“Tris.” I keep staring. “Tris.” I finally look at him. “I just don’t want to lose you.”

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.

We believe in shouting for those who can only whisper, in defending those who cannot defend themselves.

Finally, you will find that there is no half-measure when it comes to loving someone.

I ache with everything in me to make it count, so that when I finally cross the finish line, I’ll hear the words, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant.

So you’re doing that the first two or three screenings, and then finally, you dial the movie in and it’s working, and at that point, it’s 50/50 as far as what’s funny and what’s working.

The call to finally clean house is a propaganda tool of the right, which tolerates the leftists who it condemns.

I’m at a place in my life where I do finally feel, at least most of the time, that I know who I am and I’m comfortable with the person that I am.

Relationships gradually emerge and sometimes assert themselves with finality. And that’s your picture.

Sometimes we need to repeat a negative pattern many times before we’re finally ready to let it go.

Numbing the pain for a while will make it worse when you finally feel it.