“That day had changed him. It had changed the entire village. Shaken by the death of a boy they had loved, each person had found ways to be more worthy of the sacrifice he had made. They had become kinder, more careful, more attentive to one another.”

“They were satisfied with their lives which had none of the vibrance his own was taking on. And he was angry at himself, that he could not change that for them.”

“The whole world had changed. Only the fairy tales remained the same. "And they lived happily ever after,”

“Then I went home to continue my life, which had changed a little, as lives do every day, inching by microspecks forward toward whatever surprises are coming next.”

“What if others-adults-had, upon becoming Twelves, received in their instructions the same terrifying sentence? What if they had all been instructed: You may lie?”

“Jonas went and sat beside them while his father untied Lily's hair ribbons and combed her hair. He placed one hand on each of their shoulders. With all of his being he tried to give each of them a piece of the memory: not of the tortured cry of the elephant, of their towering, immense creature and the meticulous touch with which it had tended its friend at the end.But his father had continued to comb Lily's long hair, and Lily, impatient, had finally wriggled under her brother's touch. "Jonas," she said, "you're hurting me with your hand.”

“I knew that there had been times in the past-terrible times-when people had destroyed others in haste,in fear, and had brought about their own destruction”