Ally Condie

“It dances on the air for a moment before it falls, too. A fresh gust of wind almost saves it, but a worker catches sight of it and lifts a tube up to suck the paper from the air, to suck the words from the sky.I'm sorry, Grandfather.”

“Perhaps it is because now I live in his story. Now I am a part of his, and he of mine, and the part we write sometimes feels like the only part that matters.”

“The Society wants us to be afraid of dying. But I'm not. I'm only afraid of dying wrong.”

“El tiempo que pasamos juntos es como una tormenta, como viento huracanado y lluvia, como algo demasiado grande para controlarlo pero demasiado poderoso para poder eludirlo. Sopla a mi alrededor y me enreda el cabello, me deja la cara mojada, hace que me sienta viva, viva, viva.”

“What did you think about?" I wish I could tell him that I thought about him, but I lied to him once and I won't do it again. And besides, I wasn't thinking about Xander either. "I thought about angels," I say."Angels?""You know. The ones in the old stories. How they can fly to heaven." "Do you think anyone believes in them anymore?" He asks."I don't know. No. Do you?""I believe in you," he says, his voice hushed and almost reverent. "That's more faith than I ever thought I'd have.”

“No me importaría lo pequeño que se volviera el mundo siempre que Cassia continuara siendo el centro del mío.”

“No sé qué sucede cuando fallecemos. No me parece posible que haya mucho másdespués de la muerte. Pero supongo que puedo imaginar que nuestros actos perduran cuando ya no estamos. Quizá en otro lugar, en un plano distinto.”

“of course, your one of my best friends.”

“Who am I to try to change things, to get greedy and want more? If our Society changes and things are different, who am I to tell the girl who would have enjoyed the safe protected life that now she has to have choice and danger because of me?”

“Good-bye,” I say to Grandfather, and to my father, and I hold the tube in the river and pause a moment. We hold the choices of our fathers and mothers in our hands and when we cling on or let them slip between our fingers, those choices become our own.”

“Who knows why that man planted those fields? Perhaps he knew we’d need the flowers for a cure. Maybe he just thought they were beautiful, like my mother did. But we do find answers in beauty, more often than not.”

“Did you know Grandfather would give the poems to me?” I ask.“We thought he might,” my mother says.“Why didn’t you stop him?”“We didn’t want to take away your choices,” my mother says.“But Grandfather never did tell me about the Rising,” I say.“I think he wanted you to find your own way,” my mother says. She smiles. “In that way, he was a true rebel. I think that’s why he chose that argument with your father as his favorite memory. Though he was upset when the fight happened, later he came to see that your father was strong in choosing his own path, and he admired him for it.”

“My heart will always fly his name. I won’t go gentle. I’l find a way to soar like the angels in the stories and I will find him.”

“There is so much that I want. I feel it so much that I am water, a river of want, pooled in the shape of a girl named Cassia.”

“He's throwing everything he can into the air on the chance that something might take flight. And we're the smallest, weakest bird.”

“The stars have come to the earth, and the ocean has turned over the ground; dark waves meet the sky.”

“I could write paper people and I would love them too; I could make them almost real.”

“They both have in common their conviction that they are still learning, still growing, when in fact they have long ago lost that ability.”

“No,' she says, as if the suggestion is ridiculous. 'I wouldn't go back to where I'm from. I'd go someplace I've never been.”

“These branches will be my bones, I thought, and the paper will be my heart and skin, the places that feel everything.”

“I keep telling myself that, and most of the time I believe it.”

“I don't know what happens after we die. It doesn't seem to me like there can be much past this. But I suppose I can conceive that what we make and do can last beyond us. Maybe in a different place, on another plane.”

“Perhaps this is what I learned in the canyons: What I am, what I'm not, what I'll give, and what I won't.”

“And I laugh at myself for thinking I could touch the sky.”

“Then, quick, he flips the fish out onto the bank. It flops and gasps for air, its body slick.We all watch the fish die.”

“Hope looks like a footprint, a half footprint where someone grew careless and stepped into soft mud that later hardened too thick to blow away in the evening and morning winds.”

“Only the sun is in the sky. Nothing flies. There are no angels here.”

“Things here are so different. Poisoned rivers, softened stone. You never know exactly what you're getting into. What will hold and what will give way”

“I don't know where I find the air and I keep getting the words wrong: From out our bourne of death and space the flood will wash me far- but it doesn't even matter. I never knew that words might not matter.”

“But perhaps it can make the pause between death's footsteps sound and look and feel beautiful, can make the space of waiting a place where you can linger without as much fear. For we are all walking each other to our deaths, and the journey there between footsteps makes up our lives.”

“Sometimes paper is just paper, words are just words. Ways to capture the real thing. Don't be afraid to remember that.”

“But he is as we all are: light as air, transient as wisps of cloud before the sun, beautiful and fleeting, and if I ever did truly have hold of him, that has ended now.”

“It's been so long since I've let myself feel anger that I don't just feel it. It covers my mouth and I swallow it down, the taste sharp and metal as though I'm gnawing through foilware.”

“For we are all walking each other to our deaths, and the journey between footsteps makes up our lives(Cassia 'Reached')”

“If I’m talking to patients who can’t answer, why not talk to the port, too? (Xander Markham)”

“Do you think you could let someone go if you thought it was best for them?”

“You don’t usually get to choose the measure of suffering or the degree of joy you have. (Ky Markham)”

“It’s not exactly easy to save things for the future when the present is so uncertain. (Xander)”

“When we fall in love the first time, we don’t know anything. We risk a lot less than we do if we choose to love again. (Xander)”

“There is ebb and flow. Leaving and coming. Flight and fall. Sing and silent. Reaching and reached.”

“There is satisfaction in knowing that something good and right and true was part of you. That you had the blessing, gift, good fortune, perfect luck, to know someone like this, to pass through fire and water and stone and sky together and emerge, all of you, strong enough to hold on, strong enough to let go. (Cassia)”

“I imagine giving someone such a gift and then having it returned. Parents are always giving things that are not taken.”

“Words mean what you want them to mean.”

“She is not the pilot. I know it now. She reminds me of my Official back in Oria. They both have in common their conviction that they are still learning, still growing, when in fact they have long ago lost that ability.”

“I know you love me. I love you, I always will, but things can't hold like this. They have to break. You say you don't mind, that you will wait for me, but I think that you do mind, and you should. Because we've done too much waiting in our lives, Xander. Don't wait for me anymore. I hope for love for you.I hope for this more than anything else, maybe even more than my own happiness. And in a way, perhaps that means I love Xander best of all.”

“Long ago people used to say what they wanted out loud and hope that someone would give it to them. They called it praying.”

“I remember what Anna called the three of us.The Pilot. The Poet. The Physic.They are in all of us. I believe this. They every person might have a way to fly, a line of poetry to put down for others to see, a hand to heal.”

“Good-byes are like this. You can’t always mark them well at the moment of separation—no matter how deep they cut. (Ky Markham)”

“I will be strong enough to go without the tablet. But there are other things I’m not strong enough to go without, and I intend to fight for them. (Cassia Reyes)”

“You left me like he left you.”