Lauren Oliver Quotes

Coincidences, mix-ups, harmless mistakes and switches. And so a story is born.

~ Lauren Oliver

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

~ Lauren Oliver

I hate skin, I hate bones and bodies. I want to curl up inside of him and be carried there forever.

~ Lauren Oliver

And then, just at that moment, when I'm no longer sure if I'm 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.

~ Lauren Oliver

You do not know what will happen if you take down the walls; you cannot see through to the other side, don't 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.

~ Lauren Oliver

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.

~ Lauren Oliver

—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.

~ Lauren Oliver

People are stubborn and stupid. They're irrational. they're destructive. that's the point, isn't it? That's the whole reason for the cure. People will no longer destroy their own lives. They won't be capable of it.

~ Lauren Oliver

When she was little, she'd liked to pretend that stars were really lights anchoring distant islands, as if she wasn't 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.

~ Lauren Oliver

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

~ Lauren Oliver

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

~ Lauren Oliver

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

~ Lauren Oliver

That was the problem with the outside world, the human world. The whole thing was made up puzzles, of a language she didn't quite speak.

~ Lauren Oliver

And then, just at that moment, when I'm no longer sure if I'm 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 it's too late, I'm slipping, I'm gone, he's gone, and the moment curls away and back on itself like a flower folding up for the night.

~ Lauren Oliver

He pauses for only a fraction of a second. Then he leans forward and presses his lips to mine, and the whole world powers off, the moon and the rain and the sky and the streets, and it’s just the two of us in the dark, alive, alive, alive.

~ Lauren Oliver

Is it true?” I ask him.“Is what true?” His eyes are the color of honey. These are the eyes I remember from my dreams.“That you still love me,” I say, breathless. “I need to know.”Alex nods. He reaches out and touches my face—barely skimming my cheekbone and brushing away a bit of my hair. “It’s true.”“But . . . I’ve changed,” I say. “And you’ve changed.”“That’s true too,” he says quietly. I look at the scar on his face, stretching from his left eye to his jawline, and something hitches in my chest.“So what now?” I ask him. The light is too bright; the day feels as though it’s merging into dream.“Do you love me?” Alex asks. And I could cry; I could press my face into his chest and breathe in, and pretend that nothing has changed, that everything will be perfect and whole and healed again.But I can’t. I know I can’t.“I never stopped.” I look away from him. I look at Grace, and the high grass littered with the wounded and the dead. I think of Julian, and his clear blue eyes, his patience and goodness. I think of all the fighting we’ve done, and all the fighting we have yet to do. I take a deep breath. “But it’s more complicated than that.”Alex reaches out and places his hands on my shoulders. “I’m not going to run away again,” he says.“I don’t want you to,” I tell him.His fingers find my cheek, and I rest for a second against his palm, letting the pain of the past few months flow out of me, letting him turn my head toward his. Then he bends down and kisses me: light and perfect, his lips just barely meeting mine, a kiss that promises renewal.

~ Lauren Oliver

I can't stop thinking about what Caroline said to Minna about death. It isn't an infection, she said. She might be right. Then again, we've nested in the walls like bacteria. We've taken over the house, its insulation and its plumbing - we've made it our own. Or maybe it's life that's the infection: a feverish dream, a hallucination of feelings. Death is purification, a cleaning, a cure.

~ Lauren Oliver

At least when I'm sleeping I can dream myself back to Alex, can dream myself into a different world.

~ Lauren Oliver

She knew that this day, this feeling, couldn't last forever. Everything passed; that was partly why it was so beautiful. Things would get difficult again. But that was okay too.The bravery was in moving forward, no matter what.

~ Lauren Oliver

The sparrows jumped before they knew how to fly, and they learned to fly only because they had jumped

~ Lauren Oliver

It’s kind of sad, if you think about it. Like there’s no continuity in people at all. Like something ruptures when you hit twelve, or thirteen, or whatever the age is when you’re no longer a kid but a “young adult,” and after that you’re a totally different person. Maybe even a less happy person. Maybe even a worse one.

~ Lauren Oliver

Stop your idiocy, Sandra, please. For once in your death.

