Delirium - lauren oliver
1) The most dangerous sicknesses are those that make us believe we are
well. \ Proverb 42, The Book of Shhh
2) Of course that's one of the reasons it's so dangerous: (i)It
affects your mind so that you cannot think clearly, or make rational
decisions about your own well-being(i).
3) The deadliest of all deadly things: It kills you both when you have
it and when you don't.
4) Hearts are fragile things. That's why you have to be so careful.
5) You can't be really happy unless you're unhappy sometimes.
6) The devil stole into the Garden of Eden.
He carried with him the disease - amor deliria nervosa -
in the form of a seed. It grew and flowered into a
magnificent apple tree, which bore apples as bright as blood.
- From Genesis: A Complete History of the World and the Known
Universe, by Steven Horace, PhD, Harvard University
7) I love you. Remember. They cannot take it.
8) Someday we will all be saved.
9) 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.
10) Everyone you trust, everyone you think you can count on, will
eventually disappoint you. When left to their own devices, people lie
and keep secrets and change and disappear, some behind a different
face or personality, some behind a dense early morning fog, beyond a
cliff.
11) A world without fear. Impossible.
12) And even though I'm standing in the middle of the biggest crowd
I've ever seen in my life, I suddenly feel very alone.
13) 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 been changed and somebody forgot to tell me.
14) I have a brief fantasy that we're the only two people out in the
darkness - that we are the only two people awake and alive in the
city, in the world.
15) Most things, even the greatest movements on earth, have their
beginnings in something small. An earthquake that shatters a city
might begin with a tremor, a tremble, a breath. Music begins with a
vibration...
And God created the whole universe from an atom no bigger than a
thought.
16) Sometimes I feel like if you just watch things, just sit still and
let the world exist in front of you - sometimes I swear that just for
a second time freezes and the world pauses in its tilt. Just for a
second. And of you somehow found a way to live in that second, then
you would live forever.
17) The past is nothing but a weight. It will build inside of you like
a stone.
Take it from me: if you hear the past speaking to you, feel it
tugging at your back and running it's fingers up your spine, the best
thing to do - the only thing - is run.
18) Feelings aren't forever. Time wait for no man, but progress waits
for man to enact it.
19) My stomach gets that hollowed-out feeling. It amazing how words
can do that, just shred your insides apart. Sticks and stones may
break my bones, but words can never hurt me - (i)such(i) bullshit.
20) Human beings, in their natural state, are unpredictable, erratic,
and unhappy. It is only once their animal instincts are controlled
that they can be responsible, dependent, and content.
21) Now the room is full of him: he is so close I can't breathe, can't
move or speak or think. Every time he brushes me with his fingers,
time seems to teeter for a second, like it is in danger of dissolving.
The world is dissolving, I decide, except for us. Us.
22) Everyone is asleep. They've been asleep for years. You seemedc
awake... I'm tired of sleeping.
23) 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.
24) I know part of the problem, of course. The disorientation, the
distraction, the difficulty focusing - all classic Phase One signs of
deliria. But I don't care. If pneumonia felt this good I'd stand out
in the snow in the winter with bare feet and no coat on, or march into
the hospital and kiss pneumonia patients.
25) 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.
26) (i)It's going to be okay(i). Words that mean nothing, really, just
sounds intoned into vastness and darkness, little scrabbling attempts
to latch on to something when we're falling.
27) That's when you really lose people, you know. When the pain passes.
28) Snapshots, moments, mere seconds: as fragile and beautiful and
hopeless as a single butterfly, flapping on against the gathering wind.
29) Somehow, the pain only makes it better, more intense, more worth it.
30) I seem to have only hazy memories of the girl I was before then \
the girl who always did what she was told and never lied and counted
the days until her procedure with feelings of excitement, not horror
and dread. The girl who was afraid of everyone and everything. The
girl who was afraid of herself.
31) 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.
Before and after - and during, a moment no bigger or longer than
an edge.
