01c. 1982 ADIt'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.Lauren Oliver / quote ↗
02c. 1982 ADAnd now I realize Lindsay's not fearless. She's terrified. She's terrified that people will find out she's faking, bullshitting her way through life, pretending to have everything together when really she's just floundering like the rest of us. Lindsay, who will bite at you if you even look in her direction the wrong way, like on of those tiny attack dogs that are always barking and snapping in the air before they're jerked backward on the chains that keep them in one place.Lauren Oliver / quote ↗
03c. 1982 ADHana?" Lena says softly. "Are you okay?"That single stupid question breaks me. All the metal fingers relax me at once, and the tears they've been holding back come surging up at once. Suddenly I am sobbing and telling her everything: about the raid, and the dogs, and the sounds of skulls cracking underneath regulator's nightsticks. Thinking about it again makes me feel like I might puke. At a certain point, Lena puts her arms around me and starts murmuring things into my hair. I don't even know what she's saying, and I don't care. JUst having her here—solid, real, on my side—makes me feel better than I have in weeks. Slowly I manage to stop crying, swallowing back the hiccups and sobs that are still running through me. I try to tell her that I've missed her, and that I've been stupid and wrong, but my voice is muffled and thickLauren Oliver / quote ↗
05c. 1982 ADIs what I did really so much worse than what anybody else does?Is it really so much worse than what you do?Think about it.Lauren Oliver / quote ↗
08c. 1982 ADI tear down Baxter, which loops around the last mile down to Back Cove.And then I stop short. The buildings have fallen away behind me, giving way to ramshackle sheds, sparsely situated on either side of the cracked and run-down road. Beyond that, a short strip of tall, weedy grass slants down toward the cove.The water is an enormous mirror, tipped with pink and gold from the sky. In that single, blazing moment as I come around the bend, the sun—curved over the dip of the horizon like a solid gold archway—lets out its final winking rays of light, shattering the darkness of the water, turning everything white for a fraction of a second, and then falls away, sinking, dragging the pink and the red and the purple out of the sky with it, all the color bleeding away instantly and leaving only dark.Alex was right. It was gorgeous—one of the best I’ve ever seen.Lauren Oliver / quote ↗
09c. 1982 ADI think of Lindsay in the bathroom of Rosalita’s, and wonder how many people are clutching secrets like little fists, like rocks sitting in the pits of their stomachs. All of them, maybe.Lauren Oliver / quote ↗
10c. 1982 ADShe always imagined their voices entangled somewhere in the wires when they spoke, caught up in a grid she didn't fully understand, passing back and forth. Once the calls were disconnected, she imagined the echoes of old conversations would be trapped there, floating back and forth with no exit, like ghosts.Lauren Oliver / quote ↗
11c. 1982 ADI'd never undetstood how Hana Could lie so often and easily. But just like anyhting else, lying becomes easier the more you do it.Lauren Oliver / quote ↗
12c. 1982 ADBut maybe you carried your demons with you everywhere, the way you carried your shadow.Lauren Oliver / quote ↗
15c. 1982 ADThere's still always the possibility that I've gone totally, clinically cuckoo. But somehow I don't think so anymore.An article I once read said that crazy people don't worry about being crazy - that's the whole problem.Lauren Oliver / quote ↗
16c. 1982 ADThey told us love was a disease. They told us it would kill us in the end.For the very first time I realize, that this, too, might also be a lie.Lauren Oliver / quote ↗
17c. 1982 ADBut I am terrified by what I want: for him, and worst of all, from him. Because I do want. I'm not even sure what, exactly, but the want is there, just like the hate and anger were there before. But this is not a tower. It is an endless, tunneling pit; it drives deep, and opens a hole inside me.Lauren Oliver / quote ↗
18c. 1982 ADThe DFA and organizations like it have pushed and squeezed and elbowed out all the feeling in the world. They have clamped their fists around a geyser to keep it from exploding.But the pressure eventually builds, and the explosion will always come.Lauren Oliver / quote ↗
19c. 1982 ADI 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.Lauren Oliver / quote ↗
20c. 1982 ADWhen I got home, my roof was gone. Overnight the weight of the snow became too much to carry. What tipped the scale? Think about it: there must have been a final snowflake that did it, a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a milligram that made all the difference.Lauren Oliver / quote ↗
21c. 1982 ADI'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 olderLauren Oliver / quote ↗
22c. 1982 ADHe is no longer mine to lose, but the grief is there, a gnawing sense of disbelief.Lauren Oliver / quote ↗
23c. 1982 ADI put my forehead on his collarbone, place one hand on his chest. Its rhythm reassures me: He is real, and he is now.Lauren Oliver / quote ↗
