Ashley > Ashley's Quotes

“Everything in me feels fluttering and free, like I could take off from the ground at any second. Music, I think, he makes me feel like music.”
― Lauren Oliver, Before I Fall

“And then we're kissing. His lips are soft and leave mine tingling. I close my eyes, and in the darkness behind them I see beautiful blooming things, flowers spinning like snowflakes, and hummingbirds beating the same rhythm as my heart. I'm gone, lost, floating away into nothingness like I am in my dream, but this time it's a good feeling - like soaring, like being totally free. His other hand pushes my hair from my face, and I can feel the impression of his fingers everywhere that they touch, and I think of stars streaking through the sky and leaving burning trails behind them, and in that moment - however long it lasts, seconds, minutes, days - while he's saying my name into my mouth and I"m breathing into him, I realize this, right here, is the first and only time I've ever been kissed.”
― Lauren Oliver, Before I Fall

“And it's the funniest thing: as soon as I see it, the whistling in my ears stops and the feeling of terror drains away, and I realize this whole time I haven't been falling at all. I've been floating.”
― Lauren Oliver, Before I Fall

“Somewhere in the endless spinning of eternity that one, tiny, fraction of a second where our lips met is lost forever.”
― Lauren Oliver, Before I Fall

“I'm not scared, if that's what you're wondering. The moment of death is full of sound and warmth and light shooting away, arcing up and up and up, and if singing were a feeling it would be this, this light, this lifting, like laughing...

The rest you have to find out for yourself.”
― Lauren Oliver, Before I Fall

“I remember I once saw this old movie...; in it the main character was talking about how sad it is that the last time you have sex you don't know it's the last time. Since I've never even had a first time, I'm not exactly an expert, but I'm guessing it's like that for most things in life--the last kiss, the last laugh, the last cup of coffee, the last sunset, the last time you jump through a sprinkler or eat an ice-cream cone, or stick your tongue out to catch a snowflake. You just don't know.

But I think that's a good thing, really, because if you did know it would be almost impossible to let go. When you do know, it's like being asked to step off the edge of a cliff: all you want to do is get down on your hands and knees and kiss the solid ground, smell it, hold on to it.”
― Lauren Oliver, Before I Fall

“I wonder if it's ever really possible to know the truth about someone else, or if the best we can do is just stumble into each other, heads down, hoping to avoid collision. I...wonder how many people are clutching secrets like little fists, little rocks sitting in the pits of their stomachs. All of them, maybe.”
― Lauren Oliver, Before I Fall

“I used to lie here like this all summer long,' I tell her. 'I'd come up here and just stare at the sky.'
She rolls over on her back so she's staring up as well. 'Bet this view hasn't changed much, has it?'
What she says is so simple i almost laugh. She's right, of course. 'No. This looks exactly the same.'
I suppose that's the secret, If you're ever wishing for things to go back to the way they were. You just have to look up.”
― Lauren Oliver, Before I Fall

“It's funny how you can know your friends so well, but you still end up playing the same games with them.”
― Lauren Oliver, Before I Fall

“It strikes me how strange people are. You can see them every day, you can think you know them and then you found out you hardly know them at all.”
― Lauren Oliver, Before I Fall

“it's weird how much people change. for example, when i was a kid i loved all of these things..and over time all of them just fell away, one after another, replaced by friends and IMing and cell phones and boys and clothes. it's kind of sad, if you think about it. like there's no continuity in people at all. like something ruptures when you hit twelve, or thirteen, or whatever the age is when you're no longer a kid but a "young adult," and after that you're a totally different person. maybe even a less happy person. maybe even a worse one.”
― Lauren Oliver, Before I Fall

“I feel an ache in my throat, but I manage to smile. Two conflicting desires go through me at the same time, each as sharp as a razorblade: I want to see you grow up and Don't ever change.”
― Lauren Oliver, Before I Fall

“Most of the time one night blends into the next and weeks blend into weeks and months into other months. And sooner or later we all die.

But at the beginning of the night anything’s possible.”
― Lauren Oliver, Before I Fall

“At a certain point your brain stops to rationalize things. At a certain point it gives up, shuts off, shuts down.”
― Lauren Oliver, Before I Fall

“The reason you can never go home again isn't necessarily that places change, but people do. So nothing ever looks the same.”
― Lauren Oliver, Before I Fall

“..in that moment i realize how much i love the little everyday routines of my life..the details that are my life's special pattern, like how in handwoven rugs what really makes them unique are the tiny flaws in the stitching, little gaps and jumps and stutters that can never be reproduced.

so many things become beautiful when you really look.”
― Lauren Oliver, Before I Fall

“Kent?" I say, and my voice seems to have to rise from inside the fog, taking forever to get from my brain to my mouth.

