Destefano Quotes & Sayings

PEOPLE USED to be connected to one another all the time. That's what my parents told me. Everyone had phones and computers. Everyone called and kept in touch. They used to be everything, these things that are barely remembered now. These things that mean nothing to me. — Lauren DeStefano

I realized how wonderful YA is and how I really wanted to write something that created that level of intrigue. — Lauren DeStefano

So many of the things I've wanted are the things I've been taught to fear. — Lauren DeStefano

Give someone a book, they'll read for a day. Teach someone how to write a book, they'll experience a lifetime of paralyzing self doubt. — Lauren DeStefano

Do you even know what it feels like to lose someone you loved?" he asks.
"I lost everyone I loved," I tell him. I wait for him to look at me, and then I add, "The day I met you. — Lauren DeStefano

When we were first married, I thought he must have been the most heartless, hateful man I'd ever known, but he was just as much a prisonor as I was. Where Vaughn imprisoned me with walls, he imprisoned his son with ignorance. — Lauren DeStefano

Elixirs. Pills. Specialists. Are they meant to help us, or to keep us compliant?" -Daphne Leander — Lauren DeStefano

The trick was looking past the illusion, because the exit was never as far away as it seemed. — Lauren DeStefano

The only characters I ever don't like are ones that leave no impression on me. And I don't write characters that leave no impression on me. — Lauren DeStefano

Time was our very first king. We all live our lives to the aggressive ticking of the clock. We don't question that our lives are a grid of seconds; even our pulses oblige. No succeeding king can hope to hold this kind of power. — Lauren DeStefano

You
" she chokes on a sob and draws back. "You're scared? What a thing to say. You had me thinking you were dead. — Lauren DeStefano

I can almost see what Gabriel meant when he asked, 'What has the free world got that you can't get here?' Almost. Freedom, Gabriel. That's what you can't get here. — Lauren DeStefano

Don't you miss it?" I say. "Being free."
He laughs. — Lauren DeStefano

Kettle thingies. Yum. — Lauren DeStefano

I just hate to see you like this," he says. "Isn't there anything I can do?"

You could murder Vaughn. You could free Gabriel. You could help repair the damage that's been done to our home. By you.

This room is surely being recorded, though, and all I say is, "No."

He tilts my chin, and then he cups his hands around my ear and whispers, "I don't believe that."

I look at him, and I see the same look in his eyes as on the morning when I told him I was going to bring Linden home. Vaughn may be Rowan's benefactor, but I'm his twin sister. Even after this time spent apart, he can read me. — Lauren DeStefano

She was a drawing that hadn't been colored. — Lauren DeStefano

I don't want the whole world knowing just how extraordinary you are.' I straighten his tie 'Are my eyes what make me special to you?' 'No,' he says. His voice has become soft and dreamy. He pushes the curls from my face. 'They are only a ripple on the surface. — Lauren DeStefano

We accept gods that don't speak to us. We accept gods that would place us in a world filled with injustices and do nothing as we struggle. It's easier than accepting that there's nothing out there at all, and that, in our darkest moments, we are truly alone. — Lauren DeStefano

I feel unburdened, and after a while I start to imagine that the divan is a boat moving over the ocean. Sunken cities play music beneath the waves. The ghosts are stirring. — Lauren DeStefano

There was a desperate undercurrent to our marriage
a feeling of being in a dream from which I couldn't seem to awaken. A nagging sense that my life, laid out so neatly like the clothes Deirdre left on my divan, was no longer my own. — Lauren DeStefano

But there's no such thing as free. There are only different and more horrible ways to be enslaved. — Lauren DeStefano

Real' is a dirty word in this place. — Lauren DeStefano

They never exhale, the trees; on a very windy day, they rustle and inhale, and then the leaves and the branches all tremble as though something means to strangle the life from them. The sky watches on. The world is filled with anticipation, as if to wonder if this day will be a great day, or a horrible day, or the last day. — Lauren DeStefano

Every star has been set in the sky. We mistakenly think they were put there for us. — Lauren DeStefano

And about a thousand other things, he says, pausing sometimes between his words, making sure he has them right. I get the sense that words are not sufficient tools for him to build what's going on in his head as he stands before me. — Lauren DeStefano

I think, in this strange world of beautiful things, there may be some humanity after all. — Lauren DeStefano

I 'd never seen him cry; I didn't think he could . It would have to take something greater than the end of the world to reduce Vaughn Ashby to tears . — Lauren DeStefano

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. — Lauren DeStefano

When someone you care about is suffering, you don't care if the whole world burns down around them, or they're covered in scars, or blind. You just want them back. And you'll accept whatever conditions come along with it" -Morgan — Lauren DeStefano

Give me time"

"For you, always. — Lauren DeStefano

If you've never been afraid, you haven't had your moment of bravery just yet — Lauren DeStefano

The thing about hope is that it doesn't go away even when it serves no purpose. — Lauren DeStefano

Her smile is her revenge. — Lauren DeStefano

She was supposed to build sand castles on the beach and put her toes in the ocean, Madame says. — Lauren DeStefano

