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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.

-Lauren Oliver

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Not Gray, Exactly. Right

Lauren Oliver

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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.

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

I Keep Having The Urge To Cross My Hands Over My Chest, To Cover Up My Breasts, To Hide. I'm Suddenly Aware Of How Pale I Look In The Sunshine, And How Many Moles I Have Spotting Up And Down My Chest, And I Just Know He's Looking At Me Thinking I'm Wrong Or Deformed. But The He Breathes, 'beautiful' And When His Eyes Meet Mine I Know That He Really, Truly Means It.

He Looked At Me Like I Was Beautiful.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

There Are More Of Us Than You Think.

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.

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.

Still, The Vivid Green Of The Grass-where The Grass Is Actually Managing To Assert Itself Through The Dirt-seems Out Of Place. This Seems Like A Place Where The Sun Should Never Shine: A Place On The Edge, At The Limit, A Place Completely Removed From Time And Happiness And Life.

Droplets, Droplets: We Are All Identical Drips And Drops Of People, Hovering, Waiting To Be Tipped, Waiting For Someone To Show Us The Way, To Pour Us Down A Path.

Every Choice Is Limited. That's Life.

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.

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.

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

Happiness Is Found When No One Is Looking

...if You Are One Tardy Away From Missing Out On A Big Competition, You Should Probably Make Your Coffee At Home.

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.

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

Funny How Certain Things Stay With You.

At The Same Time I Know That It’s Not Really Their Fault, At Least Not Completely. I Did My Part Too. I Did It On A Hundred Different Days And In A Thousand Different Ways, And I Know It. But This Makes The Anger Worse, Not Better.

....love And Desire Enjoy A Symbiotic Relationship, Meaning That One Cannot Exist Without The Other. Desire Is An Enemy To Contentment; Desire Is Illness, A Feverish Brain. Who Can Be Considered Healthy Who Wants? The Very Word Want Suggests A Lack, An Impoverishment, And That Is What Desire Is: An Impoverishment Of The Brain, A Flaw, A Mistake.

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?

He's Stuck With Me And I'm Stuck With Him. We're Stuck. That's What Growing Up Is All About, I Guess.

And In That Moment, The Wordless Thing Passed Between Us, The Thing That Wasn't Quite Love But Was So Close I Could Believe In It Sometimes.

It Was Unfair That People Could Pretend To Be One Thing When They Were Really Something Else. That They Would Get You On Their Side And Then Do Nothing But Fail, And Fail, And Fail Again. People Should Come With Warnings, Like Cigarette Packs: Involvement Would Kill You Over Time.

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.

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.

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

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

Everyone You Trust, Everyone You Think You Can Count On, Will Eventually Disappoint You.

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

It Won't Matter If Nobody Ever Thinks I'm Pretty (although Sometimes I Wish, Just For A Second, That Somebody Would)

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

Of All The Systems Of The Body - Neurological, Cognitive, Special, Sensory - The Cardiological System Is The Most Sensitive And Easily Disturbed. The Role Of Society Must Be To Shelter These Systems From Infection And Decay, Or Else The Future Of The Human Race Is At Stake. Like A Summer Fruit That Is Protected From Insect Invasion, Bruising, And Rot By The Whole Mechanism Of Modern Farming; So Must We Protect The Heart.

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

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

For A Second, I Feel A Sense Of Overwhelming Grief: For How Things Change, For The Fact That We Can Never Go Back. I'm Not Certain Of Anything Anymore. I Don't Know What Will Happen--

I Still Wanted To Know Why. As Though Somebody Was Going To Answer That For Me, As Though Any Answer Would Be Satisfying.

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

It Was As Though The Darkness Was A Sheet Of Raw Cookie Dough And Someone Had Just Taken A Cookie Cutter And Made A Child-sized Shape Out Of It.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

No Guy In His Right Mind Would Ever Choose Me When There Are People Like Hana In The World: It Would Be Like Settling For A Stale Cookie When What You Really Want Is A Big Bowl Of Ice Cream, Whipped Cream And Cherries And Chocolate Sprinkles Included.

Waste Today, Want Tomorrow.

I Said, I Prefer The Ocean When It's Gray. Or Not Really Gray. A Pale, In-between Color. It Reminds Me Of Waiting For Something Good To Happen.

Droplets, Droplets: We Are All Identical Drips And Drops Of People, Hovering, Waiting To Be Tipped, Waiting For Someone To Show Us The Way, To Pour Us Down A Path. ... He Has Tipped Us Over, All Of Us In Our Teetering Expectancy, And Now We Are Pouring Toward Him, Coursing On A Wave Of Sound, Of Roaring Shouts And Applause. ... They Are The Moon; We Are A Tide, Their Tide, And Under Their Direction We Will Wipe Clean All The Sickness And Blight From The World.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

...the Past: It Drifts, It Gathers. If You Are Not Careful, It Will Bury You. This Is Half The Reason For The Cure: It Clean-sweeps; It Makes The Past, And All Its Pain, Distant, Like The Barest Impression On Sparkling Glass.

Sarah: "not Bad. You Look Almost Human." Lena: "thanks." Sarah: "i Said Almost." Lena: "well, Then, Almost Thanks.

I’ve Always Hated Being Looked At.

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.

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.

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.

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

I'm Mesmerized By The Way His Fingers Move Confidently Along Her Skin, As Though Her Body Is His To Reat And Touch And Tend To. She Was Mine Before She Was Yours: The Words Are There, Unexpectedly, Surging From My Throat To My Tongue. I Swallow Them Back.

