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Lauren Oliver

Lauren Oliver Quotes

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AllPeopleKnowsIfsThinkingDeliriumFeelsWorldWayLoveDelirium Trilogy

Famous Lauren Oliver Quotes

“If Conrad remembered the skinny, frightened girl he'd held for one brief moment on a frigid Boston street corner, he showed no signs of it when we met ... Even as I tried to urge hum back against the pillows, he looked at me with wild eyes. "What happened to your leather jacket?" he asked. "Shh," I said, trying to sooth him. "There's no leather jacket." "You were wearing it the first time I saw you," he said, frowning slightly.”

LoveRemembranceConradAnnabel
Book:Annabel
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“Sympathizer. It’s only slightly better than the other word that followed me for years after my mom’s death, a snakelike hiss, undulating, leaving its trail of poison: 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 my dreams that I heard the word shouted, screamed.”

SuicideDelirium TrilogyLena HalowaySympathizer
Book:Delirium
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“So many questions crowd my brain at once, it’s like one of the famous Portland fogs has swept up from the ocean and settled there, making it impossible to think normal, functional thoughts. We’re sitting on the floor of the living room, which is squashed up right next to the “dining room”, and I’m holding Jenny's workbook on my knees, reciting the problems to her, but my mind is on autopilot and my thoughts are a million miles away. Or rather, they’re exactly 3.4 miles away, down at the marshy edge of Back Cove.”

PortlandBlurryFoggyDelirium TrilogyLena Haloway
Book:Delirium
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“Hana starts off down the road. I’m tempted to watch her go. I get the urge to memorize her walk—to imprint her in my brain somehow, just as she is—but as I’m watching her waver in and out of the fierce sunlight, her silhouette gets confused with another one in my head, a shadow weaving in and out of darkness, about to walk off the cliff, and I don’t know who I’m looking at anymore. Suddenly the edges of the world are blurring and there’s a sharp pain in my throat, so I turn around and walk quickly toward the house. “Lena!” she calls out to me, just before I reach the gate. I spin around, heart leaping, thinking maybe she’ll be the one to say it. I miss you. Let’s go back. Even from a distance of fifty feet, I can see Hana hesitating. Then she makes this fluttering gesture with her hand and calls out, “Never mind.” This time when she turns around she doesn’t waver. She walks straight and quickly, turns a corner, and is gone. But what did I expect? That’s the whole point, after all: There’s no going back.”

Delirium TrilogyLena HalowayHana TatePast Is Done
Book:Delirium
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“This music ebbs and flows, irregular, sad. It reminds me, weirdly, of watching the ocean during a bad storm, the lashing, crashing waves and the spray of sea foam against the docks; the way it takes your breath away, the power and the hugeness of it. That’s exactly what happens as I listen to the music, as I come up over the final crest of hill, and the half-ruined barn and collapsing farmhouse fan out in front of me, just as the music swells, a wave about to break: The breath leaves my body all at once, and I’m struck dumb by the beauty of it. For a second it seems to me like I really am looking down at the ocean—a sea of people, writhing and dancing in the light spilling down from the barn like shadows twisting up around a flame.”

MusicCrowdDelirium Trilogy
Book:Delirium
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“I feel a pang of guilt. I’ve obviously been given the nicest bed, and the nicest room. It still amazes me to think how wrong I was all those years, when I trusted in rumors and lies. I thought the Invalids were beasts; I thought they would rip me apart. But these people saved me, and gave me the softest place to sleep, and nursed me back to health, and haven’t asked for anything in return. The animals are on the other side of the fence: monsters wearing uniforms. They speak softly, and tell lies, and smile as they’re slitting your throat.”

Delirium TrilogyLena Haloway
Book:Pandemonium
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“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 really I’m freaking out. It’s one of the skills you perfect as you get older. You have to learn that people are always listening. [...] 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 and says “Gray.” 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.”

ListeningConfusionPretendingDeliriumSplit PersonalityDelirium TrilogyLena HalowayLauren Oliver
Book:Delirium
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“My aunt just stood there, and in that second it was as though the world and the future collapsed down into a single point, and I understood that this—the kitchen, the spotless cream linoleum floors, the glaring lights, and the vivid green mass of Jell-O on the counter—was all that was left now that my mother was gone. Suddenly I couldn’t stay there. I couldn’t stand the sight of my aunt’s kitchen, which I now understood would be my kitchen. I couldn’t stand the Jell-O. My mother hated Jell-O. An itchy feeling began to work its way through my body, as though a thousand mosquitoes were circulating through my blood, biting me from the inside, making me want to scream, jump, squirm. I ran.”

MotherDelirium TrilogyLena Haloway
Author:Lauren Oliver
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“The pain in my lungs swells up and blossoms until it feels like it’s everywhere, tearing through all my cells and muscles at once. The cramp in my leg makes me wince every time my heel hits the pavement. It’s always like this on miles two and three, like all the stress and anxiety and irritation and fear get transformed into little needling points of physical pain, and you can’t breathe or imagine going farther or think anything but: I can’t. I can’t. I can’t.”

Delirium TrilogyLena Haloway
Author:Lauren Oliver
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“I’m used to a feeling of doubleness, of thinking one thing and having to do another, a constant tug-of-war. But somehow Hana has fallen cleanly away into the double half, the other world, the world of unmentionable thoughts and things and people. Is it possible that all this time I’ve been living my life, studying for tests, taking long runs with Hana—and this other world has just existed, running alongside and underneath mine, alive, ready to sneak out of the shadows and the alleyways as soon as the sun goes down? Illegal parties, unapproved music, people touching one another with no fear of the disease, with no fear for themselves. A world without fear. Impossible. And even though I’m standing in the middle of the biggest crowd I’ve ever seen in my life, I suddenly feel very alone.”

FearImpossibleCrowdApartWorlds ApartDelirium TrilogyLena HalowayHana TateDoubleness
Author:Lauren Oliver
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“The smile disappears just like that, like a candle being snuffed out. For a second she looks almost angry. [...] For a moment she stands there. Then she turns around. She is holding the lantern low so her face is in darkness. Her eyes are two bare reflections, glittering, like black stones in the moonlight. “You might as well get used to it now,” she says with quiet intensity. “Everything you were, the life you had, the people you knew … dust.” She shakes her head and says, a little more firmly, “There is no before. There is only now, and what comes next.”

LifePastRavenDelirium TrilogyLena Haloway
Book:Pandemonium
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“She'll be fine," Alex says dismissively, as though I shouldn't worry about it—as though it's none of my concern. I have the sudden urge to kick him in the back of his head. He is kneeling in front of Lena, dabbing antibacterial cream on her leg. I'm mesmerized by the way his fingers move confidently along her skin, as though her body is his to treat 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.”

MadTouchPossessiveTreatLena HalowayAlex SheathesHana TateTendDismiss
Book:Hana
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“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. And very, very rarely - by some miracle of chance and coincidence, butterflies beating their wings just so and all the threads hanging together for a minute - you get the chance to do the right thing.”

TimeDoing The Right ThingRandomness
Author:Lauren Oliver
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