Lauren Oliver

Because I think you're right. You can make a difference." He told me experiences were kind of like fate, and fate usually came in the form of a test. He told me fate liked to be worshiped. It liked to see us fall on out knees before it offered to help us up..." _

They couldn__ have known that even this was a lie__hat we never really choose, not entirely. We are always being pushed and squeezed down one road or another. We have no choice but to step forward, and then step forward again, and then step forward again; suddenly we find ourselves on a road we haven__ chosen at all.But maybe happiness isn__ in the choosing. Maybe it__ in the fiction, in the pretending: that wherever we have ended up is where we intended to be all along.

Unhappiness is bondage; therefore, happiness is freedom.

God bless Dunkin' Donuts.

Sometimes day and night reverse. Sometimes up goes down and down goes up, and love turns into hate, and the things you counted on get washed out from under your feet, leaving you pedaling in the air. Sometimes people stop loving you. And that's the kind of darkness that never gets fixed, no matter how many moons rise again, filling the sky with a weak approximation of light.

There is only what you want and what happens. There is only grabbing on and holding tight in the darkness.

And for a moment__or a split second__verything else falls away, the whole pattern and order of my life, and a huge joy crests in my chest. I am no one, and I owe nothing to anybody, and my life is my own.

Could it be? Samantha Kingston? Home? On a Friday?_ I roll my eyes. __ don__ know. Did you do a lot of acid in the sixties? Could be a flashback._ __ was two years old in 1960. I came too late for the party._ He leans down and pecks me on the head. I pull away out of habit. __nd I__ not even going to ask how you know about acid flashbacks._ __hat__ an acid flashback?_ Izzy crows. __othing,_ my dad and I say at the same time, and he smiles at me.

What's poetry?" I've never heard the word before, but I like the sound of it. It sounds elegant and easy, somehow, like a beautiful woman turning in a long dress.

You should only fall in love with people who will fall in love with you back.

I met an Invalid, and fell for his art. He showed me his smile, and went straight for my heart.

But maybe happiness isn't in the choosing. Maybe it's in the fiction, in the pretending: that wherever we have ended up is where we intended to be all along.

Here's the last thing that occurs to me as Sarah recedes in the rearview mirror, slamming out of the car, jogging across the parking lot: If you're one tardy away from missing out on a big competition, you should probably make your coffee at home.

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

....love and desire enjoy a symbiotic relationship, meaning that one cannot exist without the other. Desire is an enemy to contentment; desire is illness, a feverish brain. Who can be considered healthy who wants? The very word want suggests a lack, an impoverishment, and that is what desire is: an impoverishment of the brain, a flaw, a mistake.

But all you see is the crap. So you don't have to believe in anything. So you'll have an excuse to fail.

Sympathizer.It__ only slightly better than the other word that followed me for years after my mom__ 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.

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 dreams that I heard the word shouted, screamed.