32) Live free or die.
33) 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.
34) I don't know whether these feelings - this (i)thing(i) growing
inside if me - is something horrible and sick or the best thing that's
ever happened to me.
Either way, I can't stop it. I've lost control. And the (i)truly
(i) sick things is that despite everything, I'm glad.
35) I feel an overwhelming rush of sadness, unrelated to Alex or Brian
or any of that. I'm just struck with a sense of time passing so
quickly, rushing forward. One day I'll wake up and my whole life will
be behind me, and it will seem to have gone as quickly as a dream.
36) Stupid, stupid \ to be so careless with our time, to believe we
had so much of it left.
37) All of a sudden it hits me: he did this for me. Even after what
happened today, he came and did this for me. Gratitude overwhelms me,
and another feeling too, bringing with it a twinge of pain. I don't
deserve it. I don't deserve him. I turn back to him and can't even
speak; his face is lit up with flame and he seems to be glowing,
transforming into fire. He is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen.
38) Unimaginable, incomprehensible: a life lived without him. The idea
breaks me \ the fact that he's almost crying breaks me \ the fact
that he did this for me, the fact that he believes I'm worth it \
kills me. He is my world and my world is him and without him there is
no world.
39) LIBERTY IN ACCEPTANCE;
PEACE IN ENCLOSURE;
HAPPINESS IN RENUNCIATION
40) We stand there for one more moment, looking at each other, and in
that instant I feel our connection so strongly it's as though it
achieves physical existance, becomes a hand all aroun us, cupping us
together, protecting us.
41) Humans, unregulated, are cruel and capricious; violent and
selfish; miserable and quarrelsome. It is only after their instincts
and basic emotions have been controlled that they can be happy,
generous, and good.
42) Hate isn't the most dangerous thing... Indifference is.
43) The tone of his voice makes something painful run through me, but
I can't stop speaking. Destroy, destroy, destroy: I want to break
everything \ him, me, us, the whole city, the whole world.
44) 'That's all I want. Just you and me. Always.'
I mean it too. I'm not even afraid. Now that I know I'll have him \
that we have each other \ I feel as though I'll never be afraid of an
ything ever again.
45) And I'll be gone \ out there somewhere among the skinny, shivering
trees, encased in snow. But Alex will be with me, and we'll be safe.
We'll walk together holding hands, and kiss in broad daylight, and
love each other as much as we want to, and no one will ever try to
keep us apart.
46) I'm only seventeen years old, and I already know something she
doesn't know: 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 on to them, and fight for them, and
refuse to let them go.
47) What is beauty? Beauty is no more than a trick; a delusion; the
influence of excited particles and electrons colliding in your eyes,
jostling in your brain like a bunch of overeager schoolchildren, about
to be released on break. Will you let yourself be deluded? Will you
let yourself be deceived?
48) You have to go forward: it's the only way. You have to go forward
no matter what happens. This is the universal law.
49) Love, the deadliest of all deadly things: it kills you both when
you have it and when you don't.
But that isn't it, exactly.
The condemned and the condemned. The executioner; the blade; the
last-minute repreive; the gaspin breath and the rolling sky above you
and the (i)thank you, thank you, thank you, God(i).
Love: it will kill you and save you, both.
50) I must be gone and live, or stay and die.
51) 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.
52) He who leaps for the sky may fall, it's true.
But he may also fly.
53) I've known time to stretch out like rings expanding outward over
water; I've also known it to rush by with such force it leaves me
dizzy. But until today I've never known if to do both at the same time.
54) I'd rather die on my own terms than live on theirs.
55) Life will go on. Something aches at the very core of me, something
ancient and deep and stronger than words: the filament that joins each
if us to the root of existence, that ancient thing unfurling and
resisting and grappling, desperately, for a foothold, a way to (i)stay
here, breathe, keep going(i). But I will it away; I will it to curl up
again, to let go.
I'd rather die my way than live yours.
56) 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 thousands 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.
miki
