The first time ever I saw your face
I thought the sun rose in your eyes
And the moon and the stars
Were the gifts you gave
To the dark and endless skies
-"The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face" originally by Roberta Flack (recently covered on Glee)
When she was just a girl
She expected the world
But it flew away from her reach
So she ran away in her sleep
And dreamed of para, para, paradise
Para, para, paradise
Para, para, paradise
Every time she closed her eyes ...
Life goes on, it gets so heavy,
The wheel breaks the butterfly
Every tear a waterfall
In the stormy night she'll close her eyes
In the stormy night away she'd fly
... And so lying underneath those stormy skies,
She'd say 'Oh, I know the sun must set to rise.'
-"Paradise" by Coldplay
Days like this I want to drive away
Pack my bags and watch your shadow fade
You chewed me up and spit me out
Like I was poison in your mouth
You took my light, you drained me down
That was then and this is now
Now look at me
... This is the part of me that you're never gonna ever take away from me
Throw your sticks and stones, throw your bombs and blows,
But you're not gonna break my soul
This is the part of me that you're never gonna ever take away from me, no ...
Now look at me I'm sparkling
A firework, a dancing flame
You'll never put me out again
I'm glowing, oh, whoa
You can keep that diamond ring
It don't mean nothing anyway
In fact you can keep everything,
Yeah, yeah -- except for me
-"Part of Me" by Katy Perry
I let it fall, my heart
And as it fell, you rose to claim it
It was dark and I was over
Until you kissed my lips and you saved me
My hands they're strong
But my knees were far to weak
To stand in your arms
Without falling to your feet
But there's a side to you that I never knew, never knew
All the things you'd say, they were never true, never true
And the games you played, you would always win, always win
-"Set Fire to the Rain" by Adele
Heart beats fast
Colors and promises
How to be brave?
How can I love when I'm afraid to fall?
Watching you stand alone
All of my doubt
Suddenly goes away somehow
One step closer
I have died everyday waiting for you
Darling don't be afraid I have loved you
For a thousand years
I'll love you for a thousand more
Time stand stills
Beauty in all she is
I will be brave
I will not let anything take away
What's standing in front of me
Every breath,
Every moment has come to this
One step closer ...
And all along, I believed I would find you
Time has brought your heart to me
And I have loved you for a thousand years
-"A Thousand Years" by Christina Perri
I've waited a hundred years
But I'd wait a million more for you ...
Though we're tethered to the story we must tell
When I saw you,
Well I knew we'd tell it well
Like a whisper, we will tame the vicious seas
Like a feather, bringing kingdoms to their knees
-"Turning Page" by Sleeping at Last
"Is this one of those guide books celebrities write for girls? Oh, hell no. I'm only marginally qualified to be giving advice at all. My body mass index is certainly not ideal, I frequently use my debit card to buy things that cost less than three dollars because I never have cash on me, ad my bedroom is so untidy it looks like vandals ransacked the Anthropologie sale section. I'm kind of a mess."
-from Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? by Mindy Kaling
"However, you should know that I disagree with a lot of traditional advice. For instance, they say that the best revenge is living well. I say it's acid in the face -- who will love them now? Another old saying is that revenge is a dish best served cold. But it feels best served piping hot, straight out of the oven of outrage. My opinion? Take care of revenge right away. Push, shove, scratch that person while they're still within arm's reach. Don't let them get away! Who knows when you'll have this opportunity again?"
-from Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? by Mindy Kaling
"There is no sunrise so beautiful that it is worth waking me up to see it."
-from Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? by Mindy Kaling
"Teenage girls, please don't worry about being super popular in high school, or being the best actress in high school,, or the best athlete. Not only do people not care about any of that the second you graduate, but when you get older if you refer to your successes in high school too much, it actually makes you look kind of pitiful, like some babbling old Tennessee Williams character with nothing else going on in her life. What I've noticed is that almost no one who was a big star in high school is also a big star later in life. For us overlooked kids, it's so wonderfully fair."
-from Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? by Mindy Kaling
"I just want ambitious teenagers to know it is totally fine to be quiet, observant kids. Besides being a delight to parents, you will find you have plenty of time later to catch up. ... Sit next to the class clown and study him. Then grow up, take everything you learned, and get paid to be a real-life clown, unlike whatever unexciting thing the actual high school class clown is doing now."
-from Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? by Mindy Kaling
"One friend with whom you have a lot in common is better than three with whom you struggle to find things to talk about. We never needed best friend gear because I guess with real friends you don't have to make it official. It just is."
