Ally Condie

“It's all right to wonder.”

“Because either way, whichever life I build, has to be built on truth.”

“I like the places where one part meets another, I think, eyes to cheek, wrist to hands.”

“I will whisper the words I have written (...) and they will change from ash and nothing into flesh and blood.”

“Green tablet. Green space. Green eyes. Green girl.”

“Why are some things easier to write than say?”

“We don't need to understand everything.”

“Only when I hold onto nothing can I be the best, only then can I be what they expect me to be.”

“I see his eyes, bright with life adnfire, and I know he won't stop fighting. Even if it's the kind of quiet fight on the inside that you can't always see. And I won't stop fighting either.”

“I wonder if I will ever have the strength to hold onto something. Or if I will always be someone who destroys.”

“Why?” Lon asks in a whine. “We spent half the summer marking these paths!” I think I see a faint smile on Ky’s face and I realize that he likes Lon. Who asks the questions no one else will ask even though he never gets an answer. It strikes me that this is a kind of bravery. A wearing-down kind of bravery, but bravery nonetheless.”

“think of him risking everything each time he slips one napkin into his pocket. All these years he’s been so careful, but now he’s willing to take a chance. Because he’s found someone who wants to know. Someone he wants to tell.”

“If I couldn’t name it, would I even know what it is? Would I even feel it at all?”

“It’s harder to break something than you would think. Iwonder if the Society is finding this to be true of me as well.”

“It is strange how we hold on to the pieces of the past while we wait for our futures.”

“They were too much to carryso I left them behindfor a new life, in a new placebut no one forgot who I was.”

“How wenever, ever fight.”

“It was as though I saw for the first time thatlife could branch into different paths, take different directions.”

“Which one is the true one, Idon’t ask, they don’t tell.”

“mysoul, the mythical part of humans that the angels caredabout.”

“The word is yes.”

“For what is the point ofhaving something lovely if you never share it?It would be like having a poem, a beautiful wild poem that noone else has, and burning it.”

“Once you want something, everything changes. Now I want everything. More and more and more.”

“What is it about your voice thatmakes me want to hear you speak?”

“To see how Grandfather handles leaving, and tosee how we manage being left.”

“How can we appreciate anything fully when overwhelmed with too much?”

“Our time together feels like a storm, like a wild wind and rain, like something too big to handle but too powerful to escape.”

“Water's always moving. It's never the same.”

“This is the difference between us. I live to sort, he knows how to create.”

“In the absence of real thunder, he's making his own.”

“Oh yes. His voice has music.”

“No one should die alone.”

“And as the Society reminds us, there's a difference between knowledge and technology. Knowledge doesn't fail us.”

“They are giving us pieces of a real life instead of the whole thing. They have perfected the art of giving us just enought freedom; just enough that when we are ready to snap, a little bone is offered and we roll over, belly up, comfortable and placated like a dog... - Cassia”

“I love you."lightning. Once it has forked, hot-white, from sky to earth, there is no going back.It's time. I feel it, I know it. My eyes on him, his on me, and both of us breathing, watching, tired of of waiting. Ky close his eyes, but mine are still open. what will it feel like, his lips on mine? Like a secret told, a promise kept? Like that line in the poem-a shower of all my days- silvery rain falling all around me, where the lighting meets the earth? The whistle blows below us and the moment breaks. We are safe.For now.”

“Remembering is part of thinking, but not all of it.”

“Are you congratulating me on my life, or on my death?”

“I wonder if death will always taste this good”

“I came up on the screen, too, Cassia. But he was the one you chose to see.”

“Did the poet know how lucky he was, to have such beautiful words and a place to put them and keep them?”

“Once you want something, everything changes.”

“Red is the first color of spring. It's the real color of rebirth. Of beginning.”

“I think of how perhaps the best way to fly would be with hands full of earth, so you always remember where you came from.”

“We could have been happy. I know that, and it is perhaps the hardest thing to know.”

“Cassia.I know which life is my real one now, no matter what happens. It’s the one with you. For some reason, knowing that even one person knows my story makes things different. Maybe it’s like the poem says. Maybe this is my way of not going gentle.I love you. (Ky Markham)”

“That’s how I know they are dreams. Because the simple and plain and everyday things are the ones that we can never have. (Cassia Reyes)”

“His lips move silently, and I know what he says: the words of a poem that only two people in the world know.”

“Ky can play this game. He can play all of their games, including the one in front of him that he just lost. He knows exactly how to play, and that's why he loses every time.”

“Is falling in love with someone's story the same thing as falling in love with the person himself?”

“Even if he didn't live his story, enough of us have lives just like it. So it's true anyway.”