Life damages us, every one. We can’t escape that damage.
I feel empty, not because of sadness, but because of relief, all the tension flowing out of me.
It doesn’t take skill to stand in a place were no bullets find you, or to fire into the dark and hit a man you didn’t see.
I don’t have a bullet in my head, do I? So I’m fine.
Ingenuity requires creativity.
There is always somthing to learn, always somthing that is important to understand.
I am still the person who would have died rather than kill you.
So how can I hold Tobias’s desperation against him, like I’m better than him, like I’ve never let my own brokenness blind me?
All I want to say is that when you stop being delusional and start feeling desperate because you’re too inept to figure this out on your own, you know who to come to.
I have never had parents who set good examples, parents whose expectations were worth living up to, but she did. I can see them within her, the courage and the beauty they pressed into her like a handprint.
This is what I wanted most to avoid: for my rises and falls to become Tobias’s rises and falls. That’s why I can’t let him step in to defend me now.
I frown at him. How does he know all this information? And why, after two years of avoiding becoming a Dauntless leader at all costs, is he suddenly acting like one?
Everyone has to blame something for the way the world is.
I am afraid of her, afraid of what she says-and thrilled by it too, because it means I don’t have to accept that I am smaller than I once believed.
Little girl, he called me. A little girl who is stressed out to the point of paranoia. That is not me, but now, it’s who the Candor think I am.
I get up, because I’m supposed to, but if it were up to me, I’d stay in my seat for the rest of time.
It’s strange to see people you don’t know well in the morning, with sleepy eyes and pillow creases in their cheeks.
I wonder if this is how is is with all evil men, that to someone, they look just like good men, talk like good men, are just as likable as good men.
Insurgent, he says. Noun. A person who acts in opposition to the established authority, who is not necessarily regarded as a belligerent.
I don’t see any elderly people in the crowd. Are there any old Dauntless? Do they not last that long, or are they just sent away when they can’t jump off moving trains anymore?