but I can't help it, and I really need to kiss you right now.
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Lauren Oliver (Before I Fall)
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I’ll tell you another secret, this one for your own good. You may think the past has something to tell you. You may think that you should listen, should strain to make out its whispers, should bend over backward, stoop down low to hear its voice breathed up from the ground, from the dead places. You may think there’s something in it for you, something to understand or make sense of. But I know the truth: I know from the nights of Coldness. I know the past will drag you backward and down, have you snatching at whispers of wind and the gibberish of trees rubbing together, trying to decipher some code, trying to piece together what was broken. It’s hopeless. The past is nothing but a weight. It will build inside of you like a stone. Take it from me: 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 doβ€”the only thingβ€”is run.
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Lauren Oliver (Delirium (Delirium, #1))
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Symptoms of Amor Deliria Nervosa PHASE ONE: -preoccupation; difficulty focusing -dry mouth -perspiration, sweaty palms -fits of dizziness and disorientation -reduced mental awareness; racing thoughts; impaired reasoning skills PHASE TWO: -periods of euphoria; hysterical laughter and heightened energy -periods of despair; lethargy -changes in appetite; rapid weight loss or weight gain -fixation; loss of other interests -compromised reasoning skills; distortion of reality -disruption of sleep patterns; insomnia or constant fatigue -obsessive thoughts and actions -paranoia; insecurity PHASE THREE (CRITICAL): -difficulty breathing -pain in the chest, throat or stomach -complete breakdown of rational faculties; erratic behavior; violent thoughts and fantasies; hallucinations and delusions PHASE FOUR (FATAL): -emotional or physical paralysis (partial or total) -death If you fear that you or someone you know may have contracted deliria, please call the emergency line toll-free at 1-800-PREVENT to discuss immediate intake and treatment.
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Lauren Oliver (Delirium (Delirium, #1))
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Most things, even the greatest movements on earth, have their beginnings in something small. An earthquake that shatters a city with a tremor, a tremble, a breath. Music begins with a vibration. The flood that rushed into Portland twenty years ago after nearly two months of straight rain, that hurtled up beyond the labs and damaged more than a thousand houses, swept up tire and trash bags and old, smelly shoes and floated them through the streets like prizes, that left a thin film of green mold behind, a stench of rotting and decay that didn't go away for months, began with a trickle of water, no wider than a finger, lapping up onto the docks. And God created the whole universe from an atom no bigger than a thought. Grace's life fell apart because of a single word: sympathizer. My world exploded because of a different word: suicide. Correction: That was the first time my world exploded. The second time my world exploded, it was also because of a word. A word that worked its way out of my throat and danced onto and out of my lips before I could think about it, or stop it. The question was: Will you meet me tomorrow? And the word was: Yes.
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Lauren Oliver (Delirium (Delirium, #1))