Background Image

...

I Know Some Of You Are Thinking Maybe I Deserved It. But Before You Start Pointing Fringers, Let Me Ask You Is What I Did Really So Bad? So Bad I Deserved To Die? So Bad I Deserved To Die Like That? Is What I Did Really Much Worse Then What Anybody Else Does? Is It Really So Much Worse Than What You Do?

-Lauren Oliver

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

I Know Some Of

Lauren Oliver

...

I Know Some Of You Are Thinking Maybe I Deserved It. But Before You Start Pointing Fringers, Let Me Ask You Is What I Did Really So Bad? So Bad I Deserved To Die? So Bad I Deserved To Die Like That? Is What I Did Really Much Worse Then What Anybody Else Does? Is It Really So Much Worse Than What You Do?

Views: 6

Topic

More From Lauren Oliver

At A Certain Point Your Brain Stops To Rationalize Things. At A Certain Point It Gives Up, Shuts Off, Shuts Down.

Now, After So Many Years, I Understand What The Coldness Was And Where It Came From—this Sense That Everything Is Lost, And Worthless, And Meaningless.

I Remember A Story I Once Heard About Drowning: That When You Fall Into Cold Water It's Not That You Drown Right Away But That The Cold Disorients You And Makes You Think That Down Is Up And Up Is Down, So You May Be Swimming, Swimming, Swimming For Your Life In The Wrong Direction, All The Way Toward The Bottom Until You Sink. That's How I Feel, As Though Everything Has Been Turned Around.

I Want To Be Healed And Whole And Perfect Again, Like A Misshapen Slab Of Iron That Comes Out Of The Fire Glowing, Glittering, Razor-sharp.

That’s What Made It So Frightening To The Lawmakers: Love Obeys No Laws Other Than Its Own.

It's A Miracle I Was Able To Get Out Of The House Today. It's A Miracle I'm Even Wearing Pants, A Double Miracle I Remembered To Wear Shoes.

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.

Here's Something Else You Might As Well Learn Now: If You Want Something, If You Take It For Your Own, You'll Always Be Taking It From Someone Else. That's A Rule Too. And Something Must Die So That Others Can Live.

Maybe It Would Be Better If We Didn't Love. If We Didn't Lose, Either. If We Didn't Get Out Hearts Stomped On, Shattered; If We Didn't Have To Patch And Repatch It Until We're Like Frankenstein Monsters, All Sewn Together By Who Knows What

That Is What Alex Is Now: A Shadow-boy

Over The Past Week, I’ve Accepted That I Will Never Love Julian As Much As I Loved Alex. But Now That Idea Is Overwhelming, Like A Wall Between Us. I Will Never Love Julian Like I Love Alex.

So Are You Going To Be My Knight In Shining Armor Or What?' Kent Does A Little Bow. 'you Know I Can't Resist A Damsel In Distress.

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

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

She Was Mine Before She Was Yours.

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

Hearts Are Fragile Things. That's Why You Have To Be So Careful.

For The First Time In My Life I've Done Something For Me And By Choice And Not Because Somebody Told Me It Was Good Or Bad.

Most Of Us Won't See One Another After Graduation, And Even If We Do It Will Be Different. We'll Be Different. We'll Be Adults--cured, Tagged And Labeled And Paired And Identified And Placed Neatly On Our Life Path, Perfectly Round Marbles Set To Roll Down Even, Well-defined Slopes.

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

Somewhere In The Endless Spinning Of Eternity That One, Tiny, Fraction Of A Second Where Our Lips Met Is Lost Forever.

The Priests And The Scientists Are Right About One Thing: At Our Heart, At Our Base, We Are No Better Than Animals.

There Is Only What You Want And What Happens. There Is Only Grabbing On And Holding Tight In The Darkness.

His Secret Name, Which Belongs To Me, And To Him, And To No One Else.

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.

Everywhere He Touches Is Fire. My Whole Body Is Burning Up, The Two Of Us Becoming Twin Points Of The Same Bright White Flame.

Some Things Are Better Left Buried And Forgotten.

But...books Are So Much More. Some Of Them Are Webs; You Can Feel Your Way Along Their Threads, But Just Barely, Into Strange And Dark Corners. Some Of Them Are Balloons Bobbing Up Through The Sky: Totally Self-contained, And Unreachable, But Beautiful To Watch. And Some Of Them―the Best Ones―are Doors.

