Lauren destefano quotes

We accept gods that don't speak to us. We accept gods that would place us in a world filled with injustices and do nothing as we struggle. It's easier than accepting that there's nothing out there at all, and that, in our darkest moments, we are truly alone.

A party in the orange grove. The pain on Linden's face is immediate. I am unwavering. He has cost me more pain than I will ever be able to repay.

He kissed back, all the pages spread out around us like riddles waiting to be solved. Let them wait. Let my genes unravel, my hinges come loose. If my fate rests in the hands of a madman, let death come and bring its worse. I'll take the ruined craters of laboratories, the dead trees, this city with ashes in the oxygen, if it means freedom. I'd sooner die here than live a hundred years with wires in my veins.

Before I can process what’s happening, Deirdre has opened her hands and Linden has taken the ring from her and slipped it onto my finger. “Rhine Ashby,” he says. “My wife.

and I've always known it, the way I love a song I hear for the first time, even before I know all the words, the way I love my favorite color, and the way that the train would speed past my bedroom when it was very quiet and I'd feel it in my stomach rushing through me. I love you in a way that I've never felt needed to be said.

You've been captive for so long that you don't even realize you want freedom anymore.

I see an ocean that’s spilled out of a wineglass, its body clear and sparkling and folding over itself. I see a ribbon of sand.

I don't know if it was love or an illusion. I don't know if there's ever a way to be certain.

I nod like I'm not at all unnerved by this new cold side to him. Not cruel like his father. Not warm like the husband who sought me out on quiet nights. Something in between. This Linden has never woven his fingers through mine, never chosen me from a line of weary Gathered girls, never said he loved me in a myriad of coloured lights. We are nothing to each other.

She has the majesty of hurricanes and explosions.

Maybe hope isn't the most dangerous thing a person can have. Maybe love is.

Eventually I realize that I am holding on to him just as tightly as he holds on to me. And here we are: two small dying things, as the world ends around us like falling autumn leaves.

I've loved you since the day I stole the atlas for you," Gabriel says, because he thinks I'm asleep.

My worries always lead to dungeons; I can't imagine a worse thing than to be imprisoned for the rest of one's life, especially with so few years to enjoy what little there is.

I wanted so badly to tell him, but something about that entire night seemed so beautiful, so bizarre, that I didn't trust it with my secrets.

A feeling can't kill you.

There is a dark place calling to me, but I will not go just yet. I know I can't return from it.

Good night, sweetheart," he says. "Good bye, sweetheart," I say. And it's so casual, so innocent that he doesn't suspect a thing.

I'm suddenly finding it hard to know the difference between nightmares and consciousness.

I think, in this strange world of beautiful things, there may be some humanity after all.

...maybe hope isn't such a bad thing. Maybe it's what keeps us together.

Ah, love. That’s what the world has lost. There’s no more love, only the illusion of it.

The world seems so clean if you only looked up.

I used to have only one name; it used to mean something.

She's beautiful and graceful, and she is very compassionate and loyal when you aren't responsible for the murder of her family.

Childhood is a long, long road, from which that dark whispering forest of death seems an impossible destination.

You have a way of looking at things. You make it seem as though everything's going to be okay. I can't imagine a more dangerous thing to have than hope like yours.

Home?' I say. It's a word that can mean anywhere and nowhere.

Most dystopian, classic and contemporary, paints a future world that puts a twist on present society - a future world that could plausibly happen.

We are stronger than we've credited ourselves to be. We have been the victims and the witnesses. We have said a lifetime of good-byes.

The months fall to shards at my feet.

I think she's brave. I think that nobody has ever believed what she could be capable of. All her life, nobody was listening.

My sisters were in that van.

It is the face of a girl who has seen the world, who realizes that it hates her, and who hates it in return.

There are so many of us, so many girls. The world wants us for our wombs or our bodies, or it doesn't want us at all.

It isn’t a perfect place. There are no perfect places. But nobody cares about perfection when there are sand castles to build and kites to chase, children that are being born, old hearts that are giving in.

I think humans have always been desperate. I think it has always been about doing something awful if it might help, when the only other option is death. Maybe that's what being a parent is supposed to feel like.

There’s a limit to how much living can be done in a life without freedom.

I liked just being with you. I liked the way you breathed when you were asleep. I liked when you took the champagne glass from my hand. I liked how your fingers were always too long for your gloves.

I miss something I never even had.

