Requiem Quotes

“How can someone have the power to shatter you to dust--and also to make you feel so whole?”
― Lauren Oliver, Requiem

“This is the strange way of the world, that people who simply want to love are instead forced to become warriors.”
― Lauren Oliver, Requiem

“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.”
― Lauren Oliver, Requiem

“They couldn’t have known that even this was a lie—that we never really choose, not entirely. We are always being pushed and squeezed down one road or another. We have no choice but to step forward, and then step forward again, and then step forward again; suddenly we find ourselves on a road we haven’t chosen at all.

But maybe happiness isn’t in the choosing. Maybe it’s in the fiction, in the pretending: that wherever we have ended up is where we intended to be all along.”
― Lauren Oliver, Requiem

“Sometimes I think maybe they were right all along, the people on the other side in Zombieland. Maybe it would be better if we didn't love. If we didn't lose either. If we didn't get our hearts stomped on, shattered: if we didn't have to patch and repatch until we're like Frankenstein monsters, all sewn together and bound up by who knows what. If we could just float along, like snow. But how could anyone who's ever seen a summer - big explosions of green and skies lit up electric with splashy sunsets, a riot of flowers and wind that smells like honey - pick the snow?”
― Lauren Oliver, Alex

“I start to follow her, and Alex grabs my hand.
"I'll find you," he says, watching me with the eyes I remember. "I won't let you go again."
I don't trust myself to speak. Instead I nod, hoping that he understands me. He squeezes my hand.
"Go," he says.”
― Lauren Oliver, Requiem

“His eyes are the color of honey. These are the eyes I remember from my dreams.”
― Lauren Oliver

“Take down the walls.”
― Lauren Oliver, Requiem

“For a second I think about how easy it would be to pass back to the other side, to walk straight into the laboratories and offer myself up to the surgeons.
You were right; I was wrong. Get it out.”
― Lauren Oliver, Requiem

“it occurs to me that there is so much I never knew about him--his past, his role in the resistance, what his life was like in the Wilds, before he came to Portland, and I feel a flash of grief so intense it almost makes me cry out: not for what I lost, but for the chances I missed.”
― Lauren Oliver, Requiem

“Because I think you're right. You can make a difference." He told me experiences were kind of like fate, and fate usually came in the form of a test. He told me fate liked to be worshiped. It liked to see us fall on out knees before it offered to help us up..." ♥”
― Lauren Oliver, Requiem

“It's the rule of the wilds. You must be bigger, and stronger, and tougher.
A coldness radiates through me, a solid wall that is growing, piece by piece, in my chest. He doesn't love me.

He never loved me.
It was all a lie.

"The old Lena is dead." I say, and then push past him. Each step is more difficult than the last; the heaviness fills me and turns my limbs to stone.
You must hurt or be hurt.”
― Lauren Oliver

“Direction, like time, is a general thing, the deprived of boundaries and borders. It is an endless process interception and reinterception, doubling back and adjusting.”
― Lauren Oliver, Requiem

“I can admit, now, that I must have loved Lena. Not in an Unnatural way, but my feelings for her must have been a kind of sickness. How can someone have the power to shatter you to dust--and also to make you feel so whole?”
― Lauren Oliver

“For a minute he stands there, looking at me, and I can tell that he knows why I'm crying, and he understands, and it's going to be all right. He opens his arms to me.

"Come here," he says quietly.

I can't move to him fast enough. I practically fall into him. He catches me and pulls me in tightly to his chest, and I let myself go again, let sobs run through me. He stands there with me and murmurs into my hair and kisses the top of my head and lets me cry over losing another boy, a boy I loved better.”
― Lauren Oliver, Requiem

“And then she left, and it broke my heart so completely I could hardly breathe.”
― Lauren Oliver, Requiem

“I love you more than anything on
this earth; more than anything in the universe. I love you more
than life, more than my family, and I love you more than I love
being with you in that way.”
― Jamie McGuire

“Adalara, gemilerin binde bir uğradığı, insan ayağının binde bir bastığı adalara benzer Ece Ayhan. Bir de Ortaçağ kalelerine, şatolarına, o surlar, hendekler, kuleler, mazgallar, asma köprülerle çevrili, nerden ve nasıl gidileceği belli olmayan, bu yüzden de yanına pek yaklaşılmayan ancak karşıdan görülen, bakılan Ortaçağ kalelerine, şatolarına. Gerisinde yol iz bırakmamıştır çünkü, görünmek yetmiş gibidir. Hem niçin bıraksın? Kendisi de öyle gelmemiş midir buraya. Kimsenin elini tutmadan, kimseye yaslanmadan, yalnız kendi külünü yaka yaka.”
― İlhan Berk, Requiem

“What am I go­ing to do?” Coral asks.

