Lauren DeStefano Quotes

Words like 'unputdownable' and 'irresistible' are simply not enough for Cat Winters's In the Shadow of Blackbirds. Days after finishing this story, it remains the first thought I have in the morning, and the thing that haunts me until I sleep.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

We accept gods that don't speak to us. We accept gods that would place us in a world filled with injustices and do nothing as we struggle. It's easier than accepting that there's nothing out there at all, and that, in our darkest moments, we are truly alone.

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

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?

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 wanted to be rid of him," he says. He raises my chin with his thumb. "But not if it meant being rid of you. I climbed in beside you, and you put your head in my lap. You can't think I would have left you like that." "Look what it got you," I say. "Tea in bed and you here in front of me," he says. "It was a terrible decision, and I confess I'd make it again.

Time was our very first king. We all live our lives to the aggressive ticking of the clock. We don't question that our lives are a grid of seconds; even our pulses oblige. No succeeding king can hope to hold this kind of power.

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.

The madness of youth made me unafraid.

They never exhale, the trees; on a very windy day, they rustle and inhale, and then the leaves and the branches all tremble as though something means to strangle the life from them. The sky watches on. The world is filled with anticipation, as if to wonder if this day will be a great day, or a horrible day, or the last day.

Suddenly the clouds seem high above us. They’re moving over us in an arch, circling the planet. They have seen abysmal oceans and charred, scorched islands. They have seen how we destroyed the world. If I could see everything, as the clouds do, would I swirl around this remaining continent, still so full of color and life and seasons, wanting to protect it? Or would I just laugh at the futility of it all, and meander onward, down the earth’s sloping atmosphere?

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

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.

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

Things will get worse before they get better.

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.

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.

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

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.

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 gathers me up and I'm weightless before he sets me on the railing. He's the only thing keeping me from falling back, out of the reach of daylight. I'm not afraid of falling. I don't fear the sky beyond the train tracks like I did before. I can go anywhere just so long as it's with him.

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.

Lovers are weapons, but love is a wound.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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." Pg 225

Hope, that risky, illustrious thing. It should have gone extinct by now, but we keep it alive.

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

There is warmth shooting through my broken body where there should be pain, and I put my arms around the back of his neck and I hold on to him. I hold on because you never know in this place when something good will be taken away.

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

She has the majesty of hurricanes and explosions.

Maybe what frightens us about the edge isn't our fear of morality, but the thoughts it leads us to have.

Cure" is one of the most precious words in the English language. It's a short word. A clean and simple word. But it isn't so easy a thing as it sounds. There are questions like: How will this affect us in ten years? In twenty? What will it do to our children? Our children's children?