But That's The Problem With Love - It Acts On You, Works Through You, Resists Your Attempts To Control.

That's The Thing About Faith. It Works.

It 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.

Love, The Deadliest Of All Things: It Kills You Both When You Have It And When You Don't. But That Isn't It, Exactly. The Condemner And The Condemned. The Executioner; The Blade; The Last-minute Reprieve; The Gasping Breath And The Rolling Sky Above You And The Thank You, Thank You, Thank You God. Love: It Will Kill You And Save You, Both.

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

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 The Thing About Best Friends. That's What They Do. They Keep You From Spinning Off The Edge.

Fred Is Officially The Mayor Of Portland Now.

For A Second I Think About How Easy It Would Be To Pass Back To The Other Side, To Walk Straight Into The Laboratories And Offer Myself Up To The Surgeons. You Were Right; I Was Wrong. Get It Out.

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.

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

That’s What You Do For Family. Anything.

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

This Is What We Are Made For: Promises, Pledges, And Sworn Oaths Of Obedience.

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

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

The Old Lena Is Dead.

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.

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.

Suicide. A Sideways Word, A Word That People Whisper And Mutter And Cough: A Word That Must Be Squeezed Out Behind Cupped Palms Or Murmured Behind Closed Doors. It Was Only In Dreams That I Heard The Word Shouted, Screamed.

People Are Like Ants: Just A Few Of Them Give All The Orders. And Most Of Them Spend Their Lives Getting Squashed.

Amor Deliria Nervosa. The Deadliest Of All Deadly Things.

It's Like There's A Filter Set Up In My Brain, Except Instead Of Making Things Better, It Twists Everything Around So What Comes Out Of My Mouth Is Totally Wrong, Totally Different From What I Was Thinking.

Yeah, But Our Choices Are Limited. We Choose From A List That They Chose For Us." She Said. "well, Choices Are Supposed To Be Limited. That's Life" I Snapped

Maybe Before You Die, It's Your Ghosts You See.

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

"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."

Now I'd Rather Be Infected With Love For The Tiniest Sliver Of A Second Than Live A Hundred Years Smothered By A Lie.

Maybe, The Hope Said. Maybe.

Everytime He Brushes Me With His Fingers, Time Seems To Tether For A Second, Like It Is In Danger Of Dissolving. The Whole World Is Dissolving, I Decide, Except For Us. Us.

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

It Occurs To Me That For A Long Time She Has Been Doing Her Own Version Of Resisting.

You Have To Go Forward: It's The Only Way. You Have To Go Forward No Matter What Happens. This Is The Universal Law.

Juliet!' I Whip Around But Not Quickly Enough. She's Swallowed By The Crowd, The Gap That Allowed Her To Break For The Door Closing Just As Quickly As It Opened, A Shifting Tetris Pattern Of Bodies.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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 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.

Things That Don't Matter When You've Lived The Same Day Six Times And Died On At Least Two Of Them: Lunch Meats And Their Relative Coolness.

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”.

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.

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.

Two 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.

For A Split Second, He Had Looked Almost Like My Alex Again.

I Think Of Grace And Feel A Sharp Pain In My Chest.

Running Is A Mental Sport, More Than Anything Else. You're Only As Good As Your Training, And Your Training Is Only As Good As Your Thinking.

We’ll Go.” Her Voice Is Surprisingly Deep And Forceful. Set In Her Sunken, Shipwreck Face, Her Eyes Burn Like Two Smoldering Coals. “we’ll Fight.

This Is Not The Person I Wanted To Become: Hatred Has Carved A Permanent Place Inside Me, A Hollow Where Things Are So Easily Lost.

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.

When We Get Out Of Highschool We'll Look Back And Know We Did Everything Right, That We Kissed The Cutest Boys And Went To The Best Parties, Got In Just Enough Trouble, Listened To Our Music Too Loud, Smoked Too Many Cigarettes, And Drank Too Much And Laughed Too Much And Listened Too Little, Or Not Al All.

