The film adaptation of Lauren Oliver's bestselling young adult novel, Before I Fall, is coming out in theaters in March, which makes now the perfect time to revisit some of our favorite quotes from the book.
The novel tells the story of Samantha Kingston, a high school girl that seems to be living the perfect life. She's popular, she has a caring boyfriend, and she has a great future ahead of her. But on February 12th — on what begins as an ordinary Saturday night — Samantha is killed in a car accident. But then she wakes up the next morning — and it's February 12. Again. And she realizes she is reliving the same day over and over. She begins to search for answers about the circumstances of her death, her impact on those around her, and most importantly, how to break out of the loop.
As we wait in anticipation for the movie, here are some of the best quotes from Lauren Oliver's Before I Fall.
1
“Be honest: Are you surprised that I didn't realize sooner? Are you surprised that it took me so long to even think the word — death? Dying? Dead? Do you think I was being stupid? Naive? Try not to judge. Remember that we're the same, you and me. I thought I would live forever, too.”
2
“I guess that's what saying good-bye is always like — like jumping off an edge. The worst part is making the choice to do it. Once you're in the air, there's nothing you can do but let go.”
“Maybe you can afford to wait. Maybe for you there's a tomorrow. Maybe for you there's one thousand tomorrows, or three thousand, or ten, so much time you can bathe in it, roll around it, let it slide like coins through you fingers. So much time you can waste it. But for some of us there's only today. And the truth is, you never really know.”
4
“It amazes me how easy it is for things to change, how easy it is to start off down the same road you always take and wind up somewhere new. Just one false step, one pause, one detour, and you end up with new friends or a bad reputation or a boyfriend or a breakup. It's never occurred to me before; I've never been able to see it. And it makes me feel, weirdly, like 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.”
5
"That's the thing about best friends. That's what they do. They keep you from spinning off the edge.”
“Here's one of the things I learned that morning: if you cross a line and nothing happens, the line loses meaning. It's like that old riddle about a tree falling in a forest, and whether it makes a sound if there's no one around to hear it. You keep drawing a line farther and farther away, crossing it every time. That's how people end up stepping off the edge of the earth. You'd be surprised at how easy it is to bust out of orbit, to spin out to a place where no one can touch you. To lose yourself — to get lost. Or maybe you wouldn't be surprised. Maybe some of you already know. To those people, I can only say: I'm sorry.”
7
“And I guess that's when it starts to hit me: the whole point is, you do what you can.”
8
“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.”
“I shiver, thinking how easy it is to be totally wrong about people — to see one tiny part of them and confuse it for the whole, to see the cause and think it's the effect or vice versa”
10
“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. They are the meaning.”
11
“That's the way I feel, at least: like there's a real me and a reflection of me, and I have no way of telling which is which.”
“I've never really thought about it before, but it's a miracle how many kinds of light there are in the world, how many skies: the pale brightness of spring, when it feels like the whole world's blushing; the lush, bright boldness of a July noon; purple storm skies and a green queasiness just before lightning strikes and crazy multicolored sunsets that look like someone's acid trip.”