-from Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? by Mindy Kaling
"I decided the odds were stacked against me, which strangely made me feel like I was going to get the job even more. Sports movies had brainwashed me into the believe that when the chips are down the most, that is when success is the most inevitable."
-from Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? by Mindy Kaling
"I'm the kind of person who would rather get my hopes up really high and watch them get dashed to pieces than wisely keep my expectations at bay and hope they are exceeded. This quality has made me a needy and theatrical friend, but has given me a spectacularly more dramatic emotional life."
-from Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? by Mindy Kaling
"That's one nice thing about being a dork about men: you can sometimes play it off as restrained and classy."
-from Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? by Mindy Kaling
"I will try to like your boyfriend five times. That is a fair number of ties to hang out with your boyfriend and withhold judgment."
-from Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? by Mindy Kaling
"As everyone knows, depressed people are some of the most boring people in the world. I know this because when I was depressed, people fled. Except my best friends. I will be there for you during your horrible break-up, or getting fired from your job, or if you're just having a bad couple of months or year. I will hate it and find you really tedious, but I promise I won't abandon you."
-from Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? by Mindy Kaling
"I will hate and re-like people for you. But you can't get mad if I can't keep track. Robby? Don't we hate him? No, we love him. Okay, okay. Sorry."
-from Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? by Mindy Kaling
"I know when you fall in love with someone that you will completely forget about me. That hurts my feelings, but it is okay. Please try to remember to text me, if you can, if you know I have something going on in my life."
-from Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? by Mindy Kaling
"Everyone has a moment when they discover they love Amy Poehler. For most people, it happened sometime during her run on Saturday Night Live. For some it was when she came back to the show in 2009, nine months' pregnant, and did that complicated, hard-core Sarah Palin rap on Weekend Update."
-from Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? by Mindy Kaling
"I have never had a one-night stand. According to every women's magazine and television program ever made, this is super-unforgivably lame, and it behooves me to go reclaim my groove on an all-girls party trip to an unincorporated island territory of the United States. Every romantic comedy I watch depicts our adorable heroine walking back sheepishly from a stranger's place in the morning with bedhead and her eyeliner all sexy and smudged. ... I just don't understand any of that at all. Here's why: In my mind, the sexiest thing in the world is feeling that you're wanted. The slightly nervous asking of your phone number. The text message asking you to dinner. The simple overture of wanting me can satisfy my ego for a good long time."
-from Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? by Mindy Kaling
"Don't you need to know something more about a guy than an evening's worth of conversation at a bar to make sex appealing?"
-from Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? by Mindy Kaling
"Fear is a pretty big turn-off. I'm talking about safety here. I don't even mean sexual health safety, like STDs. I mean good old-fashioned life-and-death safety. Here's what I can't wrap my brain around. I barely talk to strangers (a habit that I started as a child and that has served me well through my adulthood). So the idea of going to a stranger's house at night or having that stranger over to my house, sounds insanely dangerous. These fears have made it so that when my female friends talk to me about one-night stands, I'm an incredibly irritating listener.
-from Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? by Mindy Kaling
Excited Sexually Liberated Friend: So, then it was like 2 a.m. that same night, and he knocked on my apartment door. I was in my robe and nothing else --
Me: No underwear?
Excited Sexually Liberated Friend: No. I said 'nothing else.' ... So he knocked at the door --
Me: Wait! Sorry. I'm just realizing your doorman let him up without ever seeing him before? Doesn't that disturb you, that your doorman would just let any old person off the street up to your apartment? I would give my doorman a book of photos of accepted guests that he could reference, like a reference book --
Excited Sexually Liberated Friend: I'm doing fine with my doorman.
Me: I would have established a different procedure.
Excited Sexually Liberated Friend: Great, Mindy. Anyway, then I showed up around the place.
Me: The doorman? (off ESL Friend's annoyed look) The guy! The guy! Yes.
Excited Sexually Liberated Friend: He was into the way I decorated it. Really taking it in.
Me: He was casing the joint!
Excited Sexually Liberated Friend: No! He was not casing the joint! He was being sexy and sweet and making cute little jokes about family photos. And then he asked if he could see my bedroom.
Me: Your bedroom, so he could rape and murder you.
-from Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? by Mindy Kaling
"So, this is what I'm like: if you come over to my house, I need to know your first and last name. I need to have your phone number and a person whom we both know so you can't disappear forever in case you murder me. Ultimately, it comes down to this: How embarrassing would it be for me to be talking to a detective at a precinct after you tried to rape and murder me in my home, and not be able to tell him your name or any information about you because we were having a one-night stand? I've seen Law & Order: SVU. I know how it works."
