Background Image

...

I Hate Both Of My Parents Right Now: For Sitting Quietly In Our House, While Out In The Darkness My Heart Was Beating Away All Of The Seconds Of My Life, Ticking Them Off One By One Until My Time Was Up; For Letting The Thread Between Us Stretch So Far And So Thin That The Moment It Was Severed For Good They Didn't Even Feel It.

-Lauren Oliver

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

I Hate Both Of

Lauren Oliver

...

I Hate Both Of My Parents Right Now: For Sitting Quietly In Our House, While Out In The Darkness My Heart Was Beating Away All Of The Seconds Of My Life, Ticking Them Off One By One Until My Time Was Up; For Letting The Thread Between Us Stretch So Far And So Thin That The Moment It Was Severed For Good They Didn't Even Feel It.

Views: 6

Topic

More From Lauren Oliver

It's As Though The Words Are Trapped, Buried Under Past Fears, Past Lives, Like Fossils Compressed Under Layers Of Dirt.

I Don't Know Where To Go. I Don't Know What Comes Now." "don't Worry," Will Said. "we'll Figure Something Out." Liesl Managed To Smile At Him. She Liked That Word: *we*. It Sounded Warm And Open, Like A Hug.

People Do Terrible Things, Sometimes, For The Best Reasons.

His Eyes Are The Color Of Honey. These Are The Eyes I Remember From My Dreams.

I Think Of All The Thousands Of Billions Of Steps And Missteps And Chances And Coincidences That Have Brought Me Here. Brought You Here, And It Feels Like The Biggest Miracle In The World.

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.

Requiem Has Been Controversial Because People Dont Feel I Gave It Closure.

It's Too Late. I've Seen Things...i've Lost Things You Can't Understand.

Maybe All Of These Different Possibilities Exist At The Same Time, Like Each Moment We Live Has A Thousand Other Moments Layered Underneath It That Look Different.

I'm So Tired After Dinner I Fall Asleep With My Clothes On, Almost As Soon As My Head Hits The Pillow, And So I Forget To Ask God, In My Prayers, To Keep Me From Waking Up.

It Was A Bird. A Bird Struggling Through Stickiness: A Bird Coated In Paint, Floundering In Its Nest, Splashing Color Everywhere. Red. Red. Red. Dozens Of Them: Black Feathers Coated Thickly With Crimson-colored Paint, Fluttering Among The Branches. Red Means Run.

But Now I Give In, Let The Anger Surge. I'm Sick Of People Acting Like This World, This Other World Is The Normal One, While I'm The Freak. It's Not Fair; Like All The Rules Have Suddenly Changed And Somebody Forgot To Tell Me.

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’ve Been Trying So Hard Not To Think His Name, Not To Even Breathe The Idea Of Him

One Of The Strangest Things About Life Is That It Will Chug On, Blind And Oblivious, Even As Your Private World - Your Little Carved-out Sphere - Is Twisting And Morphing, Even Breaking Apart.

Sometimes I Feel As Though There Are Two Me's, One Coasting Directly On Top Of The Other: The Superficial Me, Who Nods When She's Supposed To Nod And Says What She's Supposed To Say, And Some Other, Deeper Part, The Part That Worries And Dreams... Most Of The Time They Move Along In Sync And I Hardly Notice The Split, But Sometimes It Feels As Though I'm Two Whole Different People And I Could Rip Apart At Any Second.

Waste Today, Want Tomorrow.

Could It Be? Samantha Kingston? Home? On A Friday?” I Roll My Eyes. “i Don’t Know. Did You Do A Lot Of Acid In The Sixties? Could Be A Flashback.” “i Was Two Years Old In 1960. I Came Too Late For The Party.” He Leans Down And Pecks Me On The Head. I Pull Away Out Of Habit. “and I’m Not Even Going To Ask How You Know About Acid Flashbacks.” “what’s An Acid Flashback?” Izzy Crows. “nothing,” My Dad And I Say At The Same Time, And He Smiles At Me.

Fred Is Officially The Mayor Of Portland Now.

This Is What Happens When You Try To Help People. You Get Screwed.

And How She Looked At Me Like I Could Save Her From Everything Bad In He World. This Was My Secret: She Was The One Who Saved Me

The Worst Is Knowing I Can't Tell Anybody What's Happening -or What's Happened- To Me. Not Even My Mom.

