Top 181 Quotes & Sayings by Lauren DeStefano - Page 3

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

There's a world out there that nobody has bothered to promise her.

Tell freedom I said hello.

Give me time" "For you, always.

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

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

The only characters I ever don't like are ones that leave no impression on me. And I don't write characters that leave no impression on me.

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.

Tell me about yourself." "Myself?" He looks confused. "Yes," I say, patting the mattress. "You know all there is to know," he says, sitting beside me. "Not true," I say. "Where were you born? What's your favourite season? Anything." "Here. Florida," he says. "I remember a woman in a red dress with curly brown hair. Maybe she was my mother, I'm not sure. And summer. What about you?" The last part is said with a smile. He smiles so infrequently that I consider each one a trophy.

I lost everyone I loved," I tell him. I wait for him to look at me, and then I add, "The day I met you.

I can hear my brother's voice in my head. Your problem is that you're too emotional. But how can I not be emotional, Rowan? How can I not care?

I figured it out eventually," she says. She's sitting on the edge of the gurney again; her features slowly materialize as my vision clears. "It's momentum." "What?" I whisper. The feeling returning to my lips, spreading out to my fingertips and toes. "Momentum," she repeats. "You can't just stand there if you want something to fly. You have to run.

It's the silence I imagine in the rest of the world, the silence of an endless ocean and uninhabitable island, a silence that can be seen from space.

Don't forget how you got here. Don't Forget.

Sometimes we don't know how afraid we are until we've reached a strange door and we don't know what will be on the other side.

It's best to let her go," he says. No, no, that's wrong. It's never right to give up on someone.

And then I wonder, does my brother think of me this way? We entered this world together, one after the other, beats in a pulse. But I will be first to leave it. That's what I've been promised. When we were children, did he dare to imagine an empty space beside him where I then stood giggling, blowing soap bubbles through my fingers? When I die, will he be sorry that he loved me? Sorry that we were twins? Maybe he already is.

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

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

His three wives are huddled together on the bare mattress, one of them dying; when we're together, we form an alliance he can't touch. He's scared to even try.

So how long do you think it’ll be?” he says. “Before the next hurricane comes along to take you home.” “Can I tell you my biggest fear?” I say. “Yes. Tell me.” “That it will be a very windless four years.

No matter how lonely it makes me, and no matter how wide and horrific the loneliness, at least I remember who I am.

The sullen boy sitting before me is not my husband, and the girl he is fretting over isn't me, will never be me.

Did you tell freedom hello for me?

Life is much different from the days when there were lilies in my mother’s garden, and all my secrets fit into a paper cup.

There's a hazy smile on her lips that won't go away, and her hair is a mess. It's like a brushfire filled with casualties.

I don't dare touch her. Loss is a knowledge I'm sorry to have. Perhaps the only thing worse than experiencing it, is watching it replay anew in someone else--all the awful stages picking up like a chorus that has to be sung.

I've done it all before, I tell myself, and I can do it again. Trust is the strongest weapon.

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.

It's never right to give up on someone.

It's quiet for a while, and then Rowan says; "We could talk now. We're alone out here. No walls." "There are always walls." I say.

Vaughn is talking about the heat, and his voice is so excited that it breaks into whispers at times. He loves his madness the way a bird loves the sky.

He says one word, nodding into the daylight. "Look." It's an astounding word. It's a gift.

I want to make the world into something better so that he can be okay.

Even things that aren't broken can be fixed.

Everyone should remember being born. It doesn't seem fair that we only remember dying.

He looks at me, and I don't know what he sees. I used to think it was Rose. But she's not here with us now, in this room. It's just him and me, and the books. I feel like our lives are in those books. I feel like all the words on the pages are for us.

My head is my favorite swimming pool.

Do you know what my father used to say?" I ask her. "He used to say that songs had a heart. A crescendo that can make all your blood rush from your head to your toes.

You’re insane, you know that?” he says. “It’s the only thing keeping me afloat,” I say.

Because even if the lie is beautiful, the truth is what you face in the end.

I wish I had a memory of that first violent shove, the shock of cold air, the sting of oxygen into new lungs. Everyone should remember being born. It doesn't seem fair that we only remember dying.

In the distance I see a lighthouse. The light washes over us and continues on its rotation. This time, I don't know where the light will guide us.

Real’ is a dirty word in this place.

who once had dreams of saving the world, now laughs at anyone who tries.

Momentum,' She repeats. 'You can't just stand there if you want something to fly. You have to run.

Things will get worse before they get better.

Fate,' I said, 'Is a theif.

We figure out what death means when we're born, practically, and we live our whole lives in some kind of weird denial about it.

It was a terrible decision, and I confess I'd make it again.

And everywhere girls, tumbling from trees like orange blossoms and hitting the earth with sickening thuds. They crack open.

Love unrequited is violent. He loves you so much that he's turned it into hate.

Linden just wants to protect her, is what I want to say. She's all he has. I left him. I'm at arms reach, but I've left him.

You can try to please everyone and risk accomplishing nothing, or go for your dreams and risk pissing a few people off.

When we were first married, I thought he must have been the most heartless, hateful man I'd ever known, but he was just as much a prisonor as I was. Where Vaughn imprisoned me with walls, he imprisoned his son with ignorance.

Gabriel's voice can reach me anywhere. Even in a hurricane.

Write words you’re willing to burn at the stake for. Write words you’d believe in even if the rest of the world didn’t.

I want to make a world more magical than my own. I don't care if it makes sense, I don't care if it's ridiculed or if, rather than a neat round planet that goes around forever, it ends with a cliff that falls off into nothing. I want to have my eyes wide open, and I want to see this room and at the same time, not this room.

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

The seeds are tiny, unborn things, and I resent them. They'll be planted and they'll grow into exactly what they're meant to be.