Lauren DeStefano Quotes

Most dystopian, classic and contemporary, paints a future world that puts a twist on present society - a future world that could plausibly happen.

Set fire to the broken pieces; start anew.

Dystopian, by definition, promises a darker story.

I think she's brave. I think that nobody has ever believed what she could be capable of. All her life, nobody was listening.

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.

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 have always been fascinated by the ocean, to dip a limb beneath its surface and know that I'm touching eternity, that it goes on forever until it begins here again.

We writers are resilient souls.

Her mind is a bird that's trapped inside her skull, flapping and thrashing, never breaking free.

Childhood is a long, long road, from which that dark whispering forest of death seems an impossible destination.

We are stronger than we've credited ourselves to be. We have been the victims and the witnesses. We have said a lifetime of good-byes.

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?

The madness of youth made me unafraid.

When I am writing anything in general, I just want to tell the story that exists in my head; I don't try to write a parable or make a point.

There's a sort of dead passion in him. A spark that, had he more years to live, would be a wildfire.

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

It taught that there are three versions of things: the one I see in my mind, and the one that carries onto the paper, and then what it ultimately becomes.

I see an ocean that’s spilled out of a wineglass, its body clear and sparkling and folding over itself. I see a ribbon of sand.

I don't know if it was love or an illusion. I don't know if there's ever a way to be certain.

Things will get worse before they get better.

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.

Lovers are weapons, but love is a wound.

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

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.

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.

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.

I think, in this strange world of beautiful things, there may be some humanity after all.

Maybe it is desperation. Maybe we can't let things fall apart without trying. We can't let go of the people we love.

The trick was looking past the illusion, because the exit was never as far away as it seemed.

In another time, in another place, I wonder who they might have been.

A strange thing, words. Once they're said, it's hard to imagine they're untrue.

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

Even things that aren't broken can be fixed.

Ah, love. That’s what the world has lost. There’s no more love, only the illusion of it.

But there’s no such thing as free. There are only different and more horrible ways to be enslaved.

When we're alive, life consumes us. But when we die, all of the color and the motion is gone so quickly, it's as though it can no longer stand to be wasted on us.

She smiles at our husband as she moves, and he blushes, overcome by her beauty. But I know what her smile really means...Her smile is her revenge.

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.

There is a silence so great that I can hear the ice crystals cracking and falling from eyelashes of girls who will never blink again.

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

She’s a commodity in a sea of broken girls.

It is the face of a girl who has seen the world, who realizes that it hates her, and who hates it in return.

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

I think he's beginning to understand, and understanding is a horrible thing.

I start trying to stay unconscious. The problem with this is that no amount of willpower can change the reality.

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

Home?' I say. It's a word that can mean anywhere and nowhere.

A feeling can't kill you.

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.

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