Lauren Destefano Quotes

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

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. ~ Lauren DeStefano

A girl should never stop thinking. ~ Lauren DeStefano

The abandoned traffic lights stare at us like empty eye sockets. Fields have gone to weed. There's a little town of houses that have been haphazardly repaired by boards and scraps of metal. ~ Lauren DeStefano

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. ~ Lauren DeStefano

What's it like to be able to remember someone you lost?"
"It's like my mother has become an actress in a play. And the play isn't told in order, and sometimes the lines have changed. Sometimes I'm sitting too far away to see her face or hear her voice. ~ Lauren DeStefano

So many girls allow themselves to be bleeding idiots because that's what's expected of them. Dress like a girl. Walk like one. Eat like one. Desire the things a girl should desire, and nothing more - but how can that be called desire, if it's dictated. ~ Lauren DeStefano

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

Hush-a-bye, don't you cry
Go to sleepy, little baby
When you wake, you shall have
All the pretty little horses
Way down yonder in the meadow
Lies a poor little lambie
Bees and butterflies, picking out its eyes ... ~ Lauren DeStefano

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

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. ~ Lauren DeStefano

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. ~ Lauren DeStefano

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

My face is burning and I want to kick her, I want to kick her, I want to kick her. ~ Lauren DeStefano

I shake my head, watching snow tumble and swirl from an all-white sky. The world seems so clean if you only look up ~ Lauren DeStefano

We're born moving forward. Sometimes we lose people along the way, and all we can do is watch them get smaller behind us as we move on and on. ~ Lauren DeStefano

I want to be the cure that doesn't exist. But I'm nothing. I can't even work up the courage to say something. ~ Lauren DeStefano

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

As a teen I was totally that dumpy overweight nerdy girl that nobody wants to be in the stories you're told. And now I am a dumpy overweight nerdy adult and life is beautiful like a song. I'm not a flower that bloomed in the mud. Just a girl who stayed steady on the path of determination. ~ Lauren DeStefano

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. ~ Lauren DeStefano

But he has a clever way of getting answers with carefully worded statements. ~ Lauren DeStefano

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. ~ Lauren DeStefano

I was taught to speak and write a dozen languages, but there isn't a word for what you mean to me. ~ Lauren DeStefano

Old cheerful songs about frivolous things that mean nothing to me. ~ Lauren DeStefano

He has a face like composted Broccoli ~ Lauren DeStefano

Do you even know what it feels like to lose someone you loved?" he asks.
"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. ~ Lauren DeStefano

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

Every generation has a macabre notion that wars, government prohibition, natural disasters or mankind itself could be the downfall of society and the world as a whole. ~ Lauren DeStefano

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. ~ Lauren DeStefano

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. ~ Lauren DeStefano

There are lots of love stories here ... They either end happily or everyone dies. ~ Lauren DeStefano

There is a need, in every world, to believe in things that cannot be seen. ~ Lauren DeStefano

Bright spots move around him like someone shook the stars from a blanket and they all went flying. ~ Lauren DeStefano

I wonder if the people of the ground ever feel that their children are too big for their world, too. ~ Lauren DeStefano

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

You have all heard the warnings about the edge. We have been told its winds are a song that will hypnotize us, and by the time we awaken from that trance, it will be too late. ~ Lauren DeStefano

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. ~ Lauren DeStefano

There used to be an entire world of people and countries out there, but they've all since been destroyed by wars so distant they're hardly spoken about. ~ Lauren DeStefano

That's the illusion of war. You think the world is over when your city comes down. But then you realize that you're just one city in a planet the size of ten million cities" -Nim ~ Lauren DeStefano

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

She knew that the dead hid pieces of themselves in the world. They buried organs in the living. They stuffed memories into trees and clouds and other innocuous things. ~ Lauren DeStefano

Felix had left his heart buried in the ground years ago, but he felt it crack apart. ~ Lauren DeStefano

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. ~ Lauren DeStefano

Felix wasn't sure of his limits, if he had limits. After he'd been dead a while, he began to suspect he could swim to the bottom of the oceans. Beyond that. He suspected that he could swim so far down that he'd eventually go through the center of the earth and come out the other side. He could swim into the clouds, into the stars. Maybe there were ghosts on the other planets. Maybe there were ghosts laughing and splashing each other with the heat of the sun. He wasn't brave enough to find out. ~ Lauren DeStefano

As I go, I hear her screaming my name, in a brutal, bloody way, like she's being murdered, which maybe she is. But slowly. It will take her six years to die. ~ Lauren DeStefano

He was now working his way through the many shades of grief. Sadness made everything gray, he'd learned, but there were different types of gray, some darker than others. There were dark spots in his memories he wasn't brave enough to enter. ~ Lauren DeStefano

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. ~ Lauren DeStefano

People die, and everything they've ever said just echoes around and around. There's nothing new. Only the same nonsense from their lives. ~ Lauren DeStefano

Absorbing water from the clouds would make more sense than believing our lakes are a gift from the sky god. But when presented with the evidence, I see how much more terrifying it is to think we're on our own. ~ Lauren DeStefano

I want to have my questions. I want to have more thoughts than my mind can hold. ~ Lauren DeStefano

To die trying would be better than to die without purpose. ~ Lauren DeStefano

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

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

Violence is the only way to achieve freedom, it seems. I wouldn't have thought so before all of this. My escape plan was a more peaceful one, but I know now that it wouldn't have been successful. ~ Lauren DeStefano

