“I have to face the fear. I have to take control of the situation and find a way to make it less frightening.”

“Simulation Tobias kisses my neck.I try to think. I have to face the fear. I have to take control of the situation and find a way to make it less frightening.I look Simulation Tobias in the eye and say sternly, “I am not going to sleep with you in a hallucination. Okay?”Then I grab him by his shoulders and turn us around, pushing him against thebedpost. I feel something other than fear—a prickle in my stomach, a bubble of laughter. I press against him and kiss him, my hands wrapping around his arms. He feels strong. He feels…good.And he’s gone.I laugh into my hand until my face gets hot. I must be the only initiate with this fear.”

“I have been attacked by crows and men with grotesque faces; I have been set on fire by the boy who almost threw me off a ledge; I have almost drowned - twice - and this> is what I can't cope with? This is the fear I have no solutions for - a boy I like, who wants to...have sex with me?”

“But maybe what I saw as fearless was actually fear under control.”

“Writing means not just staring ugliness in the face, but finding a way to embrace it.”

“I see a kind of thirst in her expression, the same one I saw when she told me about her brother in the back room of the tattoo parlor. Before the attack simulation I might have called it a thirst for justice, or even revenge, but now I am able to identify it as a thirst for blood. And even as it frightens me, I understand it.Which should probably frighten me even more.”

“You're afraid of heights," I say. "How do you survive in the Dauntless compound?" "I ignore my fear," he says. "When I make decisions, I pretend it doesn't exist." I stare at him for a second. I can't help it. To me there's a difference between not being afraid and acting in spite of fear, as he does. I have been staring at him too long. "What?" he says quietly. "Nothing.”