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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.

-Lauren Oliver

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It's So Strange How

Lauren Oliver

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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.

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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

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If Singing Were A Feeling It Would Be This, This Light, This Lifting, Like Laughing.

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.

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

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

I Didn't Realize Then What A Privilege That Was: To Be Bored With Your Best Friend; To Have Time To Waste.

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.

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

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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.

That Is The Rule Of The Wilds: You Must Be Bigger And Stronger And Tougher. You Must Hurt Or Be Hurt.

And 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.

So Many Things Become Beautiful When You Really Look.

It's Like A Razor Blade Edging Its Way Through My Organs, Shredding Me, All I Can Think Is: It Will Kill Me, It Will Kill Me, It Will Kill Me. And I Don't Care.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

It Is War Now, And Armies Need Symbols.

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

Sometimes I Think Maybe They Were Right All Along, The People On The Other Side In Zombieland. Maybe It Would Be Better If We Didn't Love. If We Didn't Lose Either. If We Didn't Get Our Hearts Stomped On, Shattered: If We Didn't Have To Patch And Repatch Until We're Like Frankenstein Monsters, All Sewn Together And Bound Up By Who Knows What. If We Could Just Float Along, Like Snow. But How Could Anyone Who's Ever Seen A Summer - Big Explosions Of Green And Skies Lit Up Electric With Splashy Sunsets, A Riot Of Flowers And Wind That Smells Like Honey - Pick The Snow?

I'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 Older

The Tunnels May Be Long, And Twisted, And Dark; But You Are Supposed To Go Through Them.

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.

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

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

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.

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

That's All I Want. Just You And Me. Always.

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Because If It Weren’t For Me, Lena And Alex Would Never Have Been Caught At All. I Told On Them. I Was Jealous.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The First One, We’ll Name Blue.

I Didn’t Know It Would Be Like This,” He Says In A Whisper. And Then: “i’m Scared.

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 Memories Seem Like Snapshots From Someone Else’s Life.

The Salt Blowing Off The Sea Makes The Air Feel Textured And Heavy.

Hunky Heroes, Rescuing Distressed Women, Captive Princesses, And Girls Without Wheels Since 1684. P. 450

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Maybe Next Time, But Probably Not.

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A Good Friend Keeps Your Secrets For You. A Best Friend Helps You Keep Your Own Secrets.

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Not Gray, Exactly. Right Before The Sun Rises There's A Moment When The Whole Sky Goes This Pale Nothing Color-not Really Gray But Sort Of, Or Sort Of White, And I've Always Really Liked It Because It Reminds Me Of Waiting For Something Good To Happen.

Everyone Just Wasting Time Because They Have So Much Of It To Waste, Minutes Slipping By On Who's With Who And Did You Hear.

I Was Glad When The Invalids Were Executed

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.

Everything I See And Touch Reminds Me Of Him, And So Everything I See And Touch Is Perfect.

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.

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

He Looked At Me Like I Was Beautiful.

Something Aches At The Very Core Of Me, Something Ancient And Deep And Stronger Than Words: The Filament That Joins Each Of Us To The Root Of Existence, That Ancient Thing Unfurling And Resisting And Grappling, Desperately, For A Foothold, A Way To Stay Here, Breathe, Keep Going.

I Shiver, Thinking How Easy It Is To Be Totally Wrong About People-to See One Tiny Part Of Them And Confuse It For The Whole, To See The Cause And Think It's The Effect Or Vice Versa

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.

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

All This Time, I Thought We Were Growing Apart Because I Was Leaving Lena Behind. But Really It Was The Reverse. She Was Learning To Lie. She Was Learning To Love.

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When He Speaks Again, I Can Tell That He's Smiling. "so I Guess We Saved Each Other.

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

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They 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.

Holy Mother Of Lord Cocoa Puffs

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My Wild, Uncured, Erratic, Incomprehensible Heart.

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.

I Was Glad When The Invalids Were Executed. Some People Complained That Lethal Injection Was Too Humane For Convicted Terrorists, But I Thought It Sent A Powerful Message: We Are Not The Evil Ones. We Are Reasonable And Compassionate. We Stand For Fairness, Structure, And Organization. It’s The Other Side, The Uncureds, Who Bring The Chaos.

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Then I Think Of The Dark, And The Lights, And The Roaring, And Juliet, And Before I Can Think Of Anything Else, I Fight The Final Few Steps To The Door And Step Out Into The Cold, Where The Rain Is Still Coming Down Like Shards Of Moonlight, Or Like Steel.

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.

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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.

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.

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

In My Head I Try And Reach Back, Through The Fence, Past The Smoke; I Try And Grab His Hand And Pull. Alex, Come Back. There Is Nothing To Do But Sink. The Hours Close Around Me, Encase Me Completely, Like A Tomb.