"Yeah?"

"Promise you'll stay here with me?" I say.

"I promise," he whispers.”
― Lauren Oliver, Before I Fall

“Time and space recede and blast away like a universe expanding forever outward, and leaving only darkness and the two of us on its periphery, darkness and breathing and touch.”
― Lauren Oliver, Before I Fall

“Things That Don't Matter When You've Lived the Same Day Six Times and Died on at Least Two of Them: Lunch meats and their relative coolness. ”
― Lauren Oliver, Before I Fall

“My heart shoots into my throat every time I think I see his loping walk, or catch sight of some floppy brown hair on a boy - but it's never him, and each time it isn't, my heart does a reverse trajectory down into the very pit of my stomach.”
― Lauren Oliver, Before I Fall

“That's when it happens. The moment of death is full of heat and sound and pain bigger than anything, a funnel of burning heat splitting me in two, something searing and scorching and tearing, and if screaming were a feeling it would be this.
Then nothing. I know some of you are thinking maybe I deserved it. Maybe I shouldn't have sent that rose to Juliet or dumped my drink on her at the party. Maybe I shouldn't have copied off of Lauren Lornet's quiz. Maybe I shouldn't have said those things to Kent. There are probably some of you who think I deserved it because I was going to let Rob go all the way--because I wasn't going to save myself.
But before you start pointing fingers, is what I did really so bad? So bad I deserved to die? So bad I deserved to die like THAT?
Is what I did really so much worse than what anybody else does?
Is it really so much worse than what YOU do?
Think about it.”
― Lauren Oliver, Before I Fall

“It’s weird how much people change...
It’s kind of sad, if you think about it. Like there’s no continuity in people at all. Like something ruptures when you hit twelve, or thirteen, or whatever the age is when you’re no longer a kid but a “young adult,” and after that you’re a totally different person. Maybe even a less happy person. Maybe even a worse one.”
― Lauren Oliver, Before I Fall

“There are so many things I want to tell her, so many things she doesn't know; like how I remember when she first came home from the hospital, a big pink blob with a perma-smile, and she used to fall asleep while grabbing on to my pinter finger; how I sued to give her piggyback rides up and down the beach on Cape Cod, and she would tub on my ponytail to direct me one way or the other; how soft and furry her head was when she was first born; that the first time you kiss someone you'll be nervous, and it will be weird, and it won't be as good as you want it to be, and that's okay; how you should only fall in love with people who will fall in love back... I feel an ache in my throat, but i manage to smile. Two conflicting desires go through me at the same time, each as sharp as a razor blade: I want to see you grow up and Don't ever change.”
― Lauren Oliver, Before I Fall

“The sun has just risen, weak and watery-looking, like it had just spilled itself over the horizon and is too lazy to clean itself up.”
― Lauren Oliver, Before I Fall

“And when I wake up it's wonderful, like I've been carried quietly onto a calm, peaceful shore, and the dream, and its meaning, has broken over me like a wave and is ebbing away now, leaving me with a single, solid certainty. I know now.”
― Lauren Oliver, Before I Fall

“That’s when I realized that certain moments go on forever. Even after they’re over they still go on, even after you're dead and buried, those moments are lasting still, backward and forward, on into infinity. They are everything and everywhere all at once.”
― Lauren Oliver, Before I Fall

“The thing is, you don't get to know. It's not like you wake up with a bad feeling in your stomach. You don't see shadows where there shouldn't be any. You don't remember to tell your parents you love them or--in my case--remember to say good-bye to them at all.”
― Lauren Oliver, Before I Fall

“Maybe all of these different possibilities exist at the same time, like each moment we live has a thousand other moments layered underneath it that look different.”
― Lauren Oliver, Before I Fall

“That’s a funny thing: you think, when awful things happen, everything else just stops, like you would forget to pee and eat and get thirsty, but it’s not really true. It’s like you and your body are two separate things, like your body is betraying you, chugging on, idiotic and animal, craving water and sandwiches and bathroom breaks while your world falls apart.”
― Lauren Oliver, Before I Fall

“That's my favorite thing about him. I like to lie next to him when it's late, dark, and so quiet I can hear my own heartbeat. It's times like that when I'm sure that I'm in love.”
― Lauren Oliver, Before I Fall