They never exhale, the trees; on a very windy day, they rustle and inhale, and then the leaves and the branches all tremble as though something means to strangle the life from them. The sky watches on. The world is filled with anticipation, as if to wonder if this day will be a great day, or a horrible day, or the last day.

‎I have always been fascinated by the ocean, to dip a limb beneath its surface and know that I'm touching eternity, that it goes on forever until it begins here again.

Even things that aren't broken can be fixed.

Forget who you are and what you think is there, and you'll discover things that don't exist to be known.

Bet you never eat, he says. Bet you drink up the oxygen like it's butter. Bet you can go for days on nothing but thoughts.

I think he's beginning to understand, and understanding is a horrible thing.

What have you done? What have you given up?' So many things, Cecily. More than you know.

For males twenty-five is the fatal age. For women it's twenty. We are all dropping like flies.

Words like 'unputdownable' and 'irresistible' are simply not enough for Cat Winters's In the Shadow of Blackbirds. Days after finishing this story, it remains the first thought I have in the morning, and the thing that haunts me until I sleep.

I had this feeling like the solution to everything would be down there if only I could dig through all those clouds.

Maybe it is desperation. Maybe we can't let things fall apart without trying. We can't let go of the people we love.

And if I have to die trying, I will get out of here.

Humans are the absolute worst thing to happen to this planet.

Dystopian, by definition, promises a darker story.

I don’t have too many books, I have too little shelving.

Rhine. The river that, somewhere out there, has broken free.

I always knew I was an excellent liar; I just didn't know that I had it in me to fool myself.

The thing about hope is that it doesn't go away even when it serves no purpose.

When we're alive, life consumes us. But when we die, all of the color and the motion is gone so quickly, it's as though it can no longer stand to be wasted on us.

We destroy things with our curiosity. We shatter with our best intentions

Fate, I think, is a thief.

He sits next to me, careful to avoid my hair that's splayed out around my head like blood. A bullet to the forehead, boom, blond waves everywhere.

It taught that there are three versions of things: the one I see in my mind, and the one that carries onto the paper, and then what it ultimately becomes.

Hope, that risky, illustrious thing. It should have gone extinct by now, but we keep it alive.

I wanted to be rid of him," he says. He raises my chin with his thumb. "But not if it meant being rid of you. I climbed in beside you, and you put your head in my lap. You can't think I would have left you like that." "Look what it got you," I say. "Tea in bed and you here in front of me," he says. "It was a terrible decision, and I confess I'd make it again.

The madness of youth made me unafraid.

But instead of tears, when I press my face against the pillow, a horrible, primal scream comes out of me. It's unlike anything I thought myself capable of. Rage, unlike anything I've ever known.

I stare at her collarbone that's framed with lace, the hollow of her throat, her shoulders that rise with each rise with the weight of her next breath. We're fragile things. Our bones show through our skin. What would any god want with us?

I'll tell you something about true love. There's no science to it. It's as natural as the sky.

It doesn't matter how much his mother loves him; love is not enough to keep any of us alive.

She's been conned, ruined, left for dead, and she's not going to forgive any of it. She will soldier on, if only out of spite.

You can't be afraid. You can be sad if you like. You can be angry. But it's the fear that'll freeze you in place.

To die trying would be better than to die without purpose.

Times like this, when she slips her hand into mine and holds on tight, and our husband becomes just a shadow in the doorway.

Poor kid,' Jenna says, and rolls her eyes toward me for a moment. Then she returns to her book. 'She doesn't even understand what kind of place this is.

I start trying to stay unconscious. The problem with this is that no amount of willpower can change the reality.

Lovers are weapons, but love is a wound.

On tiptoes the redhead wouldn't even reach my shoulders; she is clearly too young to be a bride. And the willowy girl is too forlorn. And I am too unwilling. Yet here we are.

Every star has been set in the sky. We mistakenly think they were put there for us.

I wonder what it’s like for her, looking so much like a dead girl.

Don't you miss it?" I say. "Being free." He laughs.

I wonder if she has figured out that I'll never love Linden, especially not in the way she does, and that he'll never love anyone the way he loves her. I wonder if she realizes, despite all her efforts to train me, that I can never take her place.

When I was 11 or 12, I was really bored with everything on my summer reading list. It was all happy, middle-grade kinds of books. I was getting frustrated, because I liked to read. My mother went to the library and got me a copy of 'The Other Side of Midnight' by Sidney Sheldon. It was my first adult book.

I never wanted to live forever," she says. "I just wanted enough time.