I Will Make A Pact With You: I Will Do It If You Will Do It, Always And Forever. Take Down The Walls.

My Heart Shoots Into My Throat Every Time I Think I See His Loping Walk, Or Catch Sight Of Some Floppy Brown Hair On A Boy - But It's Never Him, And Each Time It Isn't, My Heart Does A Reverse Trajectory Down Into The Very Pit Of My Stomach.

With The Cure, Relationships Are All The Same, And Rules And Expectations Are Defined. Without The Cure, Relationships Must Be Reinvented Every Day, Languages Constantly Decoded And Deciphered. Freedom Is Exhausting.

The Reason You Can Never Go Home Again Isn't Necessarily That Places Change, But People Do. So Nothing Ever Looks The Same.

It's Funny, Isn't It? When You Are Young You Just Want To Be Old, And Then Later You Wish You Could Go Back To Being A Kid.

You Should Only Fall In Love With People Who Will Fall In Love With You Back.

Falling In Love

Once Mo Had Closed The Gates, He Returned To His Little Stone Hut, And His Half-eaten Sandwich Of Butter And Canned Sardines, And His Mug Of Thick Hot Chocolate, Which Every Night He Poured Carefully Into A Thermos Labeled Coffee.

The Question Was: Will You Meet Me Tomorrow? And The Word Was: Yes.

I Love You. They Can't Take It Away.

Rainstorms Are Incredible: Falling Shards Of Glass, The Air Full Of Diamonds.

The Thing Is, You Don't Get To Know. It's Not Like You Wake Up With A Bad Feeling In Your Stomach. You Don't See Shadows Where There Shouldn't Be Any. You Don't Remember To Tell Your Parents You Love Them Or--in My Case--remember To Say Good-bye To Them At All.

You Can Build Walls All The Way To The Sky And I Will Find A Way To Fly Above Them.

I've Never Really Thought About It Before, But It's A Miracle How Many Kinds Of Light There Are In The World, How Many Skies: The Pale Brightness Of Spring, When It Feels Like The Hole World's Blushing; The Lush, Bright Boldness Of A July Noon; Purple Storm Skies And A Green Queasiness Just Before Lightning Strikes And Crazy Multicolored Sunsets That Look Like Someone's Acid Trip.

For A Moment, My Heart Aches For Him. I Should Never Have Asked Him To Join Me Here; I Should Never Have Asked Him To Cross.

You Can Try To Pin Me Down With A Hundred Thousand Arms, But I Will Find A Way To Resist

And Even Though I'm Standing In The Middle Of The Biggest Crowd I've Ever Seen In My Life, I Suddenly Feel Very Alone.

The Flip Side Of Freedom Is This: When You're Completely Free, You're Also Completely On Your Own.

I Can Admit, Now, That I Must Have Loved Lena. Not In An Unnatural Way, But My Feelings For Her Must Have Been A Kind Of Sickness. How Can Someone Have The Power To Shatter You To Dust--and Also To Make You Feel So Whole?

They've Lied About Everything.-about The Fence, And The Existence Of Invalids, About A Million Other Things Besides. They Told Us The Raids Were Carried Out For Our Own Protection. They Told Us The Regulators Were Only Interested In Keeping The Peace. They 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, Maight Also Be A Lie.

It's An Incredible Thing, How You Can Feel So Taken Care Of By Someone And Yet Feel, Also, Like You Would Die Or Do Anything Just For The Chance To Protect Him Back.

That's The Easy Thing About Falling: There Is Only One Choice After That.

I Need Him To Know That I Came For Him. I Need Him To Know That Somehow, At Some Point In The Tunnels, I Began To Love Him.

I Close My Eyes. An Image Flashes—emerging From The Van With Julian After Our Escape From New York City; Believing, In That Moment, That We Had Escaped The Worst, That Life Would Begin Again For Us. Instead Life Has Only Grown Harder.

My Former People Were Not Totally Wrong. Love Is A Kind Of Possession. It’s A Poison. And If Alex No Longer Loves Me, I Can’t Bear To Think That He Might Love Somebody Else.

The Mark Of The Procedure. A Real One. Lu Is Cured.

It's The Way He Says My Name: Like Music.