-from Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? by Mindy Kaling
"A remarkable thin about me is that the time that elapses between a sad thought and a flood of tears is three or four seconds. I felt so foolish, having spent so much time (and money!) getting ready."
-from Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? by Mindy Kaling
"The secret I learned is that albums that remind me of my childhood happiness make me incredibly sad now. I only have perfect memories of singing along to Graceland with my parents on long car rides to Virginia Beach to visit my parents' friends. It's sort of my go-to stock image of my childhood, actually. I think it has something to do with knowing I'll never be able to go back to that time that makes me cry every time I listen to it."
-from Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? by Mindy Kaling
"I find it extremely impossible not to cry when I hear Stevie Nicks's 'Lansdslide,' especially the lyric: 'I've been afraid of changing, because I've built my life around you.' I think a good test to see if a human is actually a robot/android/cylon is to have them listen to this song lyric and study their reaction. If they don't cry, you should stab them through the heart. You will find a fusebox."
-from Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? by Mindy Kaling
"As my mom has said, when one person is unhappy, it usually means two people are unhappy but that one has not come to terms with it yet. Sandy hadn't realized how unhappy she was until he was gone. She told me that her husband's leaving her was the nicest gift he ever gave her, because she would have seen clearly enough to do it herself."
-from Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? by Mindy Kaling
"That's when the sun comes out again. I suddenly become super aware of what's going on around me, like it's all slowing down for me to encounter piece by piece."
-from Unearthly (Unearthly Book #1) by Cynthia Hand
"I take a step toward him, my mouth opening to call his name. Then I remember that I don't know it. Like always, it's as if he hears me anyway and starts to turn, and my heart skips a beat when I don't wake up but see his face now, his mouth curling up in a half smile as he jokes with the guy next to him. He glances up ad his eyes meet mine. The hallway melts away. It's only him and me now."
-from Unearthly (Unearthly Book #1) by Cynthia Hand
"I put my hand out to shake, a gesture he seems to find charming. He takes my hand, and it's like my vision and the real world clap together at this moment. He smiles this stunning, lopsided smile. He's real. His hand around mine is warm and confident, just the right amount of pressure. I'm instantly dizzy."
-from Unearthly (Unearthly Book #1) by Cynthia Hand
"I can't get out of that moment when I was in his head, feeling what he felt, hearing his thoughts as he kissed me. I can feel him loving me. And it kills me, that moment when I feel his love shift into fear. The third morning I wake up with tears streaming down my face, and when I stare up at the ceiling, wallowing in my misery, a thought occurs to me. He loves me. Inside his head, his every thought and reaction was born of love, love inside and out, crazy, irrational (and sure, a bit lustful) love. He loves me, and that's also what terrified him ... He doesn't know what I am, but he loves me. I sit up. Maybe I should have figured this out a long time ago. I shouldn't have needed to read his heart in order to see it."
-from Unearthly (Unearthly Book #1) by Cynthia Hand
"He's good to people, respectful. He doesn't cuss. He's kind. Thoughtful. ... He doesn't make a big deal about me being different."
-from Unearthly (Unearthly Book #1) by Cynthia Hand
"I've never been one of those girls, either, who dreamed of getting married never forced a boy to say vows with e on the playground or dressed up in bedsheets and pretended to walk down the aisle. When I was a kid I fashioned swords out of tree branches, and Jeffrey and I chased each other around the backyard yelling, 'Surrender or die!' Not that I was a tomboy. I liked the color purple and nail polish and sleepovers and writing my crush's name in the margins of my notebooks at school as much as any other girl. But I ever honestly considered being married. Being Mrs. Somebody. I guess I assumed that I'd get married eventually. It just seemed like it was too far away to worry about it."
-from Hallowed (Unearthly Book #2) by Cynthia Hand
"This is what happens when I stop watching the news. They call it arson. I wonder what the police would do if they found out who really did it. Uh, yes, officer, I believe the one who started the fire was about six foot three. Black hair. Amber eyes. Big, black wings. Residence: hell. Occupation: leader of the Watchers. Birth date: the dawn of time."
-from Hallowed (Unearthly Book #2) by Cynthia Hand
"Nothing can ever truly separate you, not even death. Love binds you."
