“Sometimes, all it takes to save people from a terrible fate is one person willing to do something about it. Even if that “something” is a fake bathroom break.”

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.

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

I feel the monster of grief again, writhing in the empty space where my heart and stomach used to be.

If I let a little of the emotion out, all of it will come out, and it will never end.

Sorry, am I being rude?” she asks. “I’m used to saying whatever is on my mind.

Dauntless: being brave in the midst of fear.

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.

Killing you is not the worst thing they can do to you,” I say. “Controlling you is.

But when a book comes out, it’s just hundreds of opinions and you have to learn to separate out the ones you want to listen to or figure out many you want to listen to.

My mother knit scarves for the neighborhood kids. My father helped Caleb with his homework. There was a fire in the fireplace and peace in my heart, as I was doing exactly what I was supposed to be doing, and everything was quiet.

The worst ruler is one who cannot rule himself.

I like to perform every once in a while for people who want to see me, and cut albums of music that is what I’m really about.

To hear, one must be silent.

I’ve been blessed to be one of those guys who’s looked at as a fashion-forward type of guy.

Now it is human nature to want to eat to ones fill when hungry, to want to warm up when cold, to want to rest when tired. These all are a part of people’s emotional nature.

Instead of leading to the high places of happiness, from which the world would seem to lie below one, so that one could look down with a sense of exaltation and advantage, and judge and choose and pity.

“Heaven help us,” said the old religion; the new one, from its very lack of that faith, will teach us all the more to help one another.

There is only one failure in life possible, and that is not to be true to the best one knows.