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

His fingers slide into my hair, and I hold on to his arms to stay steady as we press together like two blades at a stalemate.

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.

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.

Don’t sweat, don’t cry, we don’t need no wings to fly.

When you cry I cry and when you hurt I hurt. And together we will try to hold back the floods to tears and despair and make it through the potholed street of life.

Organize, agitate, educate, must be our war cry.

Don’t expect me to cry for the wrong reasons.

Deep in earth my love is lying and I must weep alone.

If you do not breathe through writing, if you do not cry out in writing, or sing in writing, then don’t write, because our culture has no use for it.

Which is worse? the wolf who cries before eating the lamb or the wolf who does not.

Which is worse? the wolf who cries before eating the lamb or the wolf who does not.