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

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

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

I Wonder If This Is How People Always Get Close: They Heal Each Other's Wounds; They Repair The Broken Skin.

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.

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

This Is The Past: It Drifts, It Gathers. If You Are Not Careful, It Will Bury You.

Amor Deliria Nervosa. The Deadliest Of All Deadly Things.

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 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.

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.

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

You See, We Didn't Know.

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

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

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

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

There Are Some Losses We Never Get Over.

"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."

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.

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

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.

So Many Things Become Beautiful When You Really Look.

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

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.

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

Are You Sure That Being Like Everybody Else Will Make You Happy?" "i Don't Know Any Other Way." "let Me Show You." And Then We're Kissing. Or At Least, I Think We're Kissing—i've Only Seen It Done A Couple Of Times, Quick Closed-mouth Pecks At Weddings Or On Formal Occasions. But This Isn't Like Anything I've Ever Seen, Or Imagined, Or Even Dreamed: This Is Like Music Or Dancing But Better Than Both.

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.

Hope Keeps You Alive.

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.

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.

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

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'.

Quiet Through The Grave Go I; Or Else Beneath The Graves I Lie

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.

The Devil Stole Into The Garden Of Eden. He Carried With Him The Disease - Amor Deliria Nervosa - In The Form Of A Seed. It Grew And Flowered Into A Magnificent Apple Tree, Which Bore Apples As Bright As Blood. -from Genesis: A Complete History Of The World And The Known Universe, By Steven Horace, Phd, Harvard University

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.

Someday She Will Be Saved, And The Past And All Its Pain Will Be Rendered As Smoothly Palatable As The Food We Spoon To Our Babies.

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.

Perhaps This Was How The Sparrows Did It Too; Perhaps They Were Looking So Hard At The Peaks And Tips Of The New Rooftops Coated With Dew, And The Vast New Horizon, That They Only Forgot That They Did Not Know How To Fly Until They Were Already In Midair.

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

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

It Seemed A Lifetime Ago I'd Lain In Bed With Lena And Felt Her Breath Tickling My Chin And Held Her While She Slept, Felt Her Heart Beating Through Her Skin To Mine. It Was A Lifetime Ago. Everything Was Different.

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

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

Stupid How The Mind Will Try To Distract Itself.

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.

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”.

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 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.

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 Hate Skin; I Hate Bones And Bodies. I Want To Curl Up Inside Of Him And Be Carried There Forever.

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

I Get That Rush That Comes When You Know You're Doing Something Wrong And Are Getting Away With It, Like Stealing From The School Cafeteria Of Getting Tipsy At A Family Holiday Without Anyone Knowing It.

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

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: 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 What You Do For Family. Anything.

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.

You Don't Reach Points In Life At Which Everything Is Sorted Out For Us. I Believe In Endings That Should Suggest Our Stories Always Continue.

I Wonder If It's Ever Really Possible To Know The Truth About Someone Else, Or If The Best We Can Do Is Just Stumble Into Each Other, Heads Down, Hoping To Avoid Collision. I...wonder How Many People Are Clutching Secrets Like Little Fists, Little Rocks Sitting In The Pits Of Their Stomachs. All Of Them, Maybe.

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

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

It Is War Now, And Armies Need Symbols.

Something Must Die So That Others Can Live.

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.

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

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.

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

He Who Leaps For The Sky May Fall, It's True. But He May Also Fly.

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

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

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.

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

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?

Hate Isn’t The Most Dangerous Thing, He’d Said. Indifference Is.

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

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

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.

"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.

We Wanted The Freedom To Love. We Wanted The Freedom To Choose. Now We Have To Fight For It.

Fighting For Love

And Then, Just At That Moment, When I'm No Longer Sure If I'm Dreaming Or Awake Or Walking Some Valley In Between Where Everything You Wish For Comes True, I Feel The Flutter Of His Lips On Mine.

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.

Amor Deliria Nervosa: It Affects Your Mind So That You Cannot Think Clearly, Or Make Rational Decisions About Your Own Well-being. Symptom Number Twelve.

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

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

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

Love Obeys No Laws Other Than Its Own.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

Po Swirled Upward From Where It Had Been Sitting, And Floated Over To The Window. "when You Go Swimming And You Put Your Head Under The Water," Po Said, "and Everything Is Strange And Underwater-sounding, And Strange And Underwater-looking, You Don't Miss The Air Do You? You Don't Miss The Above-water Sounds And The Above-water Look. It's Just Different." "true." Liesl Was Quiet For A Moment. Then She Added, "but I Bet You'd Miss It If You Were Drowning. I Bet You'd Really Miss The Air Then."

Until, One Day, She Wasn’t.

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.

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

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

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

Telling The Truth

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

Thinking Of Her

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

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.

I Want To Know." His Words Are A Whisper, Barely Audible. "i Want To Know With You.

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.

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.

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.

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.

That's The Thing About Faith. It Works.

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.

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

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

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.

The Second Time My World Exploded, It Was Also Because Of A Word. A Word That Worked Its Way Out Of My Throat And Danced Onto And Out Of My Lips Before I Could Think About It, Or Stop It. The Question Was: Will You Meet Me Tomorrow? And The Word Was: Yes.

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

Is This Freedom? Is It Happiness? I Don't Know. I Don't Care Anymore. It Is Different--it Is Being Alive.

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.

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

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 Wonder Whether She Was Sorry For Leaving Us Behind.

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

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.

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