The salt blowing off the sea makes the air feel textured and heav... by Lauren Oliver

The salt blowing off the sea makes the air feel textured and heavy.

Lauren Oliver

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Categorized in : Sea Air Salt

I start to follow her, and Alex grabs my hand. "I'll find you," he says, watching me with the eyes I remember. "I won't let you go again." I don't trust myself to speak. Instead I nod, hoping that he understands me. He squeezes my hand. "Go," he says.

alex eye hands

It's as though the words are trapped, buried under past fears, past lives, like fossils compressed under layers of dirt.

layers dirt past

it occurs to me that there is so much I never knew about him--his past, his role in the resistance, what his life was like in the Wilds, before he came to Portland, and I feel a flash of grief so intense it almost makes me cry out: not for what I lost, but for the chances I missed.

resistance grief past

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.

choices lying fiction

The memories seem like snapshots from someone else’s life. by Lauren Oliver

The memories seem like snapshots from someone else’s life.

snapshots seems memories

I will make a pact with you: I will do it if you will do it, always and forever. Take down the walls.

pact wall forever

We are all punished for the lives we have chosen, in one way or a... by Lauren Oliver

We are all punished for the lives we have chosen, in one way or another.

one-way chosen way

This is what we are made for: promises, pledges, and sworn oaths... by Lauren Oliver

This is what we are made for: promises, pledges, and sworn oaths of obedience.

obedience made promise

When he speaks again, I can tell that he's smiling. "So I guess w... by Lauren Oliver

When he speaks again, I can tell that he's smiling. "So I guess we saved each other.

saved i-can speak

You must hurt, or be hurt. by Lauren Oliver

You must hurt, or be hurt.

hurt

People are like houses. They could open their doors. You could walk through their rooms and touch the objects hidden in their corners. But something--the structure, the wiring, the invisible mechanism that kept the whole thing standing--remai ned invisible, suggested only by the fact of its existing at all.

house doors people

I think of the quietness of Julian's voice as he said I love you, the steadiness of his rib cage rising and falling against my back, as we sleep.I love you, Julian. But the words don't come.

sleep love fall

This was what true fear was--that you could never know other people, not completely. That you were always just guessing blind.

guessing blind people

But maybe you carried your demons with you everywhere, the way yo... by Lauren Oliver

But maybe you carried your demons with you everywhere, the way you carried your shadow.

demon shadow way

The house, the pond, the tree-it was all both overwhelmingly familiar and different from what she remembered-smaller and shabbier, somehow. It was like waking up to find that your reflection in the mirror had aged overnight, or had sprouted a new mole: You were forced to admit that things changed, whether you gave them permission to or not.

mirrors reflection house

My parents were pretty liberal, but they were still parents. I de... by Lauren Oliver

My parents were pretty liberal, but they were still parents. I definitely had my teenage rebellion.

rebellion teenage parent

Most of us won't see one another after graduation, and even if we do it will be different. We'll be different. We'll be adults--cured, tagged and labeled and paired and identified and placed neatly on our life path, perfectly round marbles set to roll down even, well-defined slopes.

growing-up adults path

Requiem has been controversial because people dont feel I gave it... by Lauren Oliver

Requiem has been controversial because people dont feel I gave it closure.

closure controversial people

I thought if I followed the rules, things would turn out all right. that's the thing about the cure, isn't it? It isn't just about deliria at all. It's about order. A path for everyone. You just have to follow it and everything will be okay. That's what the DFA is about. That's what I belevied in-what I've had to believe in. Because otherwise, it's just...chaos.

path order believe

Dystopian novels help people process their fears about what the future might look like; further, they usually show that there is always hope, even in the bleakest future.

might people looks