Lauren DeStefano is an American young adult author. She is best known for the Chemical Garden series of novels and her gallows humor.
We can change so many times in our lives. We're born into a family, and it's the only life we can imagine, but it changes. Buildings collapse. Fires burn. And the next second we're someplace else entirely, going through different motions and trying to keep up with this new person we've become.
We'll squeeze every second that we can from our lives, because we're young, and we have plenty of years to grow. We'll grow until we're braver. We'll grow until our bones ache and our skin wrinkles and our hair goes white, and until our hearts decide, at last, that it's time to stop.
The world seems so clean if you only looked up.
Maybe what frightens us about the edge isn't our fear of morality, but the thoughts it leads us to have.
Childhood is a long, long road, from which that dark whispering forest of death seems an impossible destination.
Set fire to the broken pieces; start anew.
You've been captive for so long that you don't even realize you want freedom anymore.
Poor kid,' Jenna says, and rolls her eyes toward me for a moment. Then she returns to her book. 'She doesn't even understand what kind of place this is.
Don't forget how you got here. Don't Forget.
I don't dare touch her. Loss is a knowledge I'm sorry to have. Perhaps the only thing worse than experiencing it, is watching it replay anew in someone else--all the awful stages picking up like a chorus that has to be sung.
Lovers are weapons, but love is a wound.
Suddenly the clouds seem high above us. They’re moving over us in an arch, circling the planet. They have seen abysmal oceans and charred, scorched islands. They have seen how we destroyed the world. If I could see everything, as the clouds do, would I swirl around this remaining continent, still so full of color and life and seasons, wanting to protect it? Or would I just laugh at the futility of it all, and meander onward, down the earth’s sloping atmosphere?
Maybe hope isn't the most dangerous thing a person can have. Maybe love is.
I think humans have always been desperate. I think it has always been about doing something awful if it might help, when the only other option is death. Maybe that's what being a parent is supposed to feel like.
She's been conned, ruined, left for dead, and she's not going to forgive any of it. She will soldier on, if only out of spite.
We are stronger than we've credited ourselves to be. We have been the victims and the witnesses. We have said a lifetime of good-byes.
Things will get worse before they get better.
I'll tell you something about true love. There's no science to it. It's as natural as the sky.
Momentum,' She repeats. 'You can't just stand there if you want something to fly. You have to run.
Words like 'unputdownable' and 'irresistible' are simply not enough for Cat Winters's In the Shadow of Blackbirds. Days after finishing this story, it remains the first thought I have in the morning, and the thing that haunts me until I sleep.