Lauren Oliver
Lauren Oliver
Lauren Oliveris an American author of the New York Times bestselling YA novels Before I Fall, which was published in 2010; Panic; and the Delirium trilogy: Delirium, Pandemonium and Requiem, which have been translated into more than thirty languages. She is a 2012 E.B. White Read-Aloud Award nominee for her middle-grade novel Liesl & Po, as well as author of the fantasy middle-grade novel The Spindlers. Panic, which was published in March 2014, has been optioned by Universal Pictures in...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionYoung Adult Author
Date of Birth8 November 1982
CityQueens, NY
CountryUnited States of America
But now I give in, let the anger surge. I'm sick of people acting like this world, this other world is the normal one, while I'm the freak. It's not fair; like all the rules have suddenly changed and somebody forgot to tell me.
Popularity's a weird thing. You can't really define it, and it's not cool to talk about, but you know it when you see it. Like a lazy eye, or porn.
The rules of Panic are simple. Anyone can enter. But only one person will win.
So are you going to be my knight in shining armor or what?' Kent does a little bow. 'You know I can't resist a damsel in distress.
I used to think that's what love was: knowing someone so well he was like a part of you.
It's not my fault I can't be like you, okay? I don't get up in the morning thinking the world is one big, shiny, happy place, okay? That's just not how I work. I don't think I can be fixed.
Still, the vivid green of the grass-where the grass is actually managing to assert itself through the dirt-seems out of place. This seems like a place where the sun should never shine: a place on the edge, at the limit, a place completely removed from time and happiness and life.
He's stuck with me and I'm stuck with him. We're stuck. That's what growing up is all about, I guess.
I hate both of my parents right now: for sitting quietly in our house, while out in the darkness my heart was beating away all of the seconds of my life, ticking them off one by one until my time was up; for letting the thread between us stretch so far and so thin that the moment it was severed for good they didn't even feel it.
I'm overwhelmed with sadness for everything that was lost, and filled with anger toward the people who took it away. My people-or at least, my old people. I don't know who I am anymore, or where I belong. That's not totally true...I know I belong with Alex.
For the first time in my life I've done something for me and by choice and not because somebody told me it was good or bad.
You see, we didn't know.
Perfection is a promise, and a reassurance that we are not wrong.
With the cure, relationships are all the same, and rules and expectations are defined. Without the cure, relationships must be reinvented every day, languages constantly decoded and deciphered. Freedom is exhausting.