Mariel Jimenez

“How did I love her?
Let me count the ways.
The freckles on her nose like the shadow of a shadow; the way she chewed on her lower lip when she walked and how when she ran she looked like she was born going fast and how she fit perfectly against my chest; her smell and the touch of her lips and her skin, which was always warm, and how she smiled.
Like she had a secret.
How she always made up words during Scrabble. Hyddym (secret music). Grofp (cafeteria food). Quaw (the sound a baby duck makes). How she burped her way through the alphabet once, and I laughed so hard I spat out soda through my nose.
And how she looked at me like I could save her from everything bad in the world.
This was my secret: she was the one who saved me.”
― Lauren Oliver, Requiem

“Maybe, the hope said. Maybe.”
― Lauren Oliver, Requiem

“They couldn’t have known that even this was a lie—that we never really choose, not entirely. We are always being pushed and squeezed down one road or another. We have no choice but to step forward, and then step forward again, and then step forward again; suddenly we find ourselves on a road we haven’t chosen at all.

But maybe happiness isn’t in the choosing. Maybe it’s in the fiction, in the pretending: that wherever we have ended up is where we intended to be all along.”
― Lauren Oliver, Requiem

“And we did, and it wasn’t bad. We ate the whole stupid can, we were so hungry. And when it started to get dark you pointed to the sky, and told
me there was a star for every thing you loved about me.” I’m gasping, feeling as though I am about to drown; I’m reaching for him blindly, grabbing at
his collar.”
― Lauren Oliver, Requiem