Raven Jerks And Stiffens. For A Second, I Think She Is Only Surprised: Her Mouth Goes Round, Her Eyes Wide. Then She Begins Teetering Backward, And I Know That She Is Dead. Falling, Falling, Falling . . .

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

That's What Time Does: We Stand Stubbornly Like Rocks While It Flows All Around Us, Believing That We Are Immutable - And All The Time We're Being Carved, And Shaped, And Whittled Away.

There Are Some Losses We Never Get Over.

They Say That The Cure For Love Will Make Me Happy And Safe Forever. And I’ve Always Believed Them. Until Now. Now Everything Has Changed. Now, I’d Rather Be Infected With Love For The Tiniest Sliver Of A Second Than Live A Hundred Years Smothered By A Lie

No Guest Rooms.” I Shake My Head Resolutely. “i Want To Be In A Room Room. A Lived-in Room.

No One Can Tell Us No. No One Can Make Us Stop. We Have Picked Each Other And The Rest Of The World Can Go To Hell.

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

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

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.

Love Obeys No Laws Other Than Its Own.

We Can Never Understand. We Can Only Try, Fumbling Our Way Through The Tunneled Places, Reaching For Light.

Nobody Ever Said Life Was Fair.

Step On A Crack , You'll Break Your Mama's Back. Step On A Stone, You'll End Up All Alone. Step On A Stick, You're Bound To Get The Sick. Watch Where You Tread, You'll Bring Out All The Dead. - A Common Children's Playground Chant, Usually Accompanied By Jumping Rope Or Clapping.

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.

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.

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?

It Amazes Me How Easy It Is For Things To Change, How Easy It Is To Start Off Down The Same Road You Always Take And Wind Up Somewhere New. Just One False Step, One Pause, One Detour, And You End Up With New Friends Or A Bad Reputation Or A Boyfriend Or A Breakup. It's Never Occurred To Me Before; I've Never Been Able To See It. And It Makes Me Feel, Weirdly, Like 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.

They Didn’t Get Me, I Should Have Said. They Saved Me.

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.

If Cassie Was Invalidated Because She Caught The Disease, Or Because Fred Suspected Her Of It, I Can Only Imagine What He Will Do To Me And To My Family If He Discovers That The Cure Did Not Work Perfectly.

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

But How Could Anyone Who's Ever Seen A Summer - Big Explosion Of Green And Skies Lit Up Electric With Splashy Sunsets, A Riot Of Flowers And Wind That Smells Like Honey - Pick The Snow?

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.

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.

Mama, Mama, Help Me Get Home I'm Out In The Woods, I Am Out On My Own. I Found Me A Werewolf, A Nasty Old Mutt It Showed Me Its Teeth And Went Straight For My Gut. Mama, Mama, Help Me Get Home I'm Out In The Woods, I Am Out On My Own. I Was Stopped By A Vampire, A Rotting Old Wreck It Showed Me Its Teeth And Went Straight For My Neck. 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. -from "a Child's Walk Home," Nursery Rhymes And Folk Tales

The Whole Point Of Growing Up Is Learning To Stay On The Laughing Side.

I Wonder Whether She Was Sorry For Leaving Us Behind.

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

Music, I Think, He Makes Me Feel Like Music

He Makes Me Feel

It's Like High School Holds Two Different Worlds, Revolving Around Each Other An Never Touching; The Haves And The Have-nots. I Guess It's A Good Thing. High School Is Supposed To Prepare You For The Real World, After All.

And 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.

I Suppose That's The Secret, If You're Ever Wishing For Things To Back The Way They Were. You Just Have To Look Up.

For The First Time In My Life I Actually Feel Sorry For Carol. I'm Only Seventeen Years Old, And I Already Know Something She Doesn't Know: I Know That Life Isn't Life If You Just Float Through It. I Know That The Whole Point- The Only Point- Is To Find Things That Matter, And Hold On To Them, And Fight For Them, And Refuse To Let Them Go.

I Know Some Of You Are Thinking Maybe I Deserved It. But Before You Start Pointing Fringers, Let Me Ask You Is What I Did Really So Bad? So Bad I Deserved To Die? So Bad I Deserved To Die Like That? Is What I Did Really Much Worse Then What Anybody Else Does? Is It Really So Much Worse Than What You Do?