Someday I'll tell you all of it," I say. "I'd like that," he says. "No," I say. "I promise you won't.

Set fire to the broken pieces; start anew.

Fall has always been my favorite season. The time when everything bursts with its last beauty, as if nature had been saving up all year for the grand finale.

But I know all the things you're too sweet to know.

There is warmth shooting through my broken body where there should be pain, and I put my arms around the back of his neck and I hold on to him. I hold on because you never know in this place when something good will be taken away.

Maybe what frightens us about the edge isn't our fear of morality, but the thoughts it leads us to have.

Living in a place like this, she must have learned how to see all the monsters that can hide a person.

We writers are resilient souls.

A strange thing, words. Once they're said, it's hard to imagine they're untrue.

Love is not enough to keep any of us alive.

It was my fifth grade teacher who introduced the idea that writing could be more than a hobby for me.

Cure" is one of the most precious words in the English language. It's a short word. A clean and simple word. But it isn't so easy a thing as it sounds. There are questions like: How will this affect us in ten years? In twenty? What will it do to our children? Our children's children?

We can change so many times in our lives. We're born into a family, and it's the only life we can imagine, but it changes. Buildings collapse. Fires burn. And the next second we're someplace else entirely, going through different motions and trying to keep up with this new person we've become.

I like the idea of something greater than us. We destroy things with our curiosity. We shatter with our best intentions. We are no closer to perfection than we were one hundred years ago, or five hundred.

She’s a commodity in a sea of broken girls.

Tell freedom I said hello.' 'If I happen to see it, I will.

There was a desperate undercurrent to our marriage--a feeling of being in a dream from which I couldn't seem to awaken. A nagging sense that my life, laid out so neatly like the clothes Deirdre left on my divan, was no longer my own.

Time was our very first king. We all live our lives to the aggressive ticking of the clock. We don't question that our lives are a grid of seconds; even our pulses oblige. No succeeding king can hope to hold this kind of power.

Kettle thingies. Yum.

None of the wives mention the security guards by the door, who will probably tackle us to the ground if we try to leave without our husbands.

Her mind is a bird that's trapped inside her skull, flapping and thrashing, never breaking free.

In another time, in another place, I wonder who they might have been.

Once upon a time there were two parents, two children, and a brick house with lilies in the yard. The parents died, the lilies wilted. One child disappeared. Then the other." Pg 225

Suddenly the clouds seem high above us. They’re moving over us in an arch, circling the planet. They have seen abysmal oceans and charred, scorched islands. They have seen how we destroyed the world. If I could see everything, as the clouds do, would I swirl around this remaining continent, still so full of color and life and seasons, wanting to protect it? Or would I just laugh at the futility of it all, and meander onward, down the earth’s sloping atmosphere?

When I am writing anything in general, I just want to tell the story that exists in my head; I don't try to write a parable or make a point.

She would do anything, anything to belong to his son after a lifetime of belonging to no one at all.

The trick was looking past the illusion, because the exit was never as far away as it seemed.

Perhaps... you love too fiercely.

I should not have loved my daughter as I did. Not in this world in which nothing lives for long. You children are flies. You are roses. You multiply and die.

We'll squeeze every second that we can from our lives, because we're young, and we have plenty of years to grow. We'll grow until we're braver. We'll grow until our bones ache and our skin wrinkles and our hair goes white, and until our hearts decide, at last, that it's time to stop.

Tell freedom I said hello.

There's a sort of dead passion in him. A spark that, had he more years to live, would be a wildfire.

So many of the things I've wanted are the things I've been taught to fear.

Even the human race can't claim to be natural anymore. We are fake, dying things. How fitting that I would end up in this sham of a marriage.

I can almost see what Gabriel meant when he asked, 'What has the free world got that you can’t get here?' Almost. Freedom, Gabriel. That’s what you can’t get here.

We were his disposable things. Brought to him like cattle. Stripped of what made us sisters or daughters or children. There was nothing that he could take from us—our genes, our bones, our wombs—that would ever satisfy him. There was no other way that we would be free.

But there’s no such thing as free. There are only different and more horrible ways to be enslaved.

There is no choice for him but to believe. He has nothing left to give in offering.

He gathers me up and I'm weightless before he sets me on the railing. He's the only thing keeping me from falling back, out of the reach of daylight. I'm not afraid of falling. I don't fear the sky beyond the train tracks like I did before. I can go anywhere just so long as it's with him.