Quotes from Lauren Oliver

I'm used to a feeling of doubleness, of thinking one thing and having to do another, a constant tug-of-war.

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

I used to think that's what love was: knowing someone so well he was like a part of you.

This is the strange way of the world, that people who simply want to love are instead forced to become warriors.

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

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

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.

I'd rather die my way than live yours.

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.

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.

How is it possible, I think, to change so much and not be able to change anything at all?

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.

I wonder if this is how people always get close: They heal each other's wounds; they repair the broken skin.

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

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.

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.

How can someone have the power to shatter you to dust--and also to make you feel so whole?

Love, the deadliest of all deadly things. It kills you. Alex. When you have it. Alex. And when you don't. Alex.

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.

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

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.

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

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

This is what happens when you try to help people. You get screwed.