Top 180 Lauren DeStefano Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Things will get worse before they get better.”

— Lauren DeStefano

2. “To die trying would be better than to die without purpose.”

— Lauren DeStefano

3. “Don’t forget how you got here. Don’t Forget.”

— Lauren DeStefano

4. “Most dystopian, classic and contemporary, paints a future world that puts a twist on present society – a future world that could plausibly happen.”

— Lauren DeStefano

5. “There is a dark place calling to me, but I will not go just yet. I know I can’t return from it.”

— Lauren DeStefano

6. “I miss something I never even had.”

— Lauren DeStefano

7. “I’ve done it all before, I tell myself, and I can do it again. Trust is the strongest weapon.”

— Lauren DeStefano

8. “Maybe hope isn’t the most dangerous thing a person can have. Maybe love is.”

— Lauren DeStefano

9. “Fall has always been my favorite season. The time when everything bursts with its last beauty, as if nature had been saving up all year for the grand finale.”

— Lauren DeStefano

10. “I am intrigued. I am fearless.”

— Lauren DeStefano

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

— Lauren DeStefano

12. “You’ve been captive for so long that you don’t even realize you want freedom anymore.”

— Lauren DeStefano

13. “Set fire to the broken pieces; start anew.”

— Lauren DeStefano

14. “In another time, in another place, I wonder who they might have been.”

— Lauren DeStefano

15. “I don’t have too many books, I have too little shelving.”

— Lauren DeStefano

16. “But there’s no such thing as free. There are only different and more horrible ways to be enslaved.”

— Lauren DeStefano

17. “The world seems so clean if you only looked up.”

— Lauren DeStefano

18. “I shake my head, watching snow tumble and swirl from an all-white sky. The world seems so clean if you only look up.”

— Lauren DeStefano

19. “A feeling can’t kill you.”

— Lauren DeStefano

20. “Every star has been set in the sky. We mistakenly think they were put there for us.”

— Lauren DeStefano

21. “We destroy things with our curiosity. We shatter with our best intentions.”

— Lauren DeStefano

22. “I think he’s beginning to understand, and understanding is a horrible thing.”

— Lauren DeStefano

23. “It was a terrible decision, and I confess I’d make it again.”

— Lauren DeStefano

24. “Humans are the absolute worst thing to happen to this planet.”

— Lauren DeStefano

25. “It isn’t a perfect place. There are no perfect places. But nobody cares about perfection when there are sand castles to build and kites to chase, children that are being born, old hearts that are giving in.”

— Lauren DeStefano

26. “The trick was looking past the illusion, because the exit was never as far away as it seemed.”

— Lauren DeStefano

27. “In the distance I see a lighthouse. The light washes over us and continues on its rotation. This time, I don’t know where the light will guide us.”

— Lauren DeStefano

28. “Give someone a book, they’ll read for a day. Teach someone how to write a book, they’ll experience a lifetime of paralyzing self doubt.”

— Lauren DeStefano

29. “My head is my favorite swimming pool.”

— Lauren DeStefano

30. “Her hair is full of icy wind and daylight. She is every princess, every queen, in the history book.”

— Lauren DeStefano

31. “Linden just wants to protect her, is what I want to say. She’s all he has. I left him. I’m at arms reach, but I’ve left him.”

— Lauren DeStefano

32. “Ah, love. That’s what the world has lost. There’s no more love, only the illusion of it.”

— Lauren DeStefano

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

— Lauren DeStefano

34. “But instead of tears, when I press my face against the pillow, a horrible, primal scream comes out of me. It’s unlike anything I thought myself capable of. Rage, unlike anything I’ve ever known.”

— Lauren DeStefano

35. “Just because you love someone doesn’t mean they can’t hurt you.”

— Lauren DeStefano

36. “Trust is the strongest weapon.”

— Lauren DeStefano

37. “Eventually I realize that I am holding on to him just as tightly as he holds on to me. And here we are: two small dying things, as the world ends around us like falling autumn leaves.”

— Lauren DeStefano

38. “Even things that aren’t broken can be fixed.”

— Lauren DeStefano

39. “The madness of youth made me unafraid.”

— Lauren DeStefano

40. “A party in the orange grove. The pain on Linden’s face is immediate. I am unwavering. He has cost me more pain than I will ever be able to repay.”

— Lauren DeStefano

41. “I wonder if she has figured out that I’ll never love Linden, especially not in the way she does, and that he’ll never love anyone the way he loves her. I wonder if she realizes, despite all her efforts to train me, that I can never take her place.”

— Lauren DeStefano

42. “There is a silence so great that I can hear the ice crystals cracking and falling from eyelashes of girls who will never blink again.”

— Lauren DeStefano

43. “I ’d never seen him cry; I didn’t think he could. It would have to take something greater than the end of the world to reduce Vaughn Ashby to tears .”

— Lauren DeStefano

44. “Tell freedom I said hello.”

— Lauren DeStefano

45. “When we’re alive, life consumes us. But when we die, all of the color and the motion is gone so quickly, it’s as though it can no longer stand to be wasted on us.”

— Lauren DeStefano

46. “I don’t dare touch her. Loss is a knowledge I’m sorry to have. Perhaps the only thing worse than experiencing it, is watching it replay anew in someone else – all the awful stages picking up like a chorus that has to be sung.”

— Lauren DeStefano

47. “Sometimes we don’t know how afraid we are until we’ve reached a strange door and we don’t know what will be on the other side.”

— Lauren DeStefano

48. “The only characters I ever don’t like are ones that leave no impression on me. And I don’t write characters that leave no impression on me.”

— Lauren DeStefano

49. “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.”

— Lauren DeStefano

50. “I like the idea of something greater than us. We destroy things with our curiosity. We shatter with our best intentions. We are no closer to perfection than we were one hundred years ago, or five hundred.”

— Lauren DeStefano