“Stay here,” I say. “Watch. Cov­er me if some­thing goes wrong.”

“That’s bull­shit,” she says half­heart­ed­ly.”
― Lauren Oliver, Requiem

“So Dad was cured?” I don’t know why I feel so disappointed. I didn’t even remember him; he died of cancer when I was one.

“He was.” A muscle twitches in my mom’s jaw. “But there were times I felt . . . There were times it seemed as though he could still feel it, just for a second. Maybe I only imagined it. It doesn’t matter. I loved him anyway. He was very good to me.”

reminds me that she is not just my mother, but a woman who has fought her whole life for something she has never truly experienced.

My dad was cured. And you can’t love, not fully, unless you are loved in return.

It makes me ache for her, a feeling I hate and am somehow ashamed of.”
― Lauren Oliver, Requiem

“ՀՈԳԵՀԱՆԳԻՍՏ

Կարծես անոնք երբեւիցէ
չեն մահացած.
մաքրուած են ջուրէն յղի:
Անոնք կ՛ապրին քու մարմնին մէջ,
բառեր կ՛ըսեն զրմանալի:

Եւ կը շրջիս
դուն դէմքերով ծերունիի,
աղջկայ եւ մանուկի:
Քու մարմնին մէջ ծլարձակուած
անոնք ոտեր են կ՛աճին:
Անոնք կանաչ աչքեր են,
շրթունքներ են,
կռունկներ են,
երկինքներ են,
բառեր են:”
― Յարութիւն Պէրպէրեան, Կորիզ

“He reminded me of the typical soap-opera star. His words were fake, his smile was fake, and his very presence affected me like nails on a chalkboard.”
― Jamie McGuire, Requiem

“this woman who wants to lead a revolution for love and doesn’t even acknowledge her own daughter”
― Lauren Oliver, Requiem

“¿Quien sabe? Quizas ellos tengan razón. Quizas estamos siendo manejados como locos por nuestros sentimientos. Quizas el amor es una enfermedad y estaríamos mejor sin ella. Pero nosotros elegimos una ruta diferente. Y al final, ese es el punto de escapar de la cura: Somos libres para elegir. Somos incluso libres para elegir algo horrible.”
― Lauren Oliver, Requiem

“Shhh.”my mother said She presses her lips to my forehead, strokes my hair, just like she used to when I was a child. I am a baby once again in her arms—helpless and needy. “I’m here now.”
― Lauren Oliver, Requiem

“But it’s not about knowing. It is simply about going forward. The cureds want to know; we have chosen faith instead. I asked Grace to trust me. We will have to trust too—that the world won’t end, that tomorrow will come, and that truth will come too.
An old line, a forbidden line from a text Raven once showed me, comes back to me now. He who jumps may fall, but he may also fly.
It’s time to jump.”
― Lauren Oliverren Oliver

“Fredes Salvatore Mendez was on his last legs. He was on his deathbed, on the second floor in the old section of the Hospital Santo Tomas, over on Balboa Avenue."

— A Requiem for Fredes Mendez.”
― Stephen Deck, Land of the Story Tellers: 24 Stories and 7 Poems

“When the last living thing
has died on account of us,
how poetical it would be
if Earth could say,
in a voice floating up
perhaps
from the floor
of the Grand Canyon,
'It is done.'
People did not like it here.”
― Kurt Vonnegut Jr., A Man Without a Country

“you killed us all John, the hunter is home from the hill”
― ― Dan Wells, Nothing Left to Lose

“It's nothing to fear," Mel said. "They are just souls longing for someone to care about them."
She put a hand to her chest and closed her eyes, then began a hauntingly beautiful requiem to those floating in the waters below. The wailing eased and the waters calmed.
"Oh, Mel," Calli whispered. "Your ability to empathize truly is a gift.”
― Farrah Rochon, Bemused