~ Lauren Oliver

My aunt just stood there, and in that second it was as though the world and the future collapsed down into a single point, and I understood that this—the kitchen, the spotless cream linoleum floors, the glaring lights, and the vivid green mass of Jell-O on the counter—was all that was left now that my mother was gone.Suddenly I couldn’t stay there. I couldn’t stand the sight of my aunt’s kitchen, which I now understood would be my kitchen. I couldn’t stand the Jell-O. My mother hated Jell-O. An itchy feeling began to work its way through my body, as though a thousand mosquitoes were circulating through my blood, biting me from the inside, making me want to scream, jump, squirm.I ran.

~ Lauren Oliver

Time waits for no man, but progress waits for man to inact it.

~ Lauren Oliver

Now, after so many years, I understand what the Coldness was and where it came from—this sense that everything is lost, and worthless, and meaningless.

~ Lauren Oliver

It’s for the best. But no matter how many times I repeat it, the strange, hollow feeling in my stomach doesn’t go away. And ridiculous as it is, I can’t shake the persistent, needling feeling that I’ve forgotten something, or missed something, or lost something forever.

~ Lauren Oliver

But for now, the future, like the past, means nothing. For now, there is only a homestead built of trash and scraps, at the edge of a broken city, just beyond a towering city dump; and our arrival-hungry, and half-frozen, to a place of food and water and walls that keep out the brutal winds. This, for us, is heaven.

~ Lauren Oliver

So many things become beautiful when you really look

~ Lauren Oliver

This is the mistake they make above. They think that only certain people habe a place. Only certain kinds of people belong. The rest is waste. But even waste must have a place. Otherwise it will clog and clot, and rot and fester.

~ Lauren Oliver

Power isn't free. Energy isn't free. It has to be earned.

~ Lauren Oliver

Don't worry about what you're writing or whether it's good or even whether it makes sense.

~ Lauren Oliver

That’s when it happens. The moment of death is full of heat and sound and pain bigger than anything, a funnel of burning heat splitting me in two, something searing and scorching and tearing, and if screaming were a feeling it would be this.Then nothing.

~ Lauren Oliver

And suddenly I am blindingly angry at Raven--for her lectures, and her stubbornness, and for thinking that the way that you help people is by driving them against a wall, by beating them down until they fight back.

~ Lauren Oliver

Perfection is a promise, and a reassurance that we are not wrong.

~ Lauren Oliver

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.

~ Lauren Oliver

This is not the person I wanted to become: Hatred has carved a permanent place inside me, a hollow where things are so easily lost.

~ Lauren Oliver

Everywhere he touches is fire. My whole body is burning up, the two of us becoming twin points of the same bright white flame.

~ Lauren Oliver

Do the other kids make fun of you? For how you talk?''Sometimes.''So why don't you do something about it? You could learn to talk differently, you know.'But this is my voice. How would you be able to tell when I was talking?

~ Lauren Oliver

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

~ Lauren Oliver

I want to apologize to you,” she says calmly.“Oh yeah? For what?” I don’t have time for this. We don’t have time for this. I push away thoughts of what will happen to Hana even if I manage to escape. She’ll be here, in the house . . .My stomach is clenching and unclenching. I’m worried the bread will come straight back up. I have to stay focused. What happens to Hana isn’t my concern, and it isn’t my fault, either.“For telling the regulators about 37 Brooks,” she says. “For telling them about you and Alex.”Just like that, my brain powers down. “What?“I told them.” She lets out a tiny exhalation, as though saying the words has given her relief. “I’m sorry. I was jealous.”I can’t speak. I’m swimming through a fog. “Jealous?” I manage to spit out.“I—I wanted what you had with Alex. I was confused. I didn’t understand what I was doing.” She shakes her head again.I have a swinging, seasick feeling. It doesn’t make any sense. Hana—golden girl Hana, my best friend, fearless and reckless. I trusted her. I loved her. “You were my best friend.”“I know.” Again she looks troubled, as though trying to recall the meaning of the words.“You had everything.” I can’t stop my voice from rising. The anger is vibrating, ripping through me like a live current. “Perfect life. Perfect grades. Everything.” I gesture to the spotless kitchen, to the sunshine pouring over the marble counters like drizzled butter. “I had nothing. He was my one thing. My only—” The sickness surges up and I take a step forward, clenching my fists, blind with rage. “Why couldn’t you let me have it? Why did you have to take it? Why did you always take everything?

~ Lauren Oliver