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

Because?' I Prompt 'because I'm Sorry, But I Can't Help It, And I Really Need To Kiss You Right Now.

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.

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

And A Face Above Mine, White And Beautiful, Eyes As Large As The Moon. You Saved Me. A Hand On My Cheek, Cool And Dry. Why Did You Save Me? Words Welling Up On A Tide: No, The Opposite. Eyes The Colour Of A Dawn Sky, A Crown Of Blond Hair, So Bright And White And Blinding I Could Swear It Was A Halo.

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

Love: It Will Kill You And Save You, Both

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.

Mistake, Mistake, Mistake. A Strange Word: Stinging, Somehow.

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

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.

There Are Some Losses We Never Get Over.

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

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.

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

It's Amazing How Words Can Do That, Just Shred Your Insides Apart. Sticks And Stones May Break My Bones, But Words Can Never Hurt Me - Such Bullshit.

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.

Popularity's A Weird Thing. You Can't Really Define It, And It's Not Cool To Talk About, But You Know It When You See It. Like A Lazy Eye, Or Porn.

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

I Wonder Whether She Was Sorry For Leaving Us Behind.

Amor Deliria Nervosa. The Deadliest Of All Deadly Things.

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

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

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

Huamns, Uregulated, Are Cruel And Capricious; Violet And Selfish; Miserable And Quarrelsome. It Is Only After Their Instincts And Basic Emotions Have Been Controlled That They Can Be Happy, Generous, And Good.

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

For All The People Who Have Infected Me With Amor Deliria Nervosa In The Past - You Know Who You Are. For The People Who Will Infect Me In The Future - I Can't Wait To See Who You'll Be. And In Both Cases: Thank You.

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.

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.

A Room Full Of Words That Are Nearly The Truth But Not Quite, Each Note Fluttering Off The Steam Of Its Rose Like A Broken Butterfly Wing.

I Reach Out And Grab Her Wrist. It Feels Impossibly Tiny In My Hand, Like This One Time I Found A Baby Bird Near Goose Point, And I Picked It Up And It Died There, Taking Its Final Gasping Fluttering Breaths In My Palm.

Things Would Get Difficult Again. But That Was Okay Too. The Bravery Was In Moving Forward, No Matter What.

It Occurs To Me That There Is So Much I Never Knew About Him--his Past, His Role In The Resistance, What His Life Was Like In The Wilds, Before He Came To Portland, And I Feel A Flash Of Grief So Intense It Almost Makes Me Cry Out: Not For What I Lost, But For The Chances I Missed.

Mice? Fine. Flying Mice? Not So Fine.

I Am Now Officially Married To Fred Hargrove. Nothing Will Ever Be The Same.

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

The Most Dangerous Sicknesses Are Those That Make Us Believe We Are Well

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

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, Might Also Be A Lie.

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

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

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

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.

People Are Like Houses. They Could Open Their Doors. You Could Walk Through Their Rooms And Touch The Objects Hidden In Their Corners. But Something--the Structure, The Wiring, The Invisible Mechanism That Kept The Whole Thing Standing--remai Ned Invisible, Suggested Only By The Fact Of Its Existing At All.

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

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

That's What It Was Like Waking Up In The Crypts. No-longer-dead. But Without Her. Like Burning Alive.

The Wilds Aren't Safe Anymore.

She Was Mine Before She Was Yours.

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

Take It From Me: If You Hear The Past Speaking To You, Feel It Tugging Up Your Back And Runing Its Fingers Up Your Spine, The Best Thing To Do-the Only Thing-is Run.

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

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.

Most Of The Time-- 99 Percent Of The Time-- You Just Don't Know How And Why The Threads Are Looped Together, And That's Okay. Do A Good Thing And Something Bad Happens. Do A Bad Thing And Something Good Happens. Do Nothing And Everything Explodes.

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.

There Were Days I Asked For It-prayed For It When I Went To Sleep. The Belief That I Would See You Again, That I Could Find You-the Hope For It-was The Only Thing That Kept Me Going.

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

And When We Are With Alex, I Might As Well Not Be There. They Speak In A Language Of Whispers And Giggles And Secrets; Their Words Are Like A Fairy-tale Tangle Of Thorns, Which Place A Wall Between Us.

Summer Explodes Into Portland. In Early June The Heat Was There But Not The Color--the Green Were Still Pale And Tentative, The Morning Had A Biting Coolness--but By The Last Week Of School Everything Is Technicolor And Splash, Outrageous Blue Skies And Purple Thunderstorms And Ink-black Night Skies And Red Flowers As Brights As Spots Of Blood.

This Is Pretty Much The Answer To Every Problem You Encounter In Suburbia: Plant A Tree, And Hope You Don't See Anyone's Privates.

