02UndatedBut 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.Lauren Oliver / quote ↗
03UndatedAnd for a moment―for a split second―everything else falls away, the whole pattern and order of my life, and a huge joy crests in my chest. I am no one, and I owe nothing to anybody, and my life is my own.Lauren Oliver / quote ↗
06UndatedThey 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.Lauren Oliver / quote ↗
07UndatedHe is my world and my world is him and without him there is no world.Lauren Oliver / quote ↗
08UndatedAre you sure that being like everybody else will make you happy?""I don't know any other way.""Let me show you."And then we're kissing. Or at least, I think we're kissing—I've only seen it done a couple of times, quick closed-mouth pecks at weddings or on formal occasions. But this isn't like anything I've ever seen, or imagined, or even dreamed: this is like music or dancing but better than both.Lauren Oliver / quote ↗
09UndatedThis is what I want. This is the only thing I've ever wanted. Everything else—every single second of every single day that has come before this very moment, this kiss—has meant nothing.Lauren Oliver / quote ↗
10UndatedI know the rules. I've been living here longer than you have."He cracks a smile then. He nudges me back. "Hardly.""Born and raised. You're a transplant." I nudge him again, a little harder, and he laughs and tries to catch hold of my arm. I squirm away, giggling, and he stretches out to tickle my stomach. "Country bumpkin!" I squeal, as he grabs out and wrestles me back onto the blanket, laughing."City slicker," he says, rolling over on top of me, and then kisses me. Everything dissolves: heat, explosions of color, floating.Lauren Oliver / quote ↗
12UndatedHis eyes are blazing with light, more light than all the lights in every city in the whole world, more light than we could ever invent if we had ten thousand billion years.Lauren Oliver / quote ↗
13UndatedNothing has ever been so painful or delicious as being so close to him and being unable to do anything about it: like eating ice cream so fast on a hot day you get a splitting headache.Lauren Oliver / quote ↗
14UndatedAnd suddenly it's all so ridiculously and stupidly clear I feel like laughing. This is what I want. This is the only thing i've ever wanted. Everything else---every single second of every single day that has come before this very moment, this kiss---has meant nothing.Lauren Oliver / quote ↗
15UndatedBut 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.Lauren Oliver / quote ↗
17UndatedLord, help us root our feet to the earthAnd our eyes to the roadAnd always remember the fallen angelsWho, attempting to soar,Were seared instead by the sun and, wings melting,Came crashing back to the sea.Lord, help root my eyes to the earthAnd stay my eyes to the roadSo I may never stumble.)Lauren Oliver / quote ↗
18UndatedIn my dream I know I am falling. But there is no up or down, no walls or sides or ceilings, just the sensation of cold and darkness everywhere. I am so scared I could scream. But when I open my mouth, nothing happens. And I wonder if you fall forever and never touch down, is it really still falling? I think I will fall forever.Lauren Oliver / quote ↗
19UndatedThings change after you die, though, I guess because dying is the loneliest thing you can do.Lauren Oliver / quote ↗
21UndatedThey say that just before you die your whole life flashes before your eyes, but that's not how it happened for me.Lauren Oliver / quote ↗
22UndatedLet me tell you something about dying: it's not as bad as they says.it's the coming-back-to-life part that hurts.Lauren Oliver / quote ↗
23UndatedTwo weeks until your cure" she says finally. "Sixteen days" I say, but in my head I'm counting: Seven days. Seven days until I'm free and away from all these people and their sliding superficial lives brushing past one another gliding, gliding, gliding from life to death. For them there's hardly a change between the two.Lauren Oliver / quote ↗
24UndatedIt was all very strange, Mr. Gray thought, as he wiped the coffee canister clean with a sponge. Very, very mysterious. You were born; you lived a whole life; and at the end, you wound up in a coffee canister."Ah, well," he said out loud quietly. "That's just the way things are. Life's a funny business." Death, he supposed, was the punch line.Lauren Oliver / quote ↗
