01c. 1982 ADIt’s for the best. But no matter how many times I repeat it, the strange, hollow feeling in my stomach doesn’t go away. And ridiculous as it is, I can’t shake the persistent, needling feeling that I’ve forgotten something, or missed something, or lost something forever.Lauren Oliver / quote ↗
02c. 1982 ADBut for now, the future, like the past, means nothing. For now, there is only a homestead built of trash and scraps, at the edge of a broken city, just beyond a towering city dump; and our arrival-hungry, and half-frozen, to a place of food and water and walls that keep out the brutal winds. This, for us, is heaven.Lauren Oliver / quote ↗
04c. 1982 ADThis is the mistake they make above. They think that only certain people habe a place. Only certain kinds of people belong. The rest is waste. But even waste must have a place. Otherwise it will clog and clot, and rot and fester.Lauren Oliver / quote ↗
06c. 1982 ADAn eye for an eye." "And the whole world goes blind," Coral puts in quietly.Lauren Oliver / quote ↗
07c. 1982 ADDon't worry about what you're writing or whether it's good or even whether it makes sense.Lauren Oliver / quote ↗
08c. 1982 ADThat’s when it happens. The moment of death is full of heat and sound and pain bigger than anything, a funnel of burning heat splitting me in two, something searing and scorching and tearing, and if screaming were a feeling it would be this.Then nothing.Lauren Oliver / quote ↗
09c. 1982 ADAnd suddenly I am blindingly angry at Raven--for her lectures, and her stubbornness, and for thinking that the way that you help people is by driving them against a wall, by beating them down until they fight back.Lauren Oliver / quote ↗
11c. 1982 ADYou want something and you wait and wait and feel like it's taking forever to come. Then it happens and it's over and all you want to do is curl back up in that moment before things changed.Lauren Oliver / quote ↗
12c. 1982 ADThis is not the person I wanted to become: Hatred has carved a permanent place inside me, a hollow where things are so easily lost.Lauren Oliver / quote ↗
13c. 1982 ADEverywhere he touches is fire. My whole body is burning up, the two of us becoming twin points of the same bright white flame.Lauren Oliver / quote ↗
14c. 1982 ADDo the other kids make fun of you? For how you talk?''Sometimes.''So why don't you do something about it? You could learn to talk differently, you know.'But this is my voice. How would you be able to tell when I was talking?Lauren Oliver / quote ↗
15c. 1982 ADThings change after you die, though- I guess because dying is about the lonliest thing you can do.Lauren Oliver / quote ↗
16c. 1982 ADI came to find you last night," Lena says more quietly. "When I knew there was going to be a raid...I snuck out. I was there when—when the regulators came. I barely made it out. Alex helped me. We hid in a shed until they were gone..."I close my eyes and reopen them. I remember wiggling into the damp earth, bumping my hip against the window. I remember standing, and seeing the dark forms of bodies lying like shadows in the grass, and the sharp geometry of a small she shed, nestled in the trees.Lena was there. It was almost unimaginable."I can't believe that. I can't believe you snuck out during a raid—for me." My throat feels thick again, and I will myself not to start crying. For a moment I am overwhelmed by a feeling so huge and strange, I have no name for it: It surges over the guilt and the shock and the envy; it plunges a hand into the deepest part of myself and roots me to Lena.Lauren Oliver / quote ↗
17c. 1982 ADEvery day, streets papered with more and more for .Reward, reward, reward.Reward for information.If you see something, say something.A paper town, a paper world: paper rustling in the airm whispering to me, hissing out a message of posion and jealousy.If you know something, do something.I'm sorry, Lena.Lauren Oliver / quote ↗
18c. 1982 ADWhile other girls were blurry, displaying cracks or, at the very least, seams — ripped jeans, coffee-stained T-shirts, hair that poufed up in the rain — Sophia always looked sharp, clear, as if the resolution had been turned up on a microscope and angled straight at her, as if the money had formed a kind of shrink wrap that kept her protected from the normal destruction of the everyday.Lauren Oliver / quote ↗
19c. 1982 ADWe'll walk together holding hands, and kiss in broad daylight, and love each other as much as we want to, and no one will ever try to keep up apart.Lauren Oliver / quote ↗
20c. 1982 ADI 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.Lauren Oliver / quote ↗
21c. 1982 ADHere's one of the things I learned that morning: if you cross a line and nothing happens, the line loses meaning. It's like that old riddle about a tree falling in a forest, and whether it makes a sound if there's no one around to hear it. You keep drawing a line farther and farther away, crossing it every time. That's how people end up stepping off the edge of the earth. You'd be surprised at how easy it is to bust out of orbit, to spin out to a place where no one can touch you. To lose yourself--to get lost. Or maybe you wouldn't be surprised. Maybe some of you already know.To those people, I can only say: I'm sorry.Lauren Oliver / quote ↗
22c. 1982 ADHow is it possible, I think, to change so much and not be able to change anything at all?Lauren Oliver / quote ↗
23c. 1982 ADI used to think that's what love was: knowing someone so well he was like a part of you.Lauren Oliver / quote ↗
24c. 1982 ADThis is what happens when you try to help people. You get screwed.Lauren Oliver / quote ↗
