Delirium (Delirium, #1)

by Lauren Oliver

The most dangerous sicknesses are those that make us believe we are well.

The deadliest of all deadly things: It kills you both when you have it and when you don’t.

Hearts are fragile things. That’s why you have to be so careful.

‘You know you can’t be happy unless you’re unhappy sometimes,

I love you. Remember. They cannot take it.

She is the only one who knows of the Coldness: a feeling that comes sometimes when I’m lying in bed, a black, empty feeling that knocks my breath away and leaves me gasping as though I’ve just been thrown in icy water.

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.

Sometimes I feel as though there are two me’s, one coasting directly on top of the other: the superficial me, who nods when she’s supposed to nod and says what she’s supposed to say, and some other, deeper part, the part that worries and dreams and says ‘Grey.’ Most of the time they move along in sync and I hardly notice the split, but sometimes it feels as though I’m two whole different people and I could rip apart at any second.

And ridiculous as it is, I can’t shake the persistent, needling feeling that I’ve forgotten something, or missed something, or lost something forever.

The music cuts off instantly. Strangely, the silence that follows seems just as loud.

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.

I’ve always been careful not to let myself give in to feelings of anger or irritation. I can’t afford to at Carol’s house. I owe her too much – and besides, after the few tantrums I threw as a child, I hated the way she looked at me sideways for days, as though analysing me, measuring me. I knew she was thinking, Just like her mother. But now I give in, let the anger surge. 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.

Most things, even the greatest movements on earth, have their beginnings in something small.

My world exploded because of a different word: suicide. Correction: that was the first time my world exploded. The second time my world exploded, it was also because of a word. A word that worked its way out of my throat and danced onto and out of my lips before I could think about it, or stop it. The question was: Will you meet me tomorrow? And the word was: Yes.

But just like anything else, lying becomes easier the more you do it.

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 if you somehow found a way to live in that second, then you would live forever.

‘Lena. I like you, okay? That’s it. That’s all. I like you.’

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 its fingers up your spine, the best thing to do – the only thing – is run.

Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me – such bullshit.

Animals, I think. We’re animals.

I know I must be slowing Alex down, but he doesn’t let me go, not for a second.

‘You don’t know me,’ I say quickly. ‘I want to, though.’

‘Everyone is asleep. They’ve been asleep for years. You seemed . . . awake.’ Alex is whispering now. He closes his eyes, opens them again. ‘I’m tired of sleeping.’

He says, ‘Let me show you.’

Then I’m sneaking into the house and up the stairs and into the bedroom, and it’s not until I’ve been lying in bed for a long time, shivering, aching, missing him already, that I realize my aunt and my teachers and the scientists are right about the deliria. As I lie there with the hurt driving through my chest and the sick, anxious feeling churning through me and the desire for Alex so strong inside of me it’s like a razor blade edging its way through my organs, shredding me, all I can think is: It will kill me, it will kill me, it will kill me. And I don’t care.

The anticipation of seeing Alex again is messing with my appetite big-time. Another sign of the deliria. Bring it.

It’s us against them, three against countless thousands. But for some reason, and even though it’s absurd, at that moment I feel pretty damn good about our odds.

‘That’s when you really lose people, you know. When the pain passes.’

They told us that love was a disease. They told us it would kill us in the end.

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.

The short, nondescript girl with a secret burning inside of her like a fire.

Love, the deadliest of all deadly things.

it.’ I press my hands against my chest, wishing I could somehow be even closer to him. I hate skin; I hate bones and bodies. I want to curl up inside of him and be carried there forever.

‘Lena,’ he says at last. ‘I think your mother is alive.’

It will rain at any second. It has to. I have the sensation of the world holding its breath before a giant exhale, balancing, teetering, about to let go.

Hate isn’t the most dangerous thing, he’d said. Indifference is.

I was the one who was really buried that day.

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.

Love: it will kill you and save you, both.

I must be gone and live, or stay and die.

He who leaps for the sky may fall, it’s true. But he may also fly.

I’d rather die on my own terms than live on theirs. I’d rather die loving Alex than live without him.

I’d rather die my way than live yours.

You can build walls all the way to the sky and I will find a way to fly above them.

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.