“Sometimes I ask myself questions... Sometimes I ask myself, is this your real life or is this just a pilot film? Is my life a thirty-nine week series or is it a special?""Whatever it is, your ratings are down... Five cents, please!”

“Sometimes I wish I could just press a button and be through school and starting my real life,' I told him.'This is your real life, Al,' he said, 'Don't start living in the future. That's like gulping down a piece of fudge cake and then asking yourself, 'Where'd it go?' You're missing the moment.”

“And now brothers, I will ask you a terrible question, and God knows I ask it also of myself. Is the truth beyond all truths, beyond the stars, just this: that to live without him is the real death, that to die with him the only life?”

“The gene contains a single 'word', repeated over and over again: CAG, CAG, CAG, CAG ... The repetition continues sometimes just six times, sometimes thirty, sometimes more than a hundred times. Your destiny, your sanity and your life hang by the thread of this repetition. If the 'word' is repeated thirty-five times or fewer, you will be fine.Most of us have about ten to fifteen repeats. If the 'word' is repeated thirty-nine times or more, you will in mid-life slowly start to lose your balance, grow steadily more incapable of looking after yourself and die prematurely.”

“The question I should've been asking myself was, in ninety-nine years, how will I find another Forfeit who will survive the Feed? But the question I actually asked myself was, Could Nikki ever look at me the way she looked at Jack in those final moments?”

“My parents raised me that you never ask people about their reproductive plans. “You don’t know their situation,” my mom would say. I considered it such an impolite question that for years I didn’t even ask myself. Thirty-five turned into forty faster than McDonald’s food turns into cold nonfood.”