Lauren Oliver Quotes

Every immigrant family, it seems, has someone who does not belong in the new country they have come to. It feels like permanent exile to that one brother or wife who cannot stand a silent fate in Boston or London or Melbourne. I’ve met many who remain haunted by the persistent ghost of an earlier place.

I am tired of losing people.

exile is strangely compelling to think about but terrible to experience. It is the unhealable rift forced between a human being and a native place, between the self and its true home: its essential sadness can never be surmounted. And while it is true that literature and history contain heroic, romantic, glorious, even triumphant episodes in an exile’s life, these are no more than efforts meant to overcome the crippling sorrow of estrangement.

... some of my people could have been left [in Africa] and are living there. And I can't understand them and they don't know me and I don't know them because all we had was taken away from us. And I became kind of angry; I felt the anger of why this had to happen to us. We were so stripped and robbed of our background, we wind up with nothing.

I don't want to lose you.' His voice almost a whisper. Seeing his haggard expression, she took his hand and squeezed it, then reluctantly let it go. She could feel the tears again, and she fought them back. 'But you don't want to keep me, either, do you?' To that, he had no response.

I had heard that when people lost people, there was anger. But I definitely experienced it a lot more than I was prepared for it. Anger was not something I'd ever really felt in my life and I was not prepared for it.

So sad! This is the saddest part when you lose someone you love- that person keeps changing. And later you wonder, Is this the same person I lost?

Beauty is ever to the lonely mind a shadow fleeting; she is never plain. She is a visitor who leaves behind the gift of grief, the souvenir of pain.

You just watch somebody you love slowly, slowly disappear and go away.

I miss my mother very, very much.

Here's a thing about the death of your mother, or anyone else you love: You can't anticipate how you'll feel afterward. People will tell you; a few may be close to right, none exactly right.

I wrote a techno song after I was deported. I was in America for a little bit, but then I was deported back to Germany. I was very sad.

I think about my mother every day. But usually the thoughts are fleeting - she crosses my mind like a spring cardinal that flies past the edge of your eye: startling, luminous, lovely... gone.

When we lose one we love, our bitterest tears are called forth by the memory of hours when we loved not enough.

Grief is so human, and it hits everyone at one point or another, at least, in their lives. If you love, you will grieve, and that's just given.

I think of John every day. I do try to block it, but December 8th is not the only day I think of him.

You create a world away from home and make new rooms for yourself. But when you arrive back home in your old rooms, the world you've made for yourself ceases to be real. Everything seems to crumble. Anyone who's been sent away to boarding school can understand that.

There are days when I wonder why my mom couldn't be here to see this.

Tell me not of joy: there's none Now my little sparrow's gone; He, just as you, Would toy and woo, He would chirp and flatter me, He would hang the wing awhile, Till at length he saw me smile, Lord! how sullen he would be!

Music I heard with you was more than music, and bread I broke with you was more than bread. Now that I am without you, all is desolate; all that was once so beautiful is dead.

She still talks to me now, only now she talks to me in my dreams. And I can't wait to go to sleep tonight because we have a lot to talk about. I love you.

I really miss Diana. I loved her so much.

I feel like I've never had a home, you know? I feel related to the country, to this country, and yet I don't know exactly where I fit in... There's always this kind of nostalgia for a place, a place where you can reckon with yourself.

When you love someone, and you've lost that one, then nothing really matters.

On the rare occasions when I spend a night in Oxford, the keeping of the hours by the clock towers in New College, and Merton, and the great booming of Tom tolling 101 times at 9 pm at Christ Church are inextricably interwoven with memories and regrets and lost joys. The sound almost sends me mad, so intense are the feelings it evokes.