Funny How Time Heals. Like That Bullet In My Ribs. It's There, I Know It's There, But I Can Barely Feel It At All Anymore.

This Is The Language Of The World Before—a World Of Chaos And Confusion And Happiness And Despair—before The Blitz Turned Streets To Grids, Cities To Prisons, And Hearts To Dust.

Additionally, Liesl And Po Is The Embodiment Of What Writing Has Always Been For Me At Its Purest And Most Basic--not A Paycheck, Certainly; Not An Idea, Even; And Not An Escape. Actually, It Is The Opposite Of An Escape; It Is A Way Back In, A Way To Enter And Make Sense Of A World That Occasionally Seems Harsh And Terrible And Mystifying. (from The "author's Note" At The End).

My Heart Is Fluid And Soaring. There's No Longer Any Space Between Heartbeats.

If You Want Something, If You Take It For Your Own, You'll Always Be Taking It From Someone Else.

I Have Had To Give Up So Much, So Many Selves And Lives Already. I Have Grown Up And Out Of The Rubble Of My Old Lives, Of Things And People I Have Cared For.

I Just Want To Be Normal, Like Everybody Else." "are You Sure That Being Like Everybody Else Will Make You Happy?

I'm Starved For Different Light, A Different Sun,different Sky.

Unhappiness Is Bondage; Therefore, Happiness Is Freedom. The Way To Find Happiness Is Through The Cure. Therefore, It Is Only Through The Cure That One Finds Freedom.

Finding Happiness

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.

It's Connecticut: Being Like The People Around You Is The Whole Point.

Sometimes I'm Afraid To Go To Sleep Because Of What I'm Leaving Behind.

That's What Zombieland Is: Frozen, Calm, Quiet.

Maybe He Sees It On My Face, That Fraction Of A Second When I Let My Guard Down, Because In That Moment His Expression Softens And His Eyes Go Bright As Flame And Even Though I Barely See Him Move, Suddenly He Has Closed The Space Between Us And He’s Wrapping His Warm Hands Over My Shoulders—fingers So Warm And Strong I Almost Cry Out—and Saying, “lena. I Like You, Okay? That’s It. That’s All. I Like You.” His Voice Is So Low And Hypnotic It Reminds Me Of A Song. I Think Of Predators Dropping Silently From Trees: I Think Of Enormous Cats With Glowing Amber Eyes, Just Like His.

But From The Beginning, I Knew That In A World Where Destiny Was Dead, I Was Destined, Forever, To Love Him. Even Though He Didn't - Though He Couldn't - Ever Love Me Back.

You Came Form Different Starts And You'll Come To Different Ends.

Love: It Will Kill You And Save You, Both

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.

This Is The Strange Way Of The World, That People Who Simply Want To Love Are Instead Forced To Become Warriors.

Live Free Or Die. Four Words. Thirteen Letters. Ridges, Bumps, Swirls Under My Fingertips. Another Story. We Cling Tightly To It, And Our Belief Turns It To Truth.

My Stomach Gets That Hollowed-out Feeling. It's Amazing How Words Can Do That, Just Shred Your Insides Apart.

The Last Laugh, The Last Cup Of Coffee, The Last Sunset, The Last Time You Jump Through A Sprinkler, Or Eat An Ice-cream Cone, Or Stick Your Tongue Out To Catch A Snowflake. You Just Don't Know.

He Was Still In Love With You, Anyway.

We'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.

I Love You. Remember. And Someday, I Will Find You Again.

Through Wind, And Tempest, Storm, And Rain; The Calm Shall Be Buried Inside Of Me; A Warm Stone, Heavy And Dry; The Root, The Source, A Weapon Against Pain

I 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.

Everything Looks Beautiful. The Book Of Shhh Says That Deliria Alters Your Perception, Disables Your Ability To Reason Clearly, Impairs You From Making Sound Judgments. But It Does Not Tell You This: That Love Will Turn The Whole World Into Something Greater Than Itself.

Only When It Rains. And Sometimes, Too, When I Remember.

As Steve Draws Me Closer To The Band, All I Can See Is A Frenzied Mass Of Seething, Writhing People, Like A Many-headed Sea Snake, Grinding, Waving Their Arms, Stamping Their Feet, Jumping. No Rules, Just Energy - So Much Energy, You Could Harness It; I Bet You Could Power Portland For A Decade. It Is More Than A Wave. It's A Tide, An Ocean Of Bodies.

