“All I can do is stand still- I feel like if I just stand still, I can stop it from being true, I can pretend that everything is all right.”

Nature is neutral. Nature doesn’t care how much money a person makes.

…there is power in self-sacrifice.

The truth has a way of changing people’s plans.

Grief is not as heavy as guilt, but it takes more away from you.

I gasp, pressing both palms to my chest. Now the monstrous thing has its claws around my throat, squeezing my airway. I twist and put my head between my knees, breathing until the strangled feeling leaves me.

That’s what love does. When it’s right, it makes you more than you were, more than you thought you could be.

We are not people who touch each other carelessly; every point of contact between us feels important, a rush of energy and relief.

“Oh, you know,” I say. “Sun shining. Birds chirping.” She raises an eyebrow at me, as if reminding me that we are in an underground tunnel.

He is stronger than anyone I know, and warmer than anyone else realizes; he is a secret that I have kept, and will keep for the rest of my life.

Every faction conditions its members to think and act a certain way. And most people do it. For most people, it’s not hard to learn, to find a pattern of thought that works and stay that way. But our minds move in a dozen different directions.

Sometimes drastic change requires drastic measures.

Sometimes crying or laughing are the only options left, and laughing feels better right now.

You don’t believe things because they make your life better, you believe them because they’re true.

I know exactly how we fit together, his arm around my waist, my hands on his chest, the pressure of his lips on mine. We have each other memorized.

Mom used to say that politeness is deception in pretty packaging

It will be difficult to break the habits of thinking Abnegation instilled in me, like tugging a single thread from a complex work of embroidery. But I will find new habits, new thoughts, new rules. I will become something else.

The only difference between men and women is that women are able to create new little human beings in their bodies while simultaneously writing books, driving tractors, working in offices, planting crops – in general, doing everything men do.

I think you just have to keep knocking down doors, you have to keep being aggressive, and even if somebody says ‘No’, then you have to knock on the next door.

I couldn’t be sufficiently interested in human beings to be a writer if I had contempt for human beings.

One grows accustomed to being praised, or being blamed, or being advised, but it is unusual to be understood.

Democracy can hardly be expected to flourish in societies where political and economic power is being progressively concentrated and centralized. But the progress of technology has led and is still leading to just such a concentration and centralization of power.

For me, being in prison writing in an African language was a way of saying: “Even if you put me in prison, I will keep on writing in the language which made you put me in prison.”

There are two insults which no human being will endure: The assertion that he hasn’t a sense of humor, and the doubly impertinent assertion that he has never known trouble.

Creativity is the process of bringing something new into being. Creativity requires passion and commitment. It brings to our awareness what was previously hidden and points to new life. The experience is one of heightened consciousness: ecstasy.