Lauren DeStefano

“Because even if the lie is beautiful, the truth is what you face in the end.”

“'Dystopian,' by definition, promises a darker story.”

“Wanting to be happy is not stupid.”

“I wish I had a memory of that first violent shove, the shock of cold air, the sting of oxygen into new lungs. Everyone should remember being born. It doesn't seem fair that we only remember dying.”

“It taught that there are three versions of things: the one I see in my mind, and the one that carries onto the paper, and then what it ultimately becomes.”

“Just being alive feels so arduous that all I want to do is climb under the covers and sleep.”

“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.”

“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.”

“When I am writing anything in general, I just want to tell the story that exists in my head; I don't try to write a parable or make a point.”

“Don't you miss it?" I say. "Being free."He laughs.”

“Felix wasn't sure of his limits, if he had limits. After he'd been dead a while, he began to suspect he could swim to the bottom of the oceans. Beyond that. He suspected that he could swim so far down that he'd eventually go through the center of the earth and come out the other side. He could swim into the clouds, into the stars. Maybe there were ghosts on the other planets. Maybe there were ghosts laughing and splashing each other with the heat of the sun. He wasn't brave enough to find out.”

“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.”

“You can try to please everyone and risk accomplishing nothing, or go for your dreams and risk pissing a few people off.”

“I realized how wonderful YA is and how I really wanted to write something that created that level of intrigue.”

“It was my fifth grade teacher who introduced the idea that writing could be more than a hobby for me.”

“Love unrequited is violent. He loves you so much that he's turned it into hate.”

“It is the face of a girl who has seen the world, who realizes that it hates her, and who hates it in return.”

“Trust is the strongest weapon.”

“The madness of youth made me unafraid.”

“A strange thing, words. Once they're said, it's hard to imagine they're untrue.”