“When I wake up, the other side of the bed is cold. My fingers stretch out, seeking Prim`s warmth but finding only the rough canvas cover of the mattress. She must have had bad dreams and climbed in with our mother. Of course, she did. This is the day of the Reaping.”

“She must have had bad dreams and climbed in with our mother. Of course, she did. This is the day of the reaping.”

“I have dreamed of our bed as if it were a shore where we would be washed up, not this striped mattress we must cover with sheets. [from "After an Absence"]”

“Inside the room it was dark now, the florescent light behind my father flickering so slightly it lit only the most obvious masses in the room. My sister was in a chair pulled up alongside the bed, her head resting on the side of it with her hand extended out to touch my father. My father, deep under, was lying on his back. My mother could not know that I was there with them, that here were the four of us, so changed now from the days when she tucked Lindsey and me into bed and went to make love to her husband, our father. Now she saw the pieces. She saw that my sister and father, together, had become a piece. She was glad of it.I had played a hide-and-seek game of love with my mother as I grew up, courting her attention and approval in a way that I had never had to with my father. I didn't have to play hide-and-seek anymore. As she stood in the darkened room and watched my sister and father, I knew one of the things that heaven meant. I had a choice, and it was not to divide my family in my heart.~pg 154; Susie's family and heaven”

“She'd covered the bed in books, five of them spread out across Dad's side. She once told me she liked to read the first chapters and then dream the rest. Perhaps she was dreaming them right now.”

“ll I can think about, every day, every waking minute since they drew Prim's name at the reaping, is how afraid I am.”