Lauren DeStefano Quotes

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.

— Lauren DeStefano

“Fate, I think, is a thief.”

— Lauren DeStefano

“I'll tell you something about true love. There's no science to it. It's as natural as the sky.”

— Lauren DeStefano

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

— Lauren DeStefano

Did you tell freedom hello for me?

— Lauren DeStefano

“You've been captive for so long that you don't even realize you want freedom anymore.”

— Lauren DeStefano

“There's nothing here to say good-bye to. There's no dancing girl. No mischievous smile. She's gone, off with her sisters, broken free, escaped. And if she were here now, she would say, Go.”

— Lauren DeStefano

So how long do you think it'll be?" he says. "Before the next hurricane comes along to take you home."
"Can I tell you my biggest fear?" I say.
"Yes. Tell me."
"That it will be a very windless four years.

— Lauren DeStefano

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

— Lauren DeStefano

“Set fire to the broken pieces; start anew.”

— Lauren DeStefano

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

— Lauren DeStefano

“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?”

— Lauren DeStefano

“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.”

— Lauren DeStefano

“It's the silence I imagine in the rest of the world, the silence of an endless ocean and uninhabitable island, a silence that can be seen from space.”

— Lauren DeStefano

“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.”

— Lauren DeStefano

Times like this, when she slips her hand into mine and holds on tight, and our husband becomes just a shadow in the doorway.

— Lauren DeStefano

“The madness of youth made me unafraid.”

— Lauren DeStefano

“Don't forget how you got here. Don't Forget.”

— Lauren DeStefano

“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.”

— Lauren DeStefano

He looks at me, and I don't know what he sees. I used to think it was Rose. But she's not here with us now, in this room. It's just him and me, and the books. I feel like our lives are in those books. I feel like all the words on the pages are for us.

— Lauren DeStefano

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

— Lauren DeStefano

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

— Lauren DeStefano

“We writers are resilient souls.”

— Lauren DeStefano

“To die trying would be better than to die without purpose.”

— Lauren DeStefano

“Perhaps ... you love too fiercely.”

— Lauren DeStefano

“Do dreams have to be confined to the same place as the dreamer?”

— Lauren DeStefano

“Before I can process what's happening, Deirdre has opened her hands and Linden has taken the ring from her and slipped it onto my finger.
"Rhine Ashby," he says.
"My wife.”

— Lauren DeStefano

“We were his disposable things. Brought to him like cattle. Stripped of what made us sisters or daughters or children. There was nothing that he could take from us-our genes, our bones, our wombs-that would ever satisfy him. There was no other way that we would be free.”

— Lauren DeStefano

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

— Lauren DeStefano

“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.”

— Lauren DeStefano

“I watch the ashes swim around like dandelion puffs, making swirls where bodies and walls once stood.”

— Lauren DeStefano

“I don't realize how badly I've needed to say those words until they've left my mouth. They hang in the air. And all I want now is to be away from them. To leave the truth behind. Because if I can't do anything about it, I certainly don't want to face it.”

— Lauren DeStefano

“He talks softly, patiently, as I sit on the window ledge and watch boats with colorful triangles for sails scratch the ocean.”

— Lauren DeStefano

“Just what I need." Pen throws back the blankets. "Another man in my life. At least this one doesn't speak.”

— Lauren DeStefano

“The pieces of my life can never seem to stay in one place.”

— Lauren DeStefano

“It's best not to wonder at what cost. Freedom is the only price to pay for anything in this place.”

— Lauren DeStefano

We're born moving forward. Sometimes we lose people along the way, and all we can do is watch them get smaller behind us as we move on and on.

— Lauren DeStefano

“She knew that the dead hid pieces of themselves in the world. They buried organs in the living. They stuffed memories into trees and clouds and other innocuous things.”

— Lauren DeStefano

“Maybe it really was a spirit," Pen offers.
"Spirits aren't real," he says. "The living invent them to console themselves. If you girls ever see a spirit, you'll know for certain you're alive."
Pen crinkles her nose. "Well that's grim.”

— Lauren DeStefano

Every moment is a gift, from the frivolous to the dire. The taste of sweetgold, and the rough paper of our favorite books. I find a god in these things- which god I cannot say, but I'm grateful to it.

— Lauren DeStefano

“But he has a clever way of getting answers with carefully worded statements.”

— Lauren DeStefano

Cecily peers at the murky grey liquid and frowns at a cube of meat that's floating against the rim. "What was this in a past life?" she asks.
"Pigeons and a field rabbit," Reed says. "Hunted them down myself."
"He's an excellent shot," Linden says.
"Can you eat pigeons, though?" Cecily falls back into her chair, looking a mix of disgusted and curious.
"You can eat just about anything," Reed says, dumping a ladleful into her bowl.

— Lauren DeStefano

“I draw back,gently step out of his hands that gripped my shoulders and were just edging their way to either side of my throat”

— Lauren DeStefano

“One afternoon, as Rose lay in a sweaty daze, teetering on the edge of consciousness, she made me swear that I would look after Linden, and I promised I would. I didn't expect to keep that promise, but maybe my,lie will at least do him some good in the meantime.”

— Lauren DeStefano

I want to have my questions. I want to have more thoughts than my mind can hold.

— Lauren DeStefano

“Without trying, I seem to write about these poor boys who are absolutely mad for girls who are otherwise engaged in perilous endeavors.”

— Lauren DeStefano

Absorbing water from the clouds would make more sense than believing our lakes are a gift from the sky god. But when presented with the evidence, I see how much more terrifying it is to think we're on our own.

— Lauren DeStefano

“All we were taught of geography was that the world had once been made up of seven continents and several countries, but a third world war demolished all but North America, the continent with the most advanced technology.”

— Lauren DeStefano

Trust is the strongest weapon.

— Lauren DeStefano

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.

— Lauren DeStefano