You Have To Understand. I Am No One Special. I Am Just A Single Girl. I Am Five Feet Two Inches Tall And I Am In-between In Every Way. But I Have A Secret. You Can Build Walls All The Way To The Sky And I Will Find A Way To Fly Above Them. You Can Try To Pin Me Down With A Hundred Thousand Arms, But I Will Find A Way To Resist.

I Screamed Until My Voice Dried Up In My Throat. We All Did. All Of Us In Ward Six, All Of Us Forgotten, Left To Rot.

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

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

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

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.

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.

Snapshots, Moments, Mere Seconds: As Fragile And Beautiful And Hopeless As A Single Butterfly, Flapping On Against A Gathering Wind.

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

Both Of Us Will Die Today, Gunned Down Or Smashed Up Or Exploded In Some Terrible Moment Of Fire And Twisted Metal, And When They Go To Bury Us We'll Be So Melted Together And Entwined They Won't Be Able To Separate The Bodies; Pieces Of Him Will Go With Me, And Pieces Of Me Will Go With Him.

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

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.

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.

Finishing Books - And Leaving The World You've Created - Is Always A Kind Of Emotionally Wrenching Experience. I Usually Cry.

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

You See, We Didn't Know.

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

I'm Not Scared, If That's What You're Wondering. The Moment Of Death Is Full Of Sound And Warmth And Light Shooting Away, Arcing Up And Up And Up, And If Singing Were A Feeling It Would Be This, This Light, This Lifting, Like Laughing... The Rest You Have To Find Out For Yourself.

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.

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

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.

Like I Am Alice In The Wonderland And Have Gotten Too Big For The Room.

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.

You Must Hurt, Or Be Hurt.

Is It Possible To Tell The Truth In A Society Of Lies? Or Must You Always, Of Necessity, Become A Liar?

Telling The Truth

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).

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

If You’re Smart, You Care. And If You Care, You Love.

If He Were Less Well Trained, And Less Careful, He Would Say Hate. But He Can’t Say It; It Is Too Close To Passion, And Passion Is Too Close To Love, And Love Is Amor Deliria Nervosa, The Deadliest Of All Deadly Things: It Is The Reason For The Games Of Pretend, For The Secret Selves, For The Spasms In The Throat.

When I’m Running, There’s Always This Split Second When The Pain Is Ripping Through Me And I Can Hardly Breathe And All I See Is Color And Blur—and In That Split Second, Right As The Pain Crests, And Becomes Too Much, And There’s A Whiteness Going Through Me, I See Something To My Left, A Flicker Of Color […]—and I Know Then, Too, That If I Only Turn My Head He’ll Be There, Laughing, Watching Me, And Holding Out His Arms. I Don’t Ever Turn My Head To Look, Of Course. But One Day I Will. One Day I Will, And He’ll Be Back, And Everything Will Be Okay. And Until Then: I Run.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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”.

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.

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

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'.

The Kidnapping, The Kiss. I Brought Him Here, After All. I Rescue Him An Pulled Him Into This New Life, A Life Of Freedom And Feeling.

How Can Someone Have The Power To Shatter You To Dust--and Also To Make You Feel So Whole?

I Didn't Even Know A Heart Could Beat So Loudly...it Reminds Me Of An Edgar Allen Poe Story We Had To Read In One Of Our...classes...it's Supposed To Be A Story About Guilt And The Dangers Of Civil Disobedience, But When I First Read It I Thought It Seemed Kind Of Lame And Melodramatic. Now I Get It, Though. Poe Must Have Snuck Out A Lot When He Was Young.

Things Change After You Die, Though, I Guess Because Dying Is The Loneliest Thing You Can Do.

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

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

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

I’m Hana,” Hana Says. “and This Is Lena.” She Jabs Me With An Elbow. I Know I Must Look Like A Fish, Standing There With My Mouth Gaping Open, But I’m Too Outraged To Speak. He’s Lying. I Know He’s The One I Saw Yesterday, Would Bet My Life On It. “alex. Nice To Meet You.” Alex Keeps His Eyes On Me As He And Hana Shake Hands. Then He Extends A Hand To Me. “lena,” He Says Thoughtfully. “i’ve Never Heard That Name Before.

But That's The Beauty Of Life: Time Is Yours To Keep And To Change. Just A Few Minutes Can Be Sufficient To Carve A New Road, A New Track. Just A Few Minutes, And The Void Is Kept At Bay. You Will Live Forever With That New Road Inside Of You, Stretching Away To A Place Suggested, Barely, On The Horizon. For The Shortest Time, Shorter Than The Shortest Second's Breath, You Get To Stand Up To Infinity. But Eventually, And Always, Infinity Wins.

Something Must Die So That Others Can Live.

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