-from Hallowed (Unearthly Book #2) by Cynthia Hand
"I never got the whole love-triangle thing. You know, in movies or romance novels or what not, where there's one chick that all the guys are drooling over, even though you can't see anything particularly special about her. But oh, no, they both must have her. And she's like, oh dear, however will I choose? William is so sensitive, he understands me, he swept me off my feet, oh misery, blubber, blubber, but how can I go on living without Rafe and his devil-may-care ways and his dark ad only-a-little-abusive love? Upchuck. So unrealistic, I always thought. Joke's on me, I guess."
-from Hallowed (Unearthly Book #2) by Cynthia Hand
"Our thoughts and feelings are entwined ... Memories, images, desires, feelings You seem to have a knack with feelings. It will be stronger when you touch the person, skin to skin. And sometimes you might get an image or a specific sentence that they're thinking in the moment."
-from Hallowed (Unearthly Book #2) by Cynthia Hand
"We belong together. We're tow of a very rare kind. Meant to watch out for each other, meant to join hands, ad walk side by side, through fire, through death ... I feel like I'm falling from far up, plummeting to earth and at the same time, drowning in a deep pool, struggling upward toward the surface, my lugs bursting for air."
-from Hallowed (Unearthly Book #2) by Cynthia Hand
'Funny that it turned out to be a self-fulfilling prophecy, my dream. I drive myself crazy trying to figure out why Tucker isn't there .. Thinking there shouldn't be a force on earth that would keep hi away. But in the end, he's not there because I asked him not to be. That's what we call irony. The ache really gets me then. This is it. My destined time My gauntlet to run, and I was meant to do it without Tucker. It gets so bad I have trouble breathing. I stop to catch y breath. Someone takes my hand. Christian, as I knew it would be. ... And this, I realize, is the moment of decision, what my vision has been warning me about all this tie. I could break away now, pull y hand from his, tell him again that I don't need him. I could hold on to my anger, my frustration at this hopeless choice. Or I could accept him. I could face what's between us and move on. It's such a big decision to ask of me now. It's not really fair. But then, it never has been fair, this entire fiasco, from start to finish."
-from Hallowed (Unearthly Book #2) by Cynthia Hand
"I know that when I think about my future, I'm usually overwhelmed, knowing how much will be expected of me. I know the odds are that I'll fail many of the things I try. And it's a big deal. What if I figure out what my purpose is, my reason for being on this planet, only to fall short? What if I don't pass the test?"
-from Hallowed (Unearthly Book #2) by Cynthia Hand
"But then I think about what I've learned here in the last year, and i don't mean in my classes, but what I've learned from watching my friends face their futures and search for their purposes. I've learned that a storm isn't always just bad weather, and a fire can be the start of something new. I've found out that there are a lot more shades of gray in this world than I ever knew about. I've learned that sometimes, when you're afraid but you keep moving forward, that's the biggest kind of courage there is. And finally, I've learned that life isn't really about failure and success. It's about being present, in the moment when big things happen when everything changes, including yourself. So i would tell us, no matter how bright we think our futures are, it doesn't matter. Whether we go off to some fancy university or stay home and work. That doesn't define us. Our purpose on this earth is not a single event, an accomplishment we can check off a list. there is no test. No passing or failing. Only us, each moment shaping who we are, into what we will become. So I say forget about the future. Pay attention to now. This moment right now. Let go of expectations. Just be. Then you are free to become something great."
-from Hallowed (Unearthly Book #2) by Cynthia Hand
"English was my subject. And I was really good at writing. I could turn any essay I did into sounding I knew what I was talking about."
-Brennan Boesch
"You can't really be happy unless you're unhappy sometimes. You know that, right?"
-from Delirium (Delirium Book #1) by Lauren Oliver
"It's so strange how life works: you want something and you wait and wait and feel like ti'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."
-from Delirium (Delirium Book #1) by Lauren Oliver
"I've never been comfortable with my body like Hana and some of the other girls at St. Anne's, never gotten over the awkward feeling that I've been fitted together just a little wrong in some very key places. Like I've been sketched by an amateur artist: If you don't look too closely, it's all right, but start focusing and all the smudges and mistakes become really obvious."
-from Delirium (Delirium Book #1) by Lauren Oliver
"I've learned to get really good at this -- say one thing when I'm thinking about something else, act like I'm listening when I'm not, pretend to e calm and happy when really I'm freaking out. It's one of those skill you perfect as you get older."
-from Delirium (Delirium Book #1) by Lauren Oliver
"Sometimes I feel as though there are two mes, 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 the other, deeper part, the part that worries and dreams. ... Most of the time they move along in sync and hardly notice the split, but sometimes it feels as though I'm two whole different people and could rip apart at any second."