No Wonder The Regulators Decided On Segregation Of Boys And Girls: Otherwise, It Would Have Been A Nightmare, This Feeling Angry And Self-conscious And Confused And Annoyed All The Time.

If You Cross A Line And Nothing Happens, The Line Loses Meaning.

I Cry For Everything I Abandoned And Because I, Too, Have Been Left Behind -- By Alex, By My Mom, By Time That Has Cut Through Our Worlds And Separated Us.

Human Beings, In Their Natural State, Are Unpredictable, Erratic, And Unhappy. It Is Only Once Their Animal Instincts Are Controlled That They Can Be Responsible, Dependable, And Content.

As We're Standing There I Realize We're Almost Exactly The Same Height. We Must Look Like The Dark And Light Side Of An Oreo Cookie, And I Think How Just As Easily It Could Have Been The Other Way Around. She Could Be Blocking My Path; I Could Be Trying To Slip Around Her Into The Dark.

The Only Thing Worse Than Having No Friends Is Being Pitied For Having No Friends.

That's When I Realized That Certain Moments Go On Forever. Even After They're Over They Still Go On, Even After You're Dead And Buried, Those Moments Are Lasting Still, Backward And Forward, On Into Infinity. They Are Everything And Everywhere All At Once. They Are The Meaning.

...and Once At Hana's House, When We Stole Some Blackberry Liqueur From Her Parents' Liquor Cabinet And Drank Until The Ceiling Started Spinning Overhead. Hana Was Laughing And Giggling, But I Didn't Like It, Didn't Like The Sweet Sick Taste In My Mouth Or The Way My Thoughts Seemed To Break Apart Like A Mist In The Sun.

The Rules Of Panic Are Simple. Anyone Can Enter. But Only One Person Will Win.

There'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.

We Are All Punished For The Lives We Have Chosen, In One Way Or Another.

The Hours Here Are Flat And Round, Disks Of Gray Layered One On Top Of The Other...they Move Slowly, At A Grind, Until It Seems As Though They Are Not Moving At All. They Are Just Pressing Down.

I'm Gone, Lost, Floating Away Into Nothingness Like I Am In My Dream, But This Time It's A Good Feeling - Like Soaring, Like Being Totally Free, And I Can Feel The Impression Of His Fingers Everywhere That They Touch, And I Think Of Stars Streaking Through The Sky And Leaving Burning Trails Behind Them, And In That Moment - However Long It Lasts, Seconds, Minutes, Days - While He's Saying My Name Into My Mouth And I'm Breathing Into Him, I Realize This, Right Here, Is The First And Only Time I've Ever Been Kissed In My Life.

And There It Is: Even Though We’re Standing In The Same Patch Of Sun-drenched Pavement, We Might As Well Be A Hundred Thousand Miles Apart.

It's Surprisingly Nice Out Here, Peaceful And Pretty-strange To Be Standing In The Middle Of A Little Garden While Enclosed By The Massive Stone Walls Of The Prison, Like Being At The Exact Center Of A Hurricane, And Finding Peace And Silence In The Middle Of So Much Shrieking Damage.

I’ve Always Hated Being Looked At.

Amazingly, I'd Actually Forgotten That I'm Supposed To Be Plain. I'm So Used To Alex Telling Me I'm Beautiful. I'm So Used To Feeling Beautiful Around Him. A Hollow Opens Up In My Chest. This Is What Life Will Be Like Without Him: Everything Will Become Ordinary Again. I'll Become Ordinary Again.

This Was What Being Cured Was Like: Like Being In A Fishbowl, Circling Always Inside The Same Glass.

My First Kiss. A New Kind Of Kiss, Like The New Kind Of Music Still Playing, Softly, In The Distance - Wild And Arrhythmic, Desperate. Passionate.

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.

Fourth Period I Have "life Skills", Which Is What They Call Gym When You're Old Enough To Be Offended By Forced Physical Activity (elody Thinks They Should Call It Slavery Instead, For Accuracy).

I Vowed After That Day That I Would Be Your Hero Too, No Matter How Long It Took

Love Is A Kind Of Possession. It’s A Poison.

