1
If you’re smart, you care. And if you care, you love.Lauren Oliver
2
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.Lauren Oliver
3
It's amazing how close I have been, all this time, to my old life. And yet the distance that divides me from it is vast.Lauren Oliver
5
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...Lauren Oliver
6
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.Lauren Oliver
7
But for now, the future, like the past, means nothing.Lauren Oliver
8
On the day that started it all, that rocketed me forward and landed me here, in this new body, in this new future.Lauren Oliver
9
Once you let in the word, once you allow it to take root, it will spread like a mold through all of your corners and dark spaces– and with it, the questions, the shivery, splintered fears, enough to keep you permanently awake.Lauren Oliver
10
Grief is like sinking, like being buried. I am in water the tawny color of kicked-up dirt. Every breath is full of choking. There is nothing to hold on to, no sides, no way to claw myself up. There is nothing to do but let go. Let go. Feel the weight all around you, feel the squeezing of your lungs, the slow, low pressure. Let yourself go deeper. There is nothing but bottom. There is nothing but the taste of metal, and the echoes of old things, and days that look like darkness. .Lauren Oliver
11
I’ve been in the Wilds for a month and a half now, and in that time I’ve almost forgotten about the fences. It’s amazing how close I have been, all this time, to my old life. And yet the distance that divides me from it is vast.Lauren Oliver
12
Anger is useful only to a certain point. After that, it becomes rage, and rage will make you careless.Lauren Oliver
13
Because I am terrified by what I want: for him, and worst of all, from him. Because I do want. I'm not even sure what, exactly, but the want is there, just like the hate and anger were there before. But this is not a tower. It is an endless, tunneling pit; it drives deep, and opens a hole inside me.Lauren Oliver
14
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.Lauren Oliver
15
At least when I'm sleeping I can dream myself back to Alex, can dream myself into a different world.Lauren Oliver
16
But for now, the future, like the past, means nothing. For now, there is only a homestead built of trash and scraps, at the edge of a broken city, just beyond a towering city dump; and our arrival-hungry, and half-frozen, to a place of food and water and walls that keep out the brutal winds. This, for us, is heaven.Lauren Oliver
17
This is the mistake they make above. They think that only certain people habe a place. Only certain kinds of people belong. The rest is waste. But even waste must have a place. Otherwise it will clog and clot, and rot and fester.Lauren Oliver
18
And suddenly I am blindingly angry at Raven--for her lectures, and her stubbornness, and for thinking that the way that you help people is by driving them against a wall, by beating them down until they fight back.Lauren Oliver
19
When you're completely free, you're also completely on your own.Lauren Oliver
20
But I am terrified by what I want: for him, and worst of all, from him. Because I do want. I'm not even sure what, exactly, but the want is there, just like the hate and anger were there before. But this is not a tower. It is an endless, tunneling pit; it drives deep, and opens a hole inside me.Lauren Oliver
21
The DFA and organizations like it have pushed and squeezed and elbowed out all the feeling in the world. They have clamped their fists around a geyser to keep it from exploding. But the pressure eventually builds, and the explosion will always come.Lauren Oliver
22
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.Lauren Oliver