The voices / 251 fragments

Lauren Oliver

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Name supplied in the contributor-provided quotation collection. Basic attribution label; identity, lifetime and quotation authenticity have not been independently verified.

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Archive entries

01Undated

I love you. Remember. They cannot take it

Lauren Oliver / quote

02Undated

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 / quote

03Undated

Mama, Mama, help me get homeI'm out in the woods, I am out on my own.I found me a werewolf, a nasty old muttIt showed me its teeth and went straight for my gut.Mama, Mama, help me get homeI'm out in the woods, I am out on my own.I was stopped by a vampire, a rotting old wreckIt showed me its teeth and went straight for my neck.Mama, Mama, put me to bedI won't make it home, I'm already half-dead.I met an Invalid, and fell for his artHe showed me his smile, and went straight for my heart.-From "A Child's Walk Home," Nursery Rhymes and Folk Tales

Lauren Oliver / quote

04Undated

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 / quote

05Undated

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 / quote

06Undated

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 / quote

07Undated

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

Lauren Oliver / quote

08Undated

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 / quote

09Undated

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

Lauren Oliver / quote

10Undated

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 / quote

11Undated

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

Lauren Oliver / quote

12Undated

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

Lauren Oliver / quote

13Undated

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

Lauren Oliver / quote

14Undated

I told you," he whispers back. I can feel his breath just tickling the space behind my ear, making my hair prick up on my neck. "I like you.""You don't know me," I say quickly."I want to, though.

Lauren Oliver / quote

15Undated

Live free or die.

Lauren Oliver / quote

16Undated

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 / quote

17Undated

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 / quote

18Undated

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

Lauren Oliver / quote

19Undated

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 / quote

20Undated

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 / quote

21Undated

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 / quote

22Undated

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 / quote

23Undated

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 / quote

24Undated

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 / quote