I Love You. Remember. They Cannot Take It

Feelings Aren't Forever. Time Waits For No One, But Progress Waits For Man To Enact It.

It's The Rule Of The Wilds. You Must Be Bigger, And Stronger, And Tougher. A Coldness Radiates Through Me, A Solid Wall That Is Growing, Piece By Piece, In My Chest. He Doesn't Love Me. He Never Loved Me. It Was All A Lie. "the Old Lena Is Dead." I Say, And Then Push Past Him. Each Step Is More Difficult Than The Last; The Heaviness Fills Me And Turns My Limbs To Stone. You Must Hurt Or Be Hurt.

I’m Not The Hana Everyone Told Me I Would Be After My Cure.

That's The Thing: We Didn't Really Care. A World Without Love Is Also A World Without Stakes.

I’m Sorry For Everything.” Then He Turns And Pushes Back Into The Woods, And He’s Gone.

They Haven't Killed Us Yet," I Say, And I Imagine That One Day I Will Fly A Plane Over Portland, Over Rochester, Over Every Fenced-in City In The Whole Country, And I Will Bomb And Bomb And Bomb, And Watch All Their Buildings Smoldering To Dust, And All Those People Melting And Bleeding Into Flame, And I Will See How They Like It. If You Take, We Will Take Back. Steal From Us, And We Will Rob You Blind. When You Squeeze, We Will Hit. This Is The Way The World Is Made Now.

He Is No Longer Mine To Lose, But The Grief Is There, A Gnawing Sense Of Disbelief.

When You Love Someone, When You Care For Someone, You Have To Do It Through The Good And The Bad. Not Just When You're Happy And It's Easy.

When You Love Someone

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.

Direction, Like Time, Is A General Thing, The Deprived Of Boundaries And Borders. It Is An Endless Process Interception And Reinterception, Doubling Back And Adjusting.

I'd Rather Die On My Own Terms Than Live On Theirs. I'd Rather Die Loving Alex Than Live Without Him.

Of Course. That's What People Do In A Disordered World, A World Of Freedom And Choice: They Leave When They Want. They Disappear, They Come Back, They Leave Again. And You Are Left To Pick Up The Pieces On Your Own.

Maybe, The Hope Said. Maybe.

This Is One Of My Favorite Things About The Underground: The Crashing Of The Cymbals, The Screeching Guitar Riffs, Music That Moves Into The Blood And Makes You Feel Hot And Wild And Alive.

I Need To Live My Life In The Light Of Their Deaths. I Need To Live.

And This, Really, Is The Story-within-the-story, Because If You Do Not Believe That Hearts Can Bloom Suddenly Bigger, And That Love Can Open Like A Flower Out Of Even The Hardest Places, Then I Am Afraid That For You The World Will Be Long And Brown And Barren, And You Will Have Trouble Finding The Light. But If You Do Believe, Then You Already Know All About Magic.

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.

And You Should Hear The Music. Incredible, Amazing Music, Like Nothing You've Ever Heard, Music That Almost Takes Your Head Off, You Know? That Makes You Want To Scream And Jump Up And Down And Break Stuff And Cry.

We're On The Other Side Of The Fence Now, Lena,' She Says, Tiredly, As She Passes. "don't You Get It? You Can't Tell Me What To Feel.

You Have To Understand. I Wasn't Just Thinking Of Me. I Was Thinking Of Her, Too.

Thinking Of Her

The Story Of Solomon Is The Only Way I Know How To Explain. And Then, In Smaller Letters: Forgive Me.

Willing Me To Understand: That People Should Be Sacrificed To Causes, That Beauty Can Be Built On The Backs Of The Dead.

Maybe This Is The Secret To Talking To Boys--maybe You Just Have To Be Angry All The Time.

Lies Are Just Stories, And Stories Are All That Matter. We All Tell Stories. Some Are More Truthful Than Others, Maybe, But In The End The Only Thing That Counts Is What You Can Make People Believe.

Amazing How Hope Lives. Without Air Or Water, With Hardly Anything At All To Nurture It.

I'm Overwhelmed With Sadness For Everything That Was Lost, And Filled With Anger Toward The People Who Took It Away. My People-or At Least, My Old People. I Don't Know Who I Am Anymore, Or Where I Belong. That's Not Totally True...i Know I Belong With Alex.

