Quotes from Delirium

Lauren Oliver ·  441 pages

Rating: (371.1K votes)


“I love you. Remember. They cannot take it”
― Lauren Oliver, quote from Delirium


“You can't be happy unless you're unhappy sometimes".”
― Lauren Oliver, quote from Delirium


“I'd rather die my way than live yours.”
― Lauren Oliver, quote from Delirium


“I guess that’s just part of loving people: You have to give things up. Sometimes you even have to give them up.”
― Lauren Oliver, quote from Delirium


“It's so strange how life works: You want something and you wait and wait and feel like it's taking forever to come. Then it happens and it's over and all you want to do is curl back up in that moment before things changed.”
― Lauren Oliver, quote from Delirium



“Love: It will kill you and save you, both”
― Lauren Oliver, quote from Delirium


“Love: a single word, a wispy thing, a word no bigger or longer than an edge. That's what it is: an edge; a razor. It draws up through the center of your life, cutting everything in two. Before and after. The rest of the world falls away on either side.”
― Lauren Oliver, quote from Delirium


“I run for I don't know how long. Hours, maybe, or days. Alex told me to run. So I run. You have to understand. I am no one special. I am just a single girl. I am five feet two inches tall and I am in-between in every way. But I have a secret. You can build walls all the way to the sky and I will find a way to fly above them. You can try to pin me down with a hundred thousand arms, but I will find a way to resist. And there are many of us out there, more than you think. People who refuse to stop believing. People who refuse to come to earth. People who love in a world without walls, people who love into hate, into refusal, against hope,and without fear. I love you. Remember. They cannot take it.”
― Lauren Oliver, quote from Delirium


“Hate isn’t the most dangerous thing, he’d said. Indifference is.”
― Lauren Oliver, quote from Delirium


“He who leaps for the sky may fall, it's true. But he may also fly.”
― Lauren Oliver, quote from Delirium



“Mama, Mama, help me get home
I'm out in the woods, I am out on my own.
I found me a werewolf, a nasty old mutt
It showed me its teeth and went straight for my gut.

Mama, Mama, help me get home
I'm out in the woods, I am out on my own.
I was stopped by a vampire, a rotting old wreck
It showed me its teeth and went straight for my neck.

Mama, Mama, put me to bed
I won't make it home, I'm already half-dead.
I met an Invalid, and fell for his art
He showed me his smile, and went straight for my heart.

-From "A Child's Walk Home," Nursery Rhymes and Folk Tales”
― Lauren Oliver, quote from Delirium


“I know that the whole point—the only point—is to
find the things that matter, and hold on to them, and fight for them, and refuse to
let them go.”
― Lauren Oliver, quote from Delirium


“The deadliest of all deadly things: It kills you both when you have it and
when you don’t.”
― Lauren Oliver, quote from Delirium


“The most dangerous sicknesses are those that make us believe we are well”
― Lauren Oliver, quote from Delirium


“You can build walls all the way to the sky and I will find a way to fly above them. You can try to pin me down with a hundred thousand arms, but I will find a way to resist. And there are many of us out there, more than you think. People who refuse to stop believing. People who refuse to come to earth. People who love in a world without walls, people who love into hate, into refusal, against hope, and without fear.

I love you. Remember. They cannot take it.”
― Lauren Oliver, quote from Delirium



“It's amazing how words can do that, just shred your insides apart. Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me - such bullshit.”
― Lauren Oliver, quote from Delirium


“I said, I prefer the ocean when it's gray. Or not really gray. A pale, in-between color. It reminds me of waiting for something good to happen.”
― Lauren Oliver, quote from Delirium


“Hearts are fragile things. That's why you have to be so careful.”
― Lauren Oliver, quote from Delirium


“And now I know why they invented words for love, why they had to: It's the only thing that can come close to describing what I feel in that moment, the baffling mixture of pain and pleasure and fear and joy, all running sharply through me at once.”
― Lauren Oliver, quote from Delirium


“My heart is drumming in my chest so hard it aches, but it's the good kind of ache, like the feeling you get on the first real day of autumn, when the air is crisp and the leaves are all flaring at the edges and the wind smells just vaguely of smoke - like the end and the beginning of something all at once.”
― Lauren Oliver, quote from Delirium



“That's all I want. Just you and me. Always.”
― Lauren Oliver, quote from Delirium


“Take it from me: If you hear the past speaking to you, feel it tugging up your back and runing its fingers up your spine, the best thing to do-the only thing-is run.”
― Lauren Oliver, quote from Delirium


“He is my world and my world is him and without him there is no world.”
― Lauren Oliver, quote from Delirium


“Now I'd rather be infected with love for the tiniest sliver of a second than live a hundred years smothered by a lie.”
― Lauren Oliver, quote from Delirium


“Everyone is asleep. They've all been asleep for years. You seemed ... awake.' Alex is whispering now. He closes his eyes, opens them again.'I'm tired of sleeping.”
― Lauren Oliver, quote from Delirium



“One of the strangest things about life is that it will chug on, blind and oblivious, even as your private world - your little carved-out sphere - is twisting and morphing, even breaking apart. One day you have parents; the next day you're an orphan. One day you have a place and a path. The next day you're lost in the wilderness.
And still the sun rises and clouds mass and drift and people shop for groceries and toilets flush and blinds go up and down. That's when you realize that most of it - life, the relentless mechanism of existing - isn't about you. It doesn't include you at all. It will thrust onward even after you've jumped the edge. Even after you're dead.”
― Lauren Oliver, quote from Delirium


“It's the way he says my name: like music.”
― Lauren Oliver, quote from Delirium


“I know that life isn't life if you just float through it. I know that the whole point- the only point- is to find the things that matter and hold onto them and fight for them and refuse to let them go.”
― Lauren Oliver, quote from Delirium


“Snapshots, moments, mere seconds: as fragile and beautiful and hopeless as a single butterfly, flapping on against a gathering wind.”
― Lauren Oliver, quote from Delirium


“It's like a razor blade edging its way through my organs, shredding me, all I can think is: It will kill me, it will kill me, it will kill me. And I don't care.”
― Lauren Oliver, quote from Delirium



About the author

Lauren Oliver
Born place: New York, New York
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