Promise Me We'll Stay Together, Okay? His Eyes Are Once Again The Clear Blue Of A Perfectly Transparent Pool. They Are Eyes To Swim In, To Float In, Forever. "you And Me". "i Promise". I Say. Behind Us The Door Creaks Open, And I Turn Around, Expecting Raven, Just As A Voice Cuts Through The Air: "don't Believe Her.

You See, We Didn't Know.

Sometimes I Feel Like She Deserves A Best Friend Who Is Just A Little More Special.

"and I Love You Too." His Fingers Skate The Edge Of My Jaw, Dance Briefly Over My Lips. "you Should Know That. You Have To Know That."

In One Of The Tents, Julian Is Sleeping. And In Another: Alex

And We Did, And It Wasn’t Bad. We Ate The Whole Stupid Can, We Were So Hungry. And When It Started To Get Dark You Pointed To The Sky, And Told Me There Was A Star For Every Thing You Loved About Me.” I’m Gasping, Feeling As Though I Am About To Drown; I’m Reaching For Him Blindly, Grabbing At His Collar.

I Know What The Problem Is, Of Course. The Disorientation, The Distraction, The Difficulty Focusing - All Classic Phase One Signs Of Deliria. But I Don't Care. If Pneumonia Felt This Good I'd Stand Out In The Snow In The Winter With Bare Feet And No Coat, Or March Into The Hospital And Kiss Pneumonia Patients

He Is My World And My World Is Him And Without Him There Is No World.

Less Than A Month Ago All Of August Still Stretched Before Us - Long And Golden And Reassuring, Like An Endless Period Of Delicious Sleep.

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.

Dystopian Novels Help People Process Their Fears About What The Future Might Look Like; Further, They Usually Show That There Is Always Hope, Even In The Bleakest Future.

You Have To Learn That People Are Always Listening.

Love. I Love You. I’ll Always Love You, My Love. You Are The Love Of My Life.

Love Of My Life

Always Love You

I Know What The Problem Is, Of Course. The Disorientation, The Distraction, The Difficulty Focusing - All Classic Phase One Signs Of Deliria. But I Don't Care. If Pneumonia Felt This Good I'd Stand Out In The Snow In The Winter With Bare Feet And No Coat, Or March Into The Hospital And Kiss Pneumonia Patients

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

It's Going To Be Okay. Words That Mean Nothing. Really, Just Sounds Intoned Into Vastness And Darkness, Little Scrabbling Attempts To Latch On To Something When We're Falling.

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

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.

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 You Like A Stone.

It's So Strange How Life Works: You 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.

That's When You Really Lose People, You Know.when The Pain Passes.

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.

For A Second We Just Stand There In Silence. Then, Suddenly, Alex Is Back, Easy And Smiling Again. “i Left A Note For You One Time. In The Governor’s Fist, You Know?” I Left A Note For You One Time. It’s Impossible, Too Crazy To Think About, And I Hear Myself Repeating, “you Left A Note For Me?” “i’m Pretty Sure It Said Something Stupid. Just Hi, And A Smiley Face, And My Name. But Then You Stopped Coming.” He Shrugs. “it’s Probably Still There. The Note, I Mean. Probably Just A Bit Of Paper Pulp By Now.

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

The First One, We’ll Name Blue.

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.

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

I Guess That’s Just Part Of Loving People: You Have To Give Things Up. Sometimes You Even Have To Give Them Up.

What I Meant Was, You Looked Happier In The Pictures.

..in That Moment I Realize How Much I Love The Little Everyday Routines Of My Life..the Details That Are My Life's Special Pattern, Like How In Handwoven Rugs What Really Makes Them Unique Are The Tiny Flaws In The Stitching, Little Gaps And Jumps And Stutters That Can Never Be Reproduced. So Many Things Become Beautiful When You Really Look.

Everyday Routine

You Can't Be Happy Unless You're Unhappy Sometimes".

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.

The Memories Seem Like Snapshots From Someone Else’s Life.

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.

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.

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.

The Walls Are Covered -crammed- With Writing. No. Not Writing. They Are Covered With A Single Four-letter Word That Has Been Inscribed Over And Over, On Every Available Surface. Love.

Live Free Or Die.

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.

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.

They’d Already Taken Her From Me Once. I Didn’t Want To Lose Her Again.