I'll Find You," He Says, Watching Me With The Eyes I Remember. "i Won't Let You Go Again

I Put My Forehead On His Collarbone, Place One Hand On His Chest. Its Rhythm Reassures Me: He Is Real, And He Is Now.

But Maybe You Carried Your Demons With You Everywhere, The Way You Carried Your Shadow.

Welcome To The Free World. We Give People The Power To Choose. They Can Even Choose The Wrong Thing. Beautiful, Isn't It?

My Boyfriend's An Idiot," I Say As Soon As He Lurches Away."a Cute Idiot," Ally Corrects Me."that's Like Saying 'a Cute Mutant.' Doesn't Exist.

Mama, Mama, Put Me To Bed I Won’t Make It Home, I’m Already Half-dead I Met An Invalid, And Fell For His Art He Showed Me His Smile, And Went Straight For My Heart.

What Does It Feel Like To Be Infected?" "i-- I Can't Describe It." I Force The Words Out. Can't Breathe, Can't Breathe, Can't Breathe. His Skin Smells Like Smoke From A Wood Fire, Like Soap, Like Heaven. I Imagine Tasting His Skin; I Imagine Biting His Lips. "i Want To Know." His Words Are A Whisper, Barely Audible. "i Want To Know With You.

Live Free Or Die.

Despite The Fact That Raven And Tack Are Often Fighting, It's Impossible To Imagine One Without The Other. They Are Like Two Plants That Have Grown Around Each Other - They Strangle And Squeeze And Support At The Same Time.

Raven Has Lost Deeply, Again And Again, And She, Too, Has Buried Herself. There Are Pieces Of Her Scattered All Over. Her Heart Is Nestled Next To A Small Set Of Bones Buried Beside A Frozen River, Which Will Emerge With The Spring Thaw, A Skeleton Ship Rising Out Of The Water”.

Anything, Anything Is Possible, If You Can Just See The Sky.

Anything Is Possible

I Remember Lena's Expression When He Knocked On The Door; And How Alex Had Looked At Her When She Finally Let Him Into The Storeroom. I Remember Exactly What He Was Wearing, Too, And The Mess Of His Hair, The Sneakers With Their Blue-tinged Laces. His Right Shoe Was Untied. He Didn't Notice. He Didn't Notice Anything But Lena.

I Was Glad When The Invalids Were Executed

I’m Sorry,” He Repeats Again, Too Low For Raven And Tack To Hear. “i’m Sorry For Everything.

But Hope Got In, No Matter How Hard And Fast I Tried To Stomp It Out. Like These Tiny Fire Ants We Used To Get In Portland. No Matter How Fast You Liked Them, There Were Always More, A Steady Stream Of Them, Resistant, Ever-multiplying. Maybe, The Hope Said. Maybe.

Perfection Is A Promise, And A Reassurance That We Are Not Wrong.

No One Had Ever Told Her This Basic Fact: Not Everyone Got To Be Loved.

Each Step Is More Difficult Than The Last; The Heaviness Fills Me And Turns My Limbs To Stone. You Must Hurt Or Be Hurt.

We Should Be Protected From The People Who Will Leave Us In The End, From All The People Who Will Disappear Or Forget Us.

My Heart Is Drumming In My Chest So Hard It Aches, But It's The Good Kind Of Ache, Like The Feeling You Get On The First Real Day Of Autumn, When The Air Is Crisp And The Leaves Are All Flaring At The Edges And The Wind Smells Just Vaguely Of Smoke - Like The End And The Beginning Of Something All At Once.

Most Things, Even The Greatest Movements On Earth, Have Their Beginnings In Something Small. An Earthquake That Shatters A City Might Begin With A Tremble, A Breath. Music Begins With A Vibration . . . And God Created The Whole Universe From An Atom No Bigger Than A Thought.

The Idea—the Fact Of It, The Fact That He Even Noticed And Thought About Me For More Than One Second—is Huge And Overwhelming, Makes My Legs Go Tingly And My Hands Feel Numb.

Time Becomes A Stutter-the Space Between Drumbeats, Splintered Into Fragments, And Also Endlessly Long, As Long As Soaring Guitar Notes That Melt Into One Another, As Full As The Dark Mass Of Bodies Around Me. I Feel Like The Air Downstairs Has Gone To Liquid, To Sweat And Smell And Sound, And I Have Broken Apart In It. I Am Wave: I Am Pulled Into The Everything. I Am Energy And Noise And A Heartbeat Going Boom, Boom, Boom, Echoing The Drums.

