“They're betting on how long I'll live!" I burst out. "They're not my friends!""Well, try and pretend!" snaps Effie. Then she composes herself and beams at me. "See, like this. I'm smiling at you even though you're aggravating me.”

“So the moment he walks in the door I snap, “I swear if you cry, I'll kill you here and now.”Cinna just smiles. “Had a damp morning?”“You could wring me out,” I reply.”

“They're a little strange, but I'm pretty sure neither of them is going to try to make me uncomfortable by stripping naked.”

“Want a sugar cube? [...] They're supposed to be for the horses, but who cares? They've got years to eat sugar, whereas you and I . . . well, if we see something sweet we better grab it quick. [...] You're absolutely terrifying me in that get-up. What happened to the pretty little-girl dresses?”

“My time in the arena made me realize how I needed to stop punishing [my mother] for something she couldn't help, specifically the crushing depression she fell into after my father's death. Because sometimes things happen to people and they're not equipped to deal with them.”

“This is what birds see. Only they're free and safe. The very opposite of me.”

“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.”