“It’s strange how a word, a phrase, a sentence, can feel like a blow to the head.”

But now, I am also learning this: we can be mended. We mend each other.

He stares at me, and I don’t look away. He isn’t a dog, but the same rules apply. Looking away is submissive.

Sometimes, the best way to help someone is just to be near them.

Since I was young, I have always known this: Life damages us, every one. We can’t escape that damage. But now, I am also learning this: We can be mended. We mend each other.

I’m sick of doing bad things and liking it and then wondering what’s wrong with me. I want it to be over. I want to start again.

I traded cowardice for cruelty; I traded weakness for ferocity.

I have never been carried around by a large boy, or laughed until my stomach hurt at the dinner table, or listened to the clamor of a hundred people all talking at once. Peace is restrained; this is free.

No matter how long you train someone to be brave, you never know if they are or not until something real happens.

Part of me wonders if this is a suicide mission disguised as a game.

Pride is what killed Al, and it is the flaw in every Dauntless heart. It is in mine.

Ingenuity requires creativity.

Reading is such a huge part of my life.

When you’re a writer, you hear your internal critic, and that’s really hard to get over. And then sometimes you hear critiques from classmates and stuff.

I feel like what I have become is halfway between my mother and my father, violent and impulsive and desperate and afraid. I feel like I have lost control of what I have become.

Being honest doesn’t mean you say whatever you want, wherever you want. It means that what you choose to say is true.

Maybe there’s more we all could have done, but we just have to let the guilt remind us to do better next time.

There are subtle ways to punish a person for daring to feel. You see that everyone around you has destroyed his true feeling nature. You imitate what you see.

Music inflames temperament.

I want to feel what it’s like. I want to taste it, hear it, smell it. Death is only going to happen to you once; I don’t want to miss it

If my poetry aims to achieve anything, it’s to deliver people from the limited ways in which they see and feel.

Those who constantly want something will never feel happy.

If you feel that you are good, don’t be too proud of it.

I really believe in the power of music.

If a man is tongue-tied, don’t laugh at him, but, rather, feel pity for him, as you would for a man with broken legs.