Love: A Single Word, A Wispy Thing, A Word No Bigger Or Longer Than An Edge.

Everything Looks Stark And Vivid And Frozen, As Though Drawn Precisely And Outlined In Ink - Parents' Smiles Frozen, Camera Flashes Blinding, Mouths Open And White Teeth Glinstening, Dark Glossy Hair And Deep Blue Sky And Unrelenting Light, Everyone Drowning In Light - Everything So Clear And Perfect I'm Sure It Must Already Be A Memory, Or A Dream.

It Is A Beautiful World For The People Who Get To Play The Fist.

It Will Kill Me, It Will Kill Me, It Will Kill Me. And I Don't Care.

I Feel An Overwhelming Rush Of Sadness... I'm Just Struck With A Sense Of Time Passing So Quickly, Rushing Forward. One Day I'll Wake Up And My Whole Life Will Be Behind Me, And It Will Seem To Have Gone As Quickly As A Dream.

That's The Way I Feel, At Least: Like There's A Real Me And A Reflection Of Me, And I Have No Way Of Telling Which Is Which.

All Of You, Wherever You Are: In Your Spiny Cities, Or Your One-bump Towns. Find It, The Hard Stuff, The Links Of Metal And Chink, The Fragments Of Stone Filling Your Stomach. And Pull, And Pull, And Pull. I Will Make A Pact With You: I Will Do It If You Will Do It, Always And Forever. Take Down The Walls.

There Is So Much Fragility In Kissing, In Other People: It Is All Glass.

People Need Other People To Feel Things For Them," She Said. "it Gets Lonely To Feel Things All By Yourself.

And Even If She Isn’t—even If By Some Miracle, She Survived The Escape And Has Been Squeezing Out A Living In The Wilds—she Would Never Join Forces With The Resisters. She Would Never Be Violent Or Vengeful. Not Lena, Who Used To Practically Faint When She Pricked A Finger, Who Couldn’t Even Lie To A Teacher About Being Late. She Wouldn’t Have The Stomach For It.

There Is Nothing Else For People To Do. They Do Not Think. They Feel No Passion, No Hatred, No Sadness; They Feel Nothing But Fear, And A Desire To Control. So They Watch, And Poke, And Pry.

Like I've Been Sketched By An Amateur Artist: If You Don't Look Too Closely, It's All Right, But Start Focusing And All The Smudges And Mistakes Become Really Obvious.

If You Take, We Will Take Back. Steal From Us, And We Will Rob You Blind. When You Squeeze, We Will Hit. This Is The Way The World Is Made Now.

Are You Ever Afraid To Go To Sleep? Afraid Of What Comes Next?” He Smiles A Sad Little Smile And I Swear It’s Like He Knows. “sometimes I’m Afraid Of What I’m Leaving Behind,” He Says.

Alex Loved Books. He Was The One Who First Introduced Me To Poetry. That's Another Reason I Can't Read Anymore.

This Is The First Day Of My New Beginning. From Now On I'm Going To Do Things Right. I'm Going To Be A Different Person, A Good Person. I'm Going To Be The Kind Of Person Who Would Be Remembered Well, Not Just Remembered.

The Old Lena Is Dead.

"kent?" I Say, And My Voice Seems To Have To Rise From Inside The Fog, Taking Forever To Get From My Brain To My Mouth. "yeah?" "promise You'll Stay Here With Me?" I Say. "i Promise," He Whispers.

I Start To Back Away Before I Do Something Wildly Inappropriate, Like Jump On Top Of Him.

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.

The First One, We’ll Name Blue.

Let Me Tell You Something About Dying: It's Not As Bad As They Says. It's The Coming-back-to-life Part That Hurts.

There's A Place For Everything And Everyone, You Know. That Is The Mistake They Make Above. They Think That Only Certain People Have 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.

In A World Without Love, This Is What People Are To Each Other: Values, Benefits, And Liabilities, Numbers And Data. We Weigh, We Quantify, We Measure, And The Soul Is Ground To Dust.

But If You Do Believe, Then You Already Know All About Magic.

