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

“Once you want something, everything changes.”

“Lying in bed, my body and soul bruised and tired, I realize that the Officials are right. Once you want something, everything changes. Now I want everything. More and more and more. I want to pick my work position. Marry who I choose. Eat pie for breakfast and run down a real street instead of on a tracker. Go fast when I want and slow when I want. Decide which poems I want to read and what words I want to write. 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.”

“But everything had changed, and I was becoming more and more of who I really was, and less of this person I had thought I wanted to be.”

“That's why I've kept you out of reach. It's like putting something you love away from everything so its beauty won't be tarnished. I want to be with you more, and them less. I want my life to change.”

“I want more. I want everything. I want you.""Nathan...""I'm not settling for less, Whitley," he said. "And neither should you.”