Lauren Oliver Quotes

I love you. Remember. They cannot take it

~ Lauren Oliver

I guess that’s just part of loving people: You have to give things up. Sometimes you even have to give them up.

~ Lauren Oliver

I know that the whole point—the only point—is tofind the things that matter, and hold on to them, and fight for them, and refuse tolet them go.

~ Lauren Oliver

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.

~ Lauren Oliver

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.

~ Lauren Oliver

And you can't love, not fully, unless you are loved in return.

~ Lauren Oliver

Now I'd rather be infected with love for the tiniest sliver of a second than live a hundred years smothered by a lie.

~ Lauren Oliver

If you’re smart, you care. And if you care, you love.

~ Lauren Oliver

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.

~ Lauren Oliver

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

~ Lauren Oliver

Find the things that matter, and hold on to them, and fight for them, and refuse to let them go.

~ Lauren Oliver

We wanted the freedom to love. We wanted the freedom to choose. Now we have to fight for it.

~ Lauren Oliver

Live free or die.

~ Lauren Oliver

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.

~ Lauren Oliver

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.

~ Lauren Oliver

Hunky Heroes, rescuing distressed women, captive princesses, and girls without wheels since 1684. p. 450

~ Lauren Oliver

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

~ Lauren Oliver

It was so strange, the way that life moved forward: the twists and the dead ends, the sudden opportunities. She supposed if you could predict or foresee everything that was going to happen, you’d lose the motivation to go through it all. The promise was always in the possibility.

~ Lauren Oliver

There are so many things I want to tell her, so many things she doesn't know; like how I remember when she first came home from the hospital, a big pink blob with a perma-smile, and she used to fall asleep while grabbing on to my pinter finger; how I sued to give her piggyback rides up and down the beach on Cape Cod, and she would tub on my ponytail to direct me one way or the other; how soft and furry her head was when she was first born; that the first time you kiss someone you'll be nervous, and it will be weird, and it won't be as good as you want it to be, and that's okay; how you should only fall in love with people who will fall in love back... I feel an ache in my throat, but i manage to smile. Two conflicting desires go through me at the same time, each as sharp as a razor blade: I want to see you grow up and Don't ever change.

~ Lauren Oliver

If I could make it better I would,” he says. In some ways it’s a stupid, obvious thing to say, but the way he said it, so honest and simple like it’s the truest thing there is, makes the tears prick in my eyes. (Before I Fall)

~ Lauren Oliver

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 do—the only thing— is run.

~ Lauren Oliver

And it's the funniest thing: as soon as I see it, the whistling in my ears stops and the feeling of terror drains away, and I realize this whole time I haven't been falling at all. I've been floating.

~ Lauren Oliver

You can't be happy unless you're unhappy sometimes.

~ Lauren Oliver

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.

~ Lauren Oliver

And for a moment―for a split second―everything else falls away, the whole pattern and order of my life, and a huge joy crests in my chest. I am no one, and I owe nothing to anybody, and my life is my own.

~ Lauren Oliver

God bless Dunkin' Donuts.

~ Lauren Oliver

Unhappiness is bondage; therefore, happiness is freedom.

~ Lauren Oliver

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.

~ Lauren Oliver

He is my world and my world is him and without him there is no world.

~ Lauren Oliver

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 kissing—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.

~ Lauren Oliver

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.

~ Lauren Oliver

His eyes are blazing with light, more light than all the lights in every city in the whole world, more light than we could ever invent if we had ten thousand billion years.

~ Lauren Oliver

Nothing has ever been so painful or delicious as being so close to him and being unable to do anything about it: like eating ice cream so fast on a hot day you get a splitting headache.

~ Lauren Oliver

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.

~ Lauren Oliver

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.

~ Lauren Oliver

Hope keeps you alive.

~ 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.)

~ Lauren Oliver

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.

~ Lauren Oliver

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

~ Lauren Oliver

What glitters may not be gold, and even wolves may smile, and fools will be led by promises to their deaths.

~ Lauren Oliver