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.

Lauren Oliver

Categorized in : Running Letting Go Change

Droplets, droplets: We are all identical drips and drops of people, hovering, waiting to be tipped, waiting for someone to show us the way, to pour us down a path. ... He has tipped us over, all of us in our teetering expectancy, and now we are pouring toward him, coursing on a wave of sound, of roaring shouts and applause. ... They are the moon; we are a tide, their tide, and under their direction we will wipe clean all the sickness and blight from the world.

moon waiting people

I thought the Invalids were beasts; I thought they would rip me apart. But these people saved me, and gave me the softest place to sleep, and nursed me back to health, and haven't asked for anything in return. The animals are on the other side of the fence: monsters wearing uniforms. They speak softly, and tell lies, and smile as they're slitting your throat.

rip sleep lying

There's a place for everything and everyone, you know. That is the mistake they make above. They think that only certain people have 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.

mistake people thinking

Here's something else you might as well learn now: If you want something, if you take it for your own, you'll always be taking it from someone else. That's a rule too. And something must die so that others can live.

wells want-something might

In a world without love, this is what people are to each other: values, benefits, and liabilities, numbers and data. We weigh, we quantify, we measure, and the soul is ground to dust.

data dust numbers

The priests and the scientists are right about one thing: At our heart, at our base, we are no better than animals.

scientist heart animal

My heart is fluid and soaring. There's no longer any space betwee... by Lauren Oliver

My heart is fluid and soaring. There's no longer any space between heartbeats.

fluid space heart

It's like there's a filter set up in my brain, except instead of making things better, it twists everything around so what comes out of my mouth is totally wrong, totally different from what I was thinking.

twists brain thinking

Promise me we'll stay together, okay? His eyes are once again the clear blue of a perfectly transparent pool. They are eyes to swim in, to float in, forever. "You and me". "I promise". I say. behind us the door creaks open, and I turn around, expecting Raven, just as a voice cuts through the air: "Don't believe her.

cutting eye believe

Alex loved books. He was the one who first introduced me to poetry. That's another reason I can't read anymore.

alex book firsts

They haven't killed us yet," I say, and I imagine that one day I will fly a plane over Portland, over Rochester, over every fenced-in city in the whole country, and I will bomb and bomb and bomb, and watch all their buildings smoldering to dust, and all those people melting and bleeding into flame, and I will see how they like it. If you take, we will take back. Steal from us, and we will rob you blind. When you squeeze, we will hit. This is the way the world is made now.

flames dust country

And I have Julian. I found him, and he followed me. I reach out in the half dark, wordlessly, and find his hands. We interlace our fingers, and though he doesn't say anything either, I can feel the warmth and energy passing between us, a soundless dialogue. Thank you, he is saying, and I am saying, I am so happy, I am so happy, I needed you to be safe.

dark say-anything hands

I want to know." His words are a whisper, barely audible. "I want... by Lauren Oliver

I want to know." His words are a whisper, barely audible. "I want to know with you.

It is a ruined-world, a nonsense-place. by Lauren Oliver

It is a ruined-world, a nonsense-place.

nonsense ruined world

The only thing worse than having no friends is being pitied for h... by Lauren Oliver

The only thing worse than having no friends is being pitied for having no friends.

I guess there are some things you never get used to. by Lauren Oliver

I guess there are some things you never get used to.

Funny how certain things stay with you. by Lauren Oliver

Funny how certain things stay with you.

Yeah, but our choices are limited. We choose from a list that they chose for us." She said. "Well, Choices are supposed to be limited. That's life" I snapped

yeah lists choices

If you want something, if you take it for your own, you'll always... by Lauren Oliver

If you want something, if you take it for your own, you'll always be taking it from someone else.

want-something ifs want

The hours here are flat and round, disks of gray layered one on top of the other...they move slowly, at a grind, until it seems as though they are not moving at all. They are just pressing down.

grind hours moving