The princess stops us walking. She holds the lantern up between us, and she looks at me with the eyes of all the princesses and queens in the history book. Eyes as old as Judas The Hero and Micah's boat of stars. She is ancient and profound, and she has Internment fascinated, copying her hair and her clothing in an attempt to understand. She looks at me now the way the whole floating city looks at her--hoping for some sort of answer that doesn't exist. — Lauren DeStefano

We were his disposable things. Brought to him like cattle. Stripped of what made us sisters or daughters or children. There was nothing that he could take from us - our genes, our bones, our wombs - that would ever satisfy him. There was no other way that we would be free. — Lauren DeStefano

I don't have too many books, I have too little shelving. — Lauren DeStefano

I keep staggering forward because I have to, but what Linden said last night is true: It's not much of a plan. — Lauren DeStefano

Perhaps... you love too fiercely. — Lauren DeStefano

I've done it all before, I tell myself, and I can do it again. Trust is the strongest weapon. — Lauren DeStefano

The clouds took on the shape of dancers; from somewhere far off, Pram heard music before the clouds became normal again. — Lauren DeStefano

We destroy things with our curiosity. We shatter with our best intentions — Lauren DeStefano

Maybe hope isn't such a bad thing. Maybe it's what keeps us together. — Lauren DeStefano

Free will isn't quite the same as freedom" -Daphne Leander — Lauren DeStefano

The train that circles Internment couldn't carry him far enough. My brother, the peripatetic, the sage, was too restless to stay in one place, but one place is all we're given. The only one who could quell this restlessness was Alice, always Alice, who swears she was born already in love with him. — Lauren DeStefano

We seem to have much in common with a girl who was killed for her ideas, he says. — Lauren DeStefano

There's this anomaly that happens sometimes with twins. It occurs in the womb when the fetuses are growing too closely to each other. The stronger twin develops normally, while the weaker twin crumples and is encased by the body of the stronger twin, where it becomes a parasite. The result is a single child, plagued by a twin-shaped fossil inside. Like a tumor.
In death Rose became Linden's parasitic twin. They were two separate organisms once, growing steadily beside each other. Two pulses. Two brains. But she has crumpled and died, and still he carries her inside himself. She goes where he goes, feeling nothing, seeing nothing, a shadow behind his ribs. — Lauren DeStefano

The evening sun catches every bolt and scrap of metal on the train, and for an instant we are suspended in an atmosphere of stars. — Lauren DeStefano

Maybe what frightens us about the edge isn't our fear of morality, but the thoughts it leads us to have. — Lauren DeStefano

He sits next to me, careful to avoid my hair that's splayed out around my head like blood. A bullet to the forehead, boom, blond waves everywhere. — Lauren DeStefano

Thick black smoke disappears into the darkness of night, blotting out patches of stars. Somewhere up there, higher than his world and mine, is the place where all things go when they have stopped breathing. It is a place my brother visited. Up where it's quiet and calm, and prayers are able to drift up higher than words or wishes or wants. — Lauren DeStefano

Pram wasn't told the story of her birth. But even as a very small girl, she felt deep in her chest that she was alive and dead at the same time. — Lauren DeStefano

As I go, I hear her screaming my name, in a brutal, bloody way, like she's being murdered, which maybe she is. But slowly. It will take her six years to die. — Lauren DeStefano

The pieces of my life can never seem to stay in one place. — Lauren DeStefano

A girl should never stop thinking. — Lauren DeStefano

The madness of youth made me unafraid. — Lauren DeStefano

I'm sitting on the floor of the hospital lobby, waiting. That's always the worst part, the waiting. — Lauren DeStefano

I don't know very much about art - that has always been Pen's area - but I do believe that it is honesty at its core" -Morgan — Lauren DeStefano

When I die, my characters are going to spend forever pinging in the shadows and stars looking for brains to latch onto. — Lauren DeStefano

He has a face like composted Broccoli — Lauren DeStefano

On tiptoes the redhead wouldn't even reach my shoulders; she is clearly too young to be a bride. And the willowy girl is too forlorn. And I am too unwilling.
Yet here we are. — Lauren DeStefano

I have seen my father concede to utter defeat in the hospital room. I've heard him choke on sobs and whisper angry things to the god of the sky when he thought I was asleep at Lex's bedside. I know that those uniforms are worn by men - only men. — Lauren DeStefano

Before I can process what's happening, Deirdre has opened her hands and Linden has taken the ring from her and slipped it onto my finger.
"Rhine Ashby," he says.
"My wife. — Lauren DeStefano

There's a limit to how much living can be done in a life without freedom. — Lauren DeStefano

I wonder if she has figured out that I'll never love Linden, especially not in the way she does, and that he'll never love anyone the way he loves her. I wonder if she realizes, despite all her efforts to train me, that I can never take her place. — Lauren DeStefano

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. — Lauren DeStefano

To lose one's mother was to lose the beginning of one's life story. — Lauren DeStefano

She smiles at our husband as she moves, and he blushes, overcome by her beauty. But I know what her smile really means ... Her smile is her revenge. — Lauren DeStefano

