“Eric walks toward me, and I back away by instinct. I try not to be afraid of him, but I know how smart he is and that if I’m not careful he’ll notice that I keep staring at her, and that will be my undoing.”

“He turns toward me. I want to touch him, but I’m afraid of his bareness; afraid that he will make me bare too.‘Is this scaring you, Tris?’‘No,’ I croak. I clear my throat. ‘Not really. I’m only…afraid of what I want.’‘What do you want?’ Then his face tightens. ‘Me?’Slowly I nod.”

“I don’t want to love him—this would be so much simpler if I didn’t. But I do.He’s funny, and passionate, and strong, and he believes in me more than I even believe in myself. When he looks at me, I feel like I could take on the whole world and come out standing tall. I like myself better when I’m with him, because of how he sees me. He makes me feel beautiful and powerful, like I’m the most important thing in the world, and I don’t know how to walk away from that. I don’t know how to walk away from him.”

“My brain is telling me to stop staring at him, but for some reason I can't. It's almost... instinct... to keep on looking at him.”

“My life changed in a heartbeat. Just like that” – she snapped her fingers – “everything was taken away from me. My dad and Eric were dead; my cousin and best friend, the only person who knew exactly how I felt, was moving to another country; my aunt didn’t even want to keep in touch. My greatest fear to this day is that people I care about will be torn away from my life and I won’t be able to do anything about it. I realise that’s what most people are afraid of, but I know how it feels at first hand and I never want to go through it again.”

“He’ll think I’ll do it, he’ll act like I’ll do it, and so I will do it. But if he will think differently, maybe I will act differently. But I know me, I know him, he knows himself, he knows me, and he is my clone, so we will each act exactly how we think we will, and we will each act like the other, and this is why I’ll have to kill him.”