“[Short Talk on Sylvia Plath] Did you see her mother on television? She said plain, burned things. She said I thought it an excellent poem but it hurt me. She did not say jungle fear. She did not say jungle hatred wild jungle weeping chop it back chop it. She said self-government she said end of the road. She did not say humming in the middle of the air what you came for chop.”

“Behold the male beast roaring in the jungle for his mate," said Elphaba. "See how the female beast giggles behind a shrub while she organizes her face to say, Pardon dear, did you say something?”

“Where's Dorothy?" Dad said. "I don't know. She came in, took the money and went. I don't even know how she got in.""What did she say?""She said "shush"" "And what did you say?""I shushed”

“You know what my mother said to me when she came to say good-bye, as if to cheer me up, she says maybe District Twelve will finally have a winner. Then I realized she didn't mean me, she meant you!" bursts out Peeta."Oh, she meant you," I say with a wave of dismissal."She said, 'She's a survivor, that one.' She is," says Peeta.That pulls me up short. Did his mother really say that about me? Did she rate me over her son? I see the pain in Peeta's eyes and know he isn't lying.Suddenly I'm behind the bakery and I can feel the chill of the rain running down my back, the hollowness in my belly. I sound eleven years old when I speak. "But only because someone helped me.”

“But if she was going to live in a damn jungle, she preferred it be a damn jungle in Georgia, she always said, and never saw any reason to elaborate on that.”

“Betsy did not answer. She was a talker, her family always said, but sometimes when she most wanted to talk she couldn't say a word.”