Lauren Oliver

I__e never really had a party before._ __hy did you have one now?_ I say, just to keep him talking. He gives a half laugh. __ thought if I had a party, you would come.

You do not know what will happen if you take down the walls; you cannot see through to the other side, don't know whether it will bring freedom or ruin, resolution or chaos. It might be paradise or destruction. Take down the walls. Otherwise you must live closely, in fear, building barricades against the unknown, saying prayers against the darkness, speaking verse of terror and tightness. Otherwise you may never know hell, but you will not find heaven, either.

Let me show you

I vowed after that day that I would be your hero too, no matter how long it took

And then, just at that moment, when I'm no longer sure if I'm dreaming or awake or walking some valley in between where everything you wish for comes true, I feel the flutter of his lips on mine.

Lord, help us root our feet to the earthAnd our eyes to the roadAnd always remember the fallen angelsWho, attempting to soar,Were seared instead by the sun and, wings melting,Came crashing back to the sea.Lord, help root my eyes to the earthAnd stay my eyes to the roadSo I may never stumble.)

Every choice is limited. That's life.

Raven looks at me. __hat about you, Lena?__ can feel Alex__ eyes on me. My mouth is so dry; the sun is so blinding. I look away, toward the hundreds and hundreds of people who have been driven out of their homes, out of their lives, to this place of dust and dirtiness, all because they wanted the power to feel, to think, to choose for themselves. They couldn__ have known that even this was a lie__hat 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__ chosen at all.But maybe happiness isn__ in the choosing. Maybe it__ in the fiction, in the pretending: that wherever we have ended up is where we intended to be all along.Coral shifts, and moves her hand to Alex__ arm.____ with Julian,_ I say at last. This, after all, is what I have chosen.

We are all punished for the lives we have chosen, in one way or another.

The butterflies are working their way up from my stomach into my head, making me feel dizzy, and I try to calm myself by imagining the ocean outside, its ragged breathing, the seagulls turning pinwheels in the sky.It will be over soon, I tell myself. It will be over soon and then you__l go home, and you__l never have to think about the evaluation again.

Hope keeps you alive.

I don't know which is worse: that I'm home and so much is different, or that I'm home and so much feels the same.

You can__ go home again_ _ isn__ necessarily that places change but people do.

But you can build a future out of anything. A scrap, a flicker. The desire to go forward, slowly, one foot at a time. You can build an airy city out of ruins.

But those are just words, and words are just stories, and eventually, always, stories come to an end.

That is the rule of the Wilds: You must be bigger and stronger and tougher. You must hurt or be hurt.

And suddenly it's all so ridiculously and stupidly clear I feel like laughing. This is what I want. This is the only thing i've ever wanted. Everything else---every single second of every single day that has come before this very moment, this kiss---has meant nothing.

Love will turn the whole world into something greater than itself.