Lauren Oliver Quotes

Life isn't a science. We make it up as we go.

Life, work - it's all very organic and fluid, a laboratory. I always tell people: whatever your thing is, you just have to be in it. Jump in; you'll figure it out.

I think a lot of what you do in acting, and for the most part singing and dancing and everything, is trial and error. It's all about just seeing what works, and if it does, to use it, and if not, to throw it away.

I follow my interests pretty - I don't like the word 'intuitively.' I follow them in a kind of natural way, without questioning them too much.

I reverted easily to my wild state, that is experimentation.

You will have to experiment and try things out for yourself and you will not be sure of what you are doing. That's all right, you are feeling your way into the thing.

I find time to write the way kids find time to ride their bikes.

I miss that thing I used to do when I first started out where I would just spontaneously generate ideas and try things and see where they'd go.

I think spontaneous and free reactions are the most natural.

I prefer my hesitations, my false paths, my stammering, to a preconceived idea.

Play is experimenting with chance.

Don't settle down and sit in one place. Move around, be nomadic, make each day a new horizon.

All life is an experiment.

You're at your best when you don't know what you're doing.

But there's no substitute for getting smarter faster. And the way you get smarter is to screw around vigorously. Try stuff. See what works. See what fails miserably. Learn. Rinse. Repeat.

I am not an expert. That is someone else's job. If I were expert, the approach would be all wrong. It would be from the inside. I am a blunderer. I usually don't know what I am going into at the start. I go into the fog and trust something will be there.

The great affair, the love affair with life, is to live as variously as possible, to groom one's curiosity like a high-spirited thoroughbred, climb aboard, and gallop over the thick, sunstruck hills every day.

I knew he was unreliable, but he was fun to be with. He was a child’s ideal companion, full of surprises and happy animal energy. He enjoyed food and drink. He liked to try new things. He brought home coconuts, papayas, mangoes, and urged them on our reluctant conservative selves. On Sundays he liked to discover new places, take us on endless bus or trolley rides to some new park or beach he knew about. He always counseled daring, in whatever situation, the courage to test the unknown, an instruction that was thematically in opposition to my mother’s.

You are still young, free.. Do yourself a favor. Before it's too late, without thinking too much about it first, pack a pillow and a blanket and see as much of the world as you can. You will not regret it. One day it will be too late.

So I started out for God knows where. I guess I'll know when I get there.

You don't need a guidebook to see New Orleans - just a good pair of shoes.

I have built my life to pursue the new. I don't have family, don't know many people and I am usually ready to leave within an hour.

Those who would see wonderful things must often be ready to travel alone.

There isn't a train I wouldn't take, no matter where it's going.

Youth is the time to go flashing from one end of the world to the other to try the manners of different nations; to hear the chimes at midnight; to see the sunrise in town and country; to be converted at a revival; to circumnavigate the metaphysics, write halting verses, run a mile to see a fire, and wait all day long in the theatre to applaud Hernani.