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
With 'Delirium,' I had to spend time thinking about the political, social and religious structure of a different world. But it was a fun challenge.
There's a place for everything and everyone, you know. That is the mistake they make above. They think that only certain people have a place. Only certain kinds of people belong. The rest is waste. But even waste must have a place. Otherwise it will clog and clot, and rot and fester.
Amor deliria nervosa: It affects your mind so that you cannot think clearly, or make rational decisions about your own well-being. Symptom number twelve.
My former people were not totally wrong. Love is a kind of possession. It’s a poison. And if Alex no longer loves me, I can’t bear to think that he might love somebody else.
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.
There are more of us than you think.
I’ve been trying so hard not to think his name, not to even breathe the idea of him
It strikes me how strange people are. You can see them every day, you can think you know them and then you found out you hardly know them at all.
It's like there's a filter set up in my brain, except instead of making things better, it twists everything around so what comes out of my mouth is totally wrong, totally different from what I was thinking.
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.
Be honest: Are you surprised that I didn't realize sooner? Are you surprised that it took me so long to even /think/ the word -- death? Dying? Dead? Do you think I was being stupid? Naive? Try not to judge. Remember that we're the same, you and me. I thought I would live forever too.
How is it possible, I think, to change so much and not be able to change anything at all?
As we're standing there I realize we're almost exactly the same height. We must look like the dark and light side of an Oreo cookie, and I think how just as easily it could have been the other way around. She could be blocking my path; I could be trying to slip around her into the dark.