Everything in the universe was thought to be magic once, before we came to understand it. We thought the stars were magic, but they aren't, are they? They're just hydrogen and helium and light traveling through space. ~ Lauren DeStefano

I'll never disappear. I promise that every time I leave, I'll always come back. ~ Lauren DeStefano

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

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. ~ Lauren DeStefano

The trouble was already there," Reed says."You've just uncovered it, is all. ~ Lauren DeStefano

The madness of youth had made me unafraid. ~ Lauren DeStefano

Thick black smoke disappears into the darkness of night, blotting out patches of stars. Somewhere up there, higher than his world and mine, is the place where all things go when they have stopped breathing. It is a place my brother visited. Up where it's quiet and calm, and prayers are able to drift up higher than words or wishes or wants. ~ Lauren DeStefano

I'm going to call you Rose, he says with resolution, working the back off an old clock. ~ Lauren DeStefano

Her smile is her revenge. ~ Lauren DeStefano

A feeling can't kill you. ~ Lauren DeStefano

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? ~ Lauren DeStefano

This story is the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard.
"I could find another one," Basil says.
"No, I want to see if they'll I through with it," she says.
"I don't understand why they're throwing her in the volcano," I say.
"Because she's a virgin," Basil says, and clears his throat.
"We could throw Morgan into the volcano," Pen says. ~ Lauren DeStefano

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. ~ Lauren DeStefano

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

Death itself is no match for you. The day you were born, it shrank away in fear. ~ Lauren DeStefano

We hope for things we may not get to see, and we hold on with both hands because it's one of the few things that can't be stolen from us. ~ Lauren DeStefano

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. ~ Lauren DeStefano

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. ~ Lauren DeStefano

Give me time"

"For you, always. ~ Lauren DeStefano

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. ~ Lauren DeStefano

Every word out of your mouth," he pants, "has been a lie, hasn't it?"
"No," I say softly. "Not everything."
"What about your name?" he says. "Is your name even Rhine? ~ Lauren DeStefano

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. ~ Lauren DeStefano

With free will comes inevitable error and misjudgement ~ Lauren DeStefano

Humans are the absolute worst thing to happen to this planet. ~ Lauren DeStefano

For a while, it's just the sound of the water, and then Pen says, I didn't want him to die. ~ Lauren DeStefano

I have seen my father concede to utter defeat in the hospital room. I've heard him choke on sobs and whisper angry things to the god of the sky when he thought I was asleep at Lex's bedside. I know that those uniforms are worn by men - only men. ~ Lauren DeStefano

I'm sitting on the floor of the hospital lobby, waiting. That's always the worst part, the waiting. ~ Lauren DeStefano

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

Even things that aren't broken can be fixed. ~ Lauren DeStefano

Just being alive feels so arduous that all I want to do is climb under the covers and sleep. ~ Lauren DeStefano

I miss something I never even had. ~ Lauren DeStefano

I'm dreading fall. It is a terrifying season,' he says finally. 'Everything shriveling up and dying.' I don't know how to answer. 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. I've never thought to be frightened of it. ~ Lauren DeStefano

The clouds took on the shape of dancers; from somewhere far off, Pram heard music before the clouds became normal again. ~ Lauren DeStefano

She was a drawing that hadn't been colored. ~ Lauren DeStefano

They just want to make sure we haven't gone mad. You haven't gone mad, have you? ~ Lauren DeStefano

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. ~ Lauren DeStefano

Look," Linden says. " Look how beautiful it is."
"The sunrise?" I ask.
"The start of a new day," Linden says. "Being healthy enough to witness it. ~ Lauren DeStefano

There are different sorts of geniuses. You're one too. I've never met a person with your ability to make peace" -Judas ~ Lauren DeStefano

Do I care for her? No. She tried to kill me and I don't especially like what she does with her hair. ~ Lauren DeStefano

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. ~ Lauren DeStefano

There's this anomaly that happens sometimes with twins. It occurs in the womb when the fetuses are growing too closely to each other. The stronger twin develops normally, while the weaker twin crumples and is encased by the body of the stronger twin, where it becomes a parasite. The result is a single child, plagued by a twin-shaped fossil inside. Like a tumor.
In death Rose became Linden's parasitic twin. They were two separate organisms once, growing steadily beside each other. Two pulses. Two brains. But she has crumpled and died, and still he carries her inside himself. She goes where he goes, feeling nothing, seeing nothing, a shadow behind his ribs. ~ Lauren DeStefano

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

Rhine: It's okay that you miss her. She was the love of your life.
Linden: Not the only love. It feels wrong to think about her as often as I do.
Rhine: You should think about her everyday. You shouldn't try to look for her anywhere else, because you'll never find her. You'll see her walking away in a crowded street, and when you reach for her, she'll turn around and be somebody else. Just keep her here (on your heart), okay? It's the only place you'll always be able to find her. ~ Lauren DeStefano

I wanted someone, somewhere, whom I might never meet, to read a sentence I wrote and think, I thought I was the only one who felt that way. ~ Lauren DeStefano

If you've never been afraid, you haven't had your moment of bravery just yet ~ Lauren DeStefano

And about a thousand other things, he says, pausing sometimes between his words, making sure he has them right. I get the sense that words are not sufficient tools for him to build what's going on in his head as he stands before me. ~ Lauren DeStefano