You've always had trouble relinquishing control, haven't you? But it's a rewarding thing. People need a leader. They need to feel that someone is in charge, that they're in the hands of someone greater than they are. It's far scarier for each of us to believe that we are the only ones in charge of our own destinies. We know our own downfalls. ~Vaughn — Lauren DeStefano

Old cheerful songs about frivolous things that mean nothing to me. — Lauren DeStefano

I stare at her collarbone that's framed with lace, the hollow of her throat, her shoulders that rise with each rise with the weight of her next breath. We're fragile things. Our bones show through our skin. What would any god want with us? — Lauren DeStefano

I'll tell you something about love. It's no science to it. I'ts natural as the sky — Lauren DeStefano

before I knew it, I started writing in my head. It drowns out the whispers. — Merrie Destefano

When I was 11 or 12, I was really bored with everything on my summer reading list. It was all happy, middle-grade kinds of books. I was getting frustrated, because I liked to read. My mother went to the library and got me a copy of 'The Other Side of Midnight' by Sidney Sheldon. It was my first adult book. — Lauren DeStefano

Maybe it is desperation. Maybe we can't let things fall apart without trying. We can't let go of the people we love. — Lauren DeStefano

Birdie's presence was gentle and quiet, but her absence is violent. — Lauren DeStefano

But he has a clever way of getting answers with carefully worded statements. — Lauren DeStefano

We are taught that curiosity is a thing to be feared. But our first trains came from curious minds. As did medicine, and clocks, and first kisses. — Lauren DeStefano

He's in his hell, and I'm in mine. — Lauren DeStefano

I see it now.
There are no rules. It's survival of the fittest — Lauren DeStefano

And everywhere girls, tumbling from trees like orange blossoms and hitting the earth with sickening thuds. They crack open. — Lauren DeStefano

My worries always lead to dungeons; I can't imagine a worse thing than to be imprisoned for the rest of one's life, especially with so few years to enjoy what little there is. — Lauren DeStefano

The world seems so clean if you only looked up. — Lauren DeStefano

To die trying would be better than to die without purpose. — Lauren DeStefano

I wonder if the people of the ground ever feel that their children are too big for their world, too. — Lauren DeStefano

I don't look away, because she's right: I betrayed her, and I'm not sorry. To keep her safe, I would betray a thousand kingdoms. — Lauren DeStefano

Vaughn is talking about the heat, and his voice is so excited that it breaks into whispers at times. He loves his madness the way a bird loves the sky. — Lauren DeStefano

I've seen no proof, only words, but words can be powerful" -Morgan — Lauren DeStefano

He was now working his way through the many shades of grief. Sadness made everything gray, he'd learned, but there were different types of gray, some darker than others. There were dark spots in his memories he wasn't brave enough to enter. — Lauren DeStefano

Look," Linden says. " Look how beautiful it is."
"The sunrise?" I ask.
"The start of a new day," Linden says. "Being healthy enough to witness it. — Lauren DeStefano

I'll never disappear. I promise that every time I leave, I'll always come back. — Lauren DeStefano

And if I have to die trying, I will get out of here. — Lauren DeStefano

My father warned me that you're an interloper. He told me I should make you leave, since we're no longer married and you're not my concern," he says. The thought gives me a chill. Yes, I'm sure Vaughn would love for his son to abandon me, so that Vaughn can swoop in and reclaim me the second I'm alone. But Linden adds, "I told him that wouldn't be a good idea either. — Lauren DeStefano

Her mind is a bird that's trapped inside her skull, flapping and thrashing, never breaking free. — Lauren DeStefano

Maybe it is desperation," I say. "Maybe we can't let things fall apart without trying. We can't let go of the people we love."
He looks at me, and in the sunlight his eyes come alive with greens and golds. "Sometimes we can," he says. — Lauren DeStefano

I draw back,gently step out of his hands that gripped my shoulders and were just edging their way to either side of my throat — Lauren DeStefano

And then I wonder, does my brother think of me this way? We entered this world together, one after the other, beats in a pulse. But I will be first to leave it. That's what I've been promised. When we were children, did he dare to imagine an empty space beside him where I then stood giggling, blowing soap bubbles through my fingers?
When I die, will he be sorry that he loved me? Sorry that we were twins?
Maybe he already is. — Lauren DeStefano

I love Cecily", "whether or not you believe it. Not in the same way I loved Rose, or you. But what should that matter? I've loved all my wives differently. — Lauren DeStefano

When we're alive, life consumes us. But when we die, all of the color and the motion is gone so quickly, it's as though it can no longer stand to be wasted on us. — Lauren DeStefano

I don't know how it happens. We move our faces at the same time, and then our lips are touching. I've lost my worries. Traded them in for the sun and the taste of his tongue and the thought that in sixty years we'll be ashes - we'll be tossed into the air and after a moment of weightlessness we'll be everywhere and nowhere. But for now there's quick breathing and the feeling like he has my heart in his palm as it beats outside my chest. — Lauren DeStefano