Ally Condie

“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.”

“If only it were real.”

“If only it were real.' he says.”

“People fall in love', I say, my voice hoarse. 'It happens.”

“My fingers smell like soil and my lips taste like sugar and I'm so awake right now I wonder if I'll be able to sleep tonight.”

“The salt of his tears tastes like the sea and I don't see the shore.”

“Why won't you hold me?" I ask, drawing back a little.He laughs a little, holds out his hands as if in explanation. They are covered in dirt and paint and blood.I pull his hand to mine, put my palm against his. I can feel the grit of sand, the slick of paint, and the cuts and scrapes that speak of his own journey."It will all come clean," I tell him.”

“For a moment on the top of that bare pain of rock I wonder if I should run behind or ahead-which is the best way to protect her-and then I find us just running side by side.”

“I never named anything I've written beforeno reason tosinceit would all have the same title anyway-for you-but I would call this oneone nightthat nightwhen we let the world be only youand only mewe stood on it while it spungreen and blue and redthe music endedbut wewere stillsinging”

“Watching Ky wake is better than a sunrise.”

“Cassia.Even far away, I know it's her by the way her dark hair tangles with the wind and how she stands on the red rocks of the Carving. She's more beautiful than snow.Is this real?She points to the sky.”

“I thought you had some kind of greater purpose," Vick says thoughtfully. "Gathering people to bring to the Rising. but you came into the Carving to save yourself and get back to the girl you're in love with. That's all.""That's all." I agree. He can think less of me if he wants."Good enough," Vick says. "Good night.”

“You're smiling," Indie says."I know." I say.”

“I believe, sometimes in spite of myself, in grace and better things to come and a time when we will all be whole.”

“I don't fool myself that I hold her together—she does that on her own—but holding her keeps me from flying apart.”

“He knows exactly how to play, and that's why he loses every time”

“I want to reach out and grab his hand and hold it to me, right over my heart, right where it aches the most. I don't know if doing that would heal me or make my heart break entirely, but either way this constant hungry waiting would be over.”

“It's hard to know which ways to be strong.”

“Knowledge doesn't fail us.”

“This is a difficult balance, telling the truth: how much to share, how much to keep, which truths will wound but not ruin, which will cut too deep to heal.”

“Maybe only parts of our stories can keep us safe. The whole can feel like too much to bear.”

“We have all been carved out by our sorrow. Cut deep like canyon walls.”

“Ky smiles then, a smile I've never seen before. It's the kind of daring, reckless smile that could make people follow him straight into a firing, a flood.”

“Not many people know how to make letters like this," he says. "Do you ever teach anyone?""Only once," I say.”

“No one knows anything," Vick says. "Except Ky. He thinks he's found the truth in a girl.”

“Ky is heavy in my mind, deep in my heart, his palms warm on my empty hands. I have to try to find him. Loving him gave me wings and all my work has given me the strength to move them.”

“Because once you love, it is gone. You love and you cannot call it back.”

“You are strong enough to go without.”

“I see a glint in her eye as she looks at me and it makes me smile. Hold our breath? she seems to say. Move the earth? We've been doing that all along.”

“She cried before she slept. I reached out to touch the ends of her hair. She didn't notice. I didn't know what to do. Listening to her made me ache. I felt tears stream down my face too. And when I accidentally brushed Eli with my arm his face was wet where his tears ran down. We have all been carved out by our sorrow. Cut deep like canyon walls.”

“Forgetting lets you live without the pain for a moment but remembering hits hard.”

“I think I'm looking at one of the air ships the farmers tried to take down.”

“Cassia doesn't like to sort people. I'm all too good at it and I worry I'll grow to like it too much.It's a talent.[...]And all it takes is a misstep or two for that talent to become a liability instead of an asset.”

“I don't trust the Society, and I don't trust the rebelions, I don't choose either of them, I've seen what both can do.”

“It's as though she holds to the walls of a canyon. If I move wrong she will look over her shoulder, let go, and take her chances with the fall.”

“The Rising is not what you imagine, it's not Aberations and Anomalies and rebels and rougues running free. It's a structure. A system.”

“Because I feel no anger toward my mother. Only loss, and loss is a feeling you can’t fight your way out of as easily.”

“I climb into the dark for youAre you waiting in the stars for me?”

“I marked a map for every deathFor every ache and blowMy world was all a page of blackWith nothing left but snow.”

“You have intuition, too. The Society says it doesn't really exist, but it does.”

“It's not knowing how to write that makes you interesting, it's what you write.”

“I'm just a butterfly, a mourning cloak, sealed inside a cocoon with blnd eyes and stiky wings. And suddenly I wonder if the cocoons sometimes do not open, if the butterfly inside is ever simply not strong enough to break through.”

“He still thinks that knowing why might help. He doesn't yet know that the reason will never be good enough.”

“I decided that it was the thoughts in your own mind that mattered more than anything else.”

“I wonder if there have been other errors.”

“-at least in the collective mind of the Society.”

“His uniform seems threadbare and tired, and so does he, as though he's coming apart along the edges.”

“The Society isn't human, but the people work for it sometimes are.”

“The Society music plays around and over us, but our thoughts are our own.”

“For a moment nothing happens. The figure stands still and I stand cold and alive and-He starts to run. I make my way down the rocks, slipping, sliding, trying to get to the plain. I wish, I think, my feet clumsy, moving too fast, not fast enough, I wish i could run, I wish I'd written a whole poem, I wish I kept the compass-And then I reach the plain and wish for nothing but what I have. Ky. Running toward me. I have never seen him run like this, fast, free, strong, wild. He looks so beautiful, his body moves so right. He stops just close enough for me to see the blue of his eyes and forget the red on my hands and the green I wish I wore. "You're here," he says, breathing hard and hungry. sweat and dirt cover his face, and he looks at me as though I'm the only thing he ever needed to see. I open my mouth to say yes. But I only have time to breathe in before he closes the last of the distance. All I know is the kiss.”