Lauren Oliver, Delirium

"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."

"Everything has taken on a strange, distant quality - the sounds of running and shouting outside get warped and weird like they're being filtered through water, and Alex looks miles away. I start to think I might be dreaming, or about to pass"

"Poetry isn't like any writing I've ever heard before. I don't understand all of it, just bits of images, sentences that appear half-finished, all fluttering together like brightly colored ribbons in the wind."

"Two weeks until your cure" she says finally. "Sixteen days" I say, but in my head I'm counting: Seven days. Seven days until I'm free and away from all these people and their sliding superficial lives brushing past one another gliding, gliding, gliding from life to death. For them there's hardly a change between the two."

"Lord, help us root our feet to the earth And our eyes to the road And always remember the fallen angels Who, attempting to soar,Were seared instead by the sun and, wings melting,Came crashing back to the sea. Lord, help root my eyes to the earth And stay my eyes to the road So I may never stumble.)"

"And suddenly it's all so ridiculously and stupidly clear I feel like laughing. This is what I want. This is the only thing i've ever wanted. Everything else---every single second of every single day that has come before this very moment, this kiss---has meant nothing."

"Nothing has ever been so painful or delicious as being so close to him and being unable to do anything about it: like eating ice cream so fast on a hot day you get a splitting headache."

"His eyes are blazing with light, more light than all the lights in every city in the whole world, more light than we could ever invent if we had ten thousand billion years."

"This is what I want. This is the only thing I've ever wanted. Everything else—every single second of every single day that has come before this very moment, this kiss—has meant nothing."

"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."

"He is my world and my world is him and without him there is no world."

"Unhappiness is bondage; therefore, happiness is freedom."

"You can't be happy unless you're unhappy sometimes"."

"I’ll tell you another secret, this one for your own good. You may think the past has something to tell you. You may think that you should listen, should strain to make out its whispers, should bend over backward, stoop down low to hear its voice breathed up from the ground, from the dead places. You may think there’s something in it for you, something to understand or make sense of. But I know the truth: I know from the nights of Coldness. I know the past will drag you backward and down, have you snatching at whispers of wind and the gibberish of trees rubbing together, trying to decipher some code, trying to piece together what was broken. It’s hopeless. The past is nothing but a weight. It will build inside of you like a stone. Take it from me: If you hear the past speaking to you, feel it tugging at your back and running its fingers up your spine, the best thing to do—the only thing— is run."

"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."

"I told you," he whispers back. I can feel his breath just tickling the space behind my ear, making my hair prick up on my neck. "I like you."You don't know me," I say quickly."I want to, though."

"Find the things that matter, and hold on to them, and fight for them, and refuse to let them go."

"I'd rather die on my own terms than live on theirs. I'd rather die loving Alex than live without him."

"Now I'd rather be infected with love for the tiniest sliver of a second than live a hundred years smothered by a lie."

"And now I know why they invented words for love, why they had to: It's the only thing that can come close to describing what I feel in that moment, the baffling mixture of pain and pleasure and fear and joy, all running sharply through me at once."