I Feel Like I'm Playing Some Giant Video Game, Or Trying To Solve A Really Complicated Math Equation. 'one Girl Is Trying To Avoid Forty Raiding Parties Of Between Fifteen To Twenty People Each, Spread Out Across A Radius Of Seven Miles. If She Has To Make It 2.7 Miles Through The Center, What Is The Probablitiy She Will Wake Up Tomorrow Morning In A Jail Cell? Please Feel Free To Round Pi To 3.14'.

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.

We All Need Mantras, I Guess - Stories We Tell Ourselves To Keep Us Going.

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

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

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

Thinking Of Her

He’s Speaking In The Tone Of Voice That Everyone Uses When They’re About To Break You Apart. Gentle—kind, Even—like They Can Make The News Sound Better Just By Speaking In A Lullaby Voice.

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.

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.

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.

We Are Such Small, Stupid Things. For Most Of My Life I Thought Of Nature As The Stupid Thing: Blind, Animal, Destructive. We, The Humans, Were Clean And Smart And In Control: We Had Wrestled The Rest Of The World Into Submission, Battered It Down, Pinned It To A Glass Slide And The Pages Of The Bool Of Shhh.

This Is What Hatred Is. It Will Feed You And At The Same Time Turn You To Rot.

My Parents Were Pretty Liberal, But They Were Still Parents. I Definitely Had My Teenage Rebellion.

And I Have Julian. I Found Him, And He Followed Me. I Reach Out In The Half Dark, Wordlessly, And Find His Hands. We Interlace Our Fingers, And Though He Doesn't Say Anything Either, I Can Feel The Warmth And Energy Passing Between Us, A Soundless Dialogue. Thank You, He Is Saying, And I Am Saying, I Am So Happy, I Am So Happy, I Needed You To Be Safe.

Do 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?

Fear. Blame. Don't Forget. Mom. I Love You. -lauren Oliver, Delerium

Until, One Day, She Wasn’t.

Nothing Exists But Him.

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.

I Think Of The Quietness Of Julian's Voice As He Said I Love You, The Steadiness Of His Rib Cage Rising And Falling Against My Back, As We Sleep.i Love You, Julian. But The Words Don't Come.

I Guess There Are Some Things You Never Get Used To.

Love Is The Only Thing In The World Worth Having. You Must Never Loose It Or Give It Away. We Must Never Let Them Take It From Us.

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.

I Am Growing Stronger. I Am A Stone Being Excavated By The Slow Passage Of Water; I Am Wood Charred By A Fire.

Growing Stronger

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 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.

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.

People Themselves Are Full Of Tunnels: Winding, Dark Spaces And Caverns; Impossible To Know All The Places Inside Of Them. Impossible Even To Imagine.

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.

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

Everything In Me Feels Fluttering And Free, Like I Could Take Off From The Ground At Any Second. Music, I Think, He Makes Me Feel Like Music.

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.

I Don't Know How I Stay On My Feet, Why I Don;t Just Shatter Into Dust Right There, Why My Heart Keeps Beating When I Want It So Badly To Stop

It Strikes Me How Strange People Are. You Can See Them Every Day - You Can Think You Know Them - And Then You Fшnd Out You Hardly Know Them At All.

I'm Used To A Feeling Of Doubleness, Of Thinking One Thing And Having To Do Another, A Constant Tug-of-war.

Alex Is Dead, Do You Hear Me? All Of That-what We Felt, What It Meant- That's Done Now, Okay? Buried. Blown Away.

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.

We're Killers, All Of Us: We Kill Our Lives, Our Past Selves, The Things That Mattered. We Bury Them Under Slogans And Excuses.

This Is The World We Live In, A World Of Safety And Happiness And Order, A World Without Love. A World Where Children Crack Their Heads On Stone Fireplaces And Nearly Gnaw Off Their Tongues And The Parents Are Concerned. Not Heartbroken, Frantic, Desperate. Concerned, As They Are When You Fail Mathematics, As They Are When They Are Late To Pay Their Taxes.

Life Isn't Life If You Just Float Through It.

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.

...into Hate, Into Refusal, Against Hope And Without Fear

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.

Trending Author

Charles M. Schwab

Portia De Rossi

Alexander McQueen

Category