Amor Deliria Nervosa Isn't A Disease Of Love. It's A Disease Of Selfishness.

The Sparrows Jumped Before They Knew How To Fly, And They Learned To Fly Only Because They Had Jumped.

What Is Beauty? Beauty Is No More Than A Trick; A Delusion; The Influence Of Excited Particles And Electrons Colliding In Your Eyes, Jostling In Your Brain Like A Bunch Of Overeager School Children, About To Be Released On Break. Will You Let Yourself Be Deluded? Will You Let Yourself Be Decieved? -"on Beauty And Falsehood," The New Philosophy, By Ellen Dorpshire

Time And Space Recede And Blast Away Like A Universe Expanding Forever Outward, And Leaving Only Darkness And The Two Of Us On Its Periphery, Darkness And Breathing And Touch.

Are You Sure You Can't Dematerialize? Not Even A Little?" "i'm Sure.

I’m With Julian,” I Say At Last. This, After All, Is What I Have Chosen.

For A Second I Feel A Rush Of Sadness: For The Horizons That Vanish Behind Us, For The People We Leave Behind, The Tiny-doll Selves That Get Stored Away And Ultimately Buried.

I Don't Understand How Everything Changes, How The Layers Of Your Life Get Buried. Impossible. At Some Point, At Some Time, We Must All Explode.

Here's Another Thing To Remember: Hope Keeps You Alive. Even When You're Dead, It's The Only Thing That Keeps You Alive.

We Leave Pippa Behind, Standing In The Dark, Teeming Bowels Of The Camp, While The Sun Begins To Stain The Sky Electric, And From All Sides The Guns Draw Closer.

That’s A Funny Thing: You Think, When Awful Things Happen, Everything Else Just Stops, Like You Would Forget To Pee And Eat And Get Thirsty, But It’s Not Really True. It’s Like You And Your Body Are Two Separate Things, Like Your Body Is Betraying You, Chugging On, Idiotic And Animal, Craving Water And Sandwiches And Bathroom Breaks While Your World Falls Apart.

But The Guilt Goes Even Deeper Than That. It, Too, Is Dust: Layers And Layers Of It Have Accumulated. Because If It Weren’t For Me, Lena And Alex Would Never Have Been Caught At All. I Told On Them. I Was Jealous. God Forgive Me, For I Have Sinned.

Black Is Too Morbid; Red Will Set Them On Edge; Pink Is Too Juvenile; Orange Is Freakish

Mice? Fine. Flying Mice? Not So Fine.

"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."

There's That Confidence Again, That Semi-infuriating Easiness Of His, The Tilt Of His Head And The Smile. But Today It's Not Infuriating. Today I Like It, Feel Like It's Somehow Rubbing Off On Me, Like If I Was Around Him Enough I Would Never Feel Awkward Or Frightened Or Insecure.

It Is War Now, And Armies Need Symbols.

Chance. Stupid, Dumb, Blind Chance. Just A Part Of The Strange Mechanism Of The World, With Its Fits And Coughs And Starts And Random Collisions.

Poetry Isn't Like Any Writing I've Ever Heard Before. I Don't Understand All Of It, Just Bits Of Images, Sentences That Appear Half-finished, All Fluttering Together Like Brightly Colored Ribbons In The Wind.

That's When You Realize That Most Of It-life, The Relentless Mechanism Of Existing-isn't About You. It Doesn't Include You At All. It Will Thrust Onward Even After You've Jumped The Edge. Even After You're Dead.

Old Words; Words That Nearly Brought Me To My Knees. Live Free Or Die

That Was What Her Parents Did Not Understand—and Had Never Understood—about Stories. Liza Told Herself Storied As Though She Was Weaving And Knotting An Endless Rope. Then, No Matter How Dark Or Terrible The Pit She Found Herself In, She Could Pull Herself Out, Inch By Inch And Hand Over Hand, On The Long Rope Of Stories.

I’ve Never Really Had A Party Before.” “why Did You Have One Now?” I Say, Just To Keep Him Talking. He Gives A Half Laugh. “i Thought If I Had A Party, You Would Come.

This Is What Amazes Me: That People Are New Every Day. That They Are Never The Same. You Must Always Invent Them, And They Must Always Invent Themselves, Too.

Trending Author

Julia Margaret Cameron

Category