Kristi Borgman

“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

“But how could anyone who's ever seen a summer - big explosion of green and skies lit up electric with splashy sunsets, a riot of flowers and wind that smells like honey - pick the snow?”
― Lauren Oliver, Requiem

“Stop!” His voice rings out sharply, hard as a slap. He releases me and I stumble backward. “Alex is dead, do you hear me? All of that—what we felt, what it meant—that’s done now, okay? Buried. Blown away.”
“Alex!”
He has started to turn away; now he whirls around. The moon lights him stark white and furious, a camera image, two-dimensional, gripped by the flash. “I don’t love you, Lena. Do you hear me? I never loved you.”
The air goes. Everything goes. “I don’t believe you.” I’m crying so hard, I can hardly speak.
He takes one step toward me. And now I don’t recognize him at all. He has transformed entirely, turned into a stranger. “It was a lie. Okay? It was all a lie. Craziness, like they always said. Just forget about it. Forget it ever happened.”
― Lauren Oliver, Requiem

“I'll find you," he says, watching me with the eyes I remember. "I won't let you go again”
― Lauren Oliver, Requiem