-from Delirium (Delirium Book #1) by Lauren Oliver
"And maybe, after all, he really doesn't recognize me. We made eye contact for only a few seconds, and I'm sure to him I was only a blurry, in-between face, easy to forget. Not pretty. Not ugly, either. Just plain, like a thousand other faces you would see on the street. He, on the other hand, is most definitely not in-between."
-from Delirium (Delirium Book #1) by Lauren Oliver
"Is it even remotely, conceivably possible he was sending a message? Is it possible he was asking me to meet him? The idea makes me dizzy. I keep thinking, too, about the single word, directed low and quietly straight into my ear: gray. He was there; he saw me; he remembered me. So many questions crowd my braind at once, it's like one of the famous Portland fogs has swept up from the ocean and settled there, making it impossible to think normal, functional thoughts."
-from Delirium (Delirium Book #1) by Lauren Oliver
"I remind myself that I probably imagined the whole thing -- the message, the meeting up. ... He's probably already forgotten about the two girls he met at the lab complex today. He was probably just being nice earlier, making casual conversation. it's for the best. But no matter how may ties I repeat it, the strange, hollow feeling in my stomach doesn't go away. And ridiculous as it is, I can't shake the persistent, needling feeling that I've forgottne something, or missed something, or lost something forever."
-from Delirium (Delirium Book #1) by Lauren Oliver
"Sometimes I feel like she deserves a best friend who is just a little more special. Once Hana told me that she likes me because I'm for real -- because I really feel things. But that's the whole problem: how much I feel things."
-from Delirium (Delirium Book #1) by Lauren Oliver
"It was like she had dropped away for a second -- my best friend, my only real friend -- and in her place was a stranger. That's what's been happening all this time: Hana has been morphing into a stranger. A sharp blade of sadness goes through me, deep and quick. I guess it was bound to happen eventually. I've always known it would. 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 dense early morning fog, beyond a cliff."
-from Delirium (Delirium Book #1) by Lauren Oliver
"Most things, even the greatest movements on earth, have their beginnings in something small. An earthquake that shatters a city might begin with a tremor, a tremble, a breath. Music begins with a vibration. ... 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."
-from Delirium (Delirium Book #1) by Lauren Oliver
"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 as second. And if you somehow found a way to live in that second, then you would live forever."
-from Delirium (Delirium Book #1) by Lauren Oliver
"I'll tell you another secret, this one for your own good. You may think the past has something to tell you. You may think that you should listen, should strain to make out its whispers, should bend over backward, stoop down low to hear its voice breathed up from the ground, from the dead places. You may think there's something in it for you, something to understand or make sense of. But iI know the truth: I know from the nights of coldness. I know the past will drag you backward ad down, have you snatching at whispers of the wind and the gibberish of trees rubbing together trying to decipher some code, trying to piece together what was broken. It's hopeless. That past is nothing but a weight. It will build inside of you like 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 -- run."
-from Delirium (Delirium Book #1) by Lauren Oliver
"'Why me?' I don't mean to ask it, but the words slide out. 'I'm nobody ...' I want to say, I'm nobody special, but the words dry up in my mouth. This is what I imagine it feels like to climb to the top of a mountain, where the air is so thin you can inhale and inhale and inhale and still feel like you can't take a breath. Alex doesn't answer and I realize he doesn't have an answer, just like I suspected -- there's no reason for it at all. he's picked me at random, as a joke, or because he knew I'd be too scared to tell on him."
-from Delirium (Delirium Book #1) by Lauren Oliver
"Love will turn the whole world into something greater than itself. Even the dump, shimmering in the heat, an enormous mound of scrap metal and melting plastic and stinking things, seems strange and miraculous, like some alien world transported to earth. In the morning light the seagulls perched on the roof of city hall look like they've been coated in thick white paint; as they light up against the pale blue sky I think I've never seen anything so sharp and clear and pretty in my life. Rainstorms are incredible: falling shards of glass, the air full of diamonds. The wind whisper's Alex's name and the ocean repeats it; the swaying trees make me think of dancing."
-from Delirium (Delirium Book #1) by Lauren Oliver
"Snapshots, moments, mere seconds: as fragile and beautiful and hopeless as a single butterfly, flapping on against a gathering wind."
-from Delirium (Delirium Book #1) by Lauren Oliver
"One of the strangest things about life is that it will chug on, blind and oblivious, even as your private world -- your little carved-out sphere -- is twisting and morphing, even breaking apart."
-from Delirium (Delirium Book #1) by Lauren Oliver
