Ally Condie

“When you can’t cry because all you are is pain, and if you let some of it out, you might cease to exist.”

“Something in her is still drowning a little from loss.”

“She is holding on tight to this talk of flowers, as I did before, when I was afraid and alone. If you sing and speak of blooms and petals that come back after a long time of being winter-still, you don’t have to think about things that don’t.”

“I believe in a new beginning. And so do many others out there—those writing on scraps to hang in the Gallery, those who continue to work hard to take care of the sick, those who dare to believe that we can all be the pilots of something new and better.”

“For a moment, I’m a part of it all. Then I’m just apart.”

“Once you get out, you don’t go back.”

“They’re no rebellion. They’re Society, with a different name,”

“Now Death usurps my premium”

“There’s got to be some light in a corner somewhere.”

“Earth is a giant stone, rolling and turning through the sky. And we’re all on it together. I do believe that.”

“I’m not Rising or Society”

“The earth reflects the sky and the sky meets the earth and, every now and then, if we’relucky, we have a moment to see how small we are.”

“And I realize that I can never stay in these hollowed-out places in the earth for long before I have to come up for air.”

“She’s trying to figure out the Plague on her own and not taking what the Rising says for granted.”

“We are the ones who are alive. Here. With everything to lose”

“She knows how things fit together and move, but so few people understand her. She’s the most solitary person I’ve ever known.”

“And even if you could use the sample to create someone a lot like the original person, it would never be the person themselves. You can’t bring anyone back, ever.”

“There are many of them in the world, I think, good men and women with their frail deeds. Wondering what might have been, how things might have danced, if we had only dared to be bright.”

“Was there a stolen touch before he found himself again at the bottom of the hill with the stone to push? Did he smile to himself as he set, again, to rolling it?”

“In some ways, our being Matched is the biggest strike against me. How was she supposed to love me when the Society said she should?”

“Some things will remain valuable no matter who is in charge”

“It’s a strange feeling, I thought, like my bones are walking along with me on the outside of my body.”

“Each word I write brings me closer to finding the right ones.”

“That word, calm, sounds impossibly beautiful, gloriously uncomplicated. A water-smooth word, a word that can take the edge away from fear, gloss it over, make it shiny. Calm. Gentle.”

“Death will not take the people I love. Our journey will end differently.”

“But i must count this journey, allFor it has brought me Thee.”

“Sé que querías decirme que siempre me recordarías, Cassia, pero tengo miedo de que me olvides.”

“En cambio trazo una curva. Una ola. Como un mar, o un retal de seda verde que ondea el viento. Cric, cric. Ahora ésta roca, moldeada por otras fuerzas , el agua y el viento, está modificada por mí. Y eso me gusta. Yo siempre me transformo en lo que otras personas quieren. Con Cassia en la Loma: Sólo que entonces era yo mismo.”

“El militar sonríe. La Sociedad no es humana, pero las personas que trabajan para ella a veces lo son.”

“Escalo en la oscuridad por ti. ¿Me esperas tú en las estrellas?”

“Los militares y funcionarios quieren que nos dé miedo éste río, todos los ríos, para que nunca nos atrevamos a beber de ellos ni a cruzarlos.”

“Of course, one person can be the world.”

“I wonder if they'll be able to resist. It's not exactly easy to save things for the future when the present is so uncertain.”

“I could go above ground now and then to gather food and paper, and isn't that enough to live on?”

“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.”

“A little surge of bitterness goes through me like someone's shot it right into my veins with a syringe. But I know how to get over the feeling: remember that it doesn't do any good.”

“I am trapped in glass and I want to break out and breath deep but I´m too afraid that it will hurt.”

“Es casi incómoda, mi conciencia de él. De cada pausa, cada movimiento cuando coloca una pieza en el tablero negro y gris. Quiero cogerle la mano y ponérsela justo encima de mi corazón, justo donde más me duele. No sé si hacerlo me curaría o me lo haría pedazos, pero, en ambos casos, esta espera ávida y constante cesaría.”

“...but suddenly I hope Xander's right. I hope part of me fell in love with Ky before anyone else told me to.”

“I believe in you," he says, his voice hushed and almost reverent. "That's more faith than I ever thought I'd have.”

“I have a sense that we have not yet arrived, that we are still reaching. For each other. For who we are meant to be.”

“If you loved someone, if someone loved you, if they taught you to write and made it so you could speak, how can you do nothing at all? You might as well take their words out of the dirt and try to snatch them from the wind. Because once you love, it is gone. You love and you cannot call it back.”

“Much as I love looking at the stars, I never learned to guide by them. I mark my course by people; Xander, a point in the map, my parents, another point; Ky, the final destination. When Xander moves, the geography of everything changes.”

“Because in the end you can't always choose what to keep. You can only choose how you let it go.”

“Death,” I say. “ It’s the one thing they haven’t fully conquered. They want to know more about it.”

“There is no place for someone like him in the Society, I think, for someone who can create. He can do so many things of incomparable value, things no one else can do, and the Society doesn't care about that at all.”

“I'm standing in a river. It's blue. Dark blue. Reflecting the color of the evening sky.”

“I run for her.I run for them.For me.”

“But I've already broken the glass; I've given the green away; I've made my choice.”

“And then he says it, right there on the Hill, and of all the words I have hidden and saved and treasured, these are the ones I will never forget, the most important ones of all. 'I love you.”