Then I realize what it is. It’s him. Something about him makes me feel like I am about to fall. Or turn to liquid. Or burst into flames.
I wonder if fears ever really go away, or if they just lose their power over us.
I belong to the people I love, and they belong to me–they, and the love and loyaty I give them, form my identity far more than any word or group ever could.
But when I do feel all the strength go out of me, and I fall to my knees beside the table and I think I cry, then, or at least I want to, and everything inside me screams for just one more kiss, one more word, one more glance, one more.
Fear doesn’t shut you down; it wakes you up. I’ve seen it. It’s fascinating.” He releases me but doesn’t pull away, his hand grazing my jaw, my neck. “Sometimes I just…want to see it again. Want to see you awake.
I love you” I say.”I love you, too” he says. “I’ll see you soon.
I think you’re still the only person sharp enough to sharpen someone like me.
We are not people who touch each other carelessly; every point of contact between us feels important, a rush of energy and relief.
I’ll be your family now,” he says. “I love you,” I say. (….)He stares at me. I wait with my hands clutching his arms for stability as he considers his response. He frowns at me. “Say it again.””Tobias,” I say, “I love you.
I regret…” Tobias tilts his head, and sighs. “I regret my choice.””What Choice?”, and… I felt like maybe I could make something more of my decision.”
I feel like myself, strong and weak at once – allowed, at least for a little while, to be both.
No matter how long you train someone to be brave, you never know if they are or not until something real happens.
One ChoiceOne Choice, decided your friends.One Choice, defines your beliefs.One Choice, determines your loyalties – Forever.ONCE CHOICE CAN TRANSFORM YOU
Yeah, sometimes life really sucks,” she says. “But you know what I’m holding on for?”I raise my eyebrows.She raises hers, too, mimicking me.”The moments that don’t suck,” she says. “The trick is to notice them when they come around.
Dead people can be our heroes because they cant disappoint us later; they only improve over time, as we forget more and more about them.
Because inside me is a beast that snarls, and growls, and strains toward freedom.. and as hard as I try, I cannot kill it.
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
Writing means not just staring ugliness in the face, but finding a way to embrace it.
Can you be a girl for a few seconds?””I’m always a girl” I frown.”You know what I mean. Like a silly, annoying girl”I twirl my hair around my finger. “Kay.
We could visit him,” suggests Will. “But what would we say? ‘I didn’t know you that well, but I’m sorry you got stabbed in the eye’?
I didn’t know that idiocy caused people to just start spontaneously bleeding from the nose.
Leaving us with Eric is like hiring a babysitter who spends his time sharpening knives.
You don’t believe things because they make your life better, you believe them because they’re true.
She has been to the compound before. She remembered this hallway. She knows about the initiation process. My mother was Dauntless.
It’s hard to know what’s right in this life,’ she said. ‘We do what we can, but what we really need is mercy. Do you know who taught me that?’ A grin. ‘You.'”P459
We believe in ordinary acts of bravery, in the courage that drives one person to stand up for another.
I keep finding myself stifled by the company of others and then crippled by loneliness when I leave them. I am terrified and I don’t even know of what, because I have lost everything already.
Knowledge is power. Power to do evil…or power to do good. Power itself is not evil. So knowledge itself is not evil.
Valuing knowledge above all else results in a lust for power, and that leads men into dark and empty places.
It’s hard to know what’s right in this life,’ she said. ‘We do what we can, but what we really need is mercy. Do you know who taught me that?’ A grin. ‘You.
…we have something they want. Valuing knowledge above all else results in a lust for power, and that leads men into dark and empty places. We should be thankful that we know better.
It’s strange how time can make a place shrink, make its strangeness ordinary.
Tris,” he says. “What did they do to you? You’re acting like a lunatic.””That’s not very nice of you to say,” I say. “They put me in a good mood, that’s all. And now I really want to kiss you, so if you could just relax-
Be careful, though.””Aren’t I always?””No, I think the word for how you usually are is ‘reckless.
People are supossed to aspire to become their fathers, not shudder at the thought.
I have to face the fear. I have to take control of the situation and find a way to make it less frightening.
I clench my teeth as tears come. I am fed up. I am fed up with tears and weakness. But there isn’t much I can do to stop them. ~ ‘Tris
Yeah, well, we’re all afraid.” I sighed. “The angry more than most, I think.
I miss the fears of the past few weeks, rendered small by my fears now.
Psyche you out?” I repeat. “I’m your FRIEND. I wouldn’t do that.” He doesn’t say anything. I can tell he doesn’t believe me-not quite.
Sometimes, all it takes to save people from a terrible faith is one person willing to do something about it. Even if that “something” is a fake bathroom break.
Now she looks pale and small, but her eyes make me think of wide- open skies that I have never actually seen, only dreamed of.
Freedom. He offered it like someone who didn’t know what it meant, someone who had never had it taken away.”pg 185
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.
Instead I take the lead, Tobias silent at my side, and though he does not touch me, he steadies me.
The battle we are fighting is not against a particular group. It is against human nature – or at least what it has become.
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.
I could never hurt him enough to make his betrayal stop hurting. And it hurts, in every part of my body.
It isn’t right to wish pain on other people just because they hurt me first.
Hearing him talk about his mother, about his intact family, makes my chest hurt for a second, like someone pierced it with a needle.
Crying defies scientific explanation. Tears are only meant to lubricate the eyes. There is no real reason for tear glands to overproduce tears at the behest of emotion.
I know what it is to become something you hate, I know how it hurts. But life is full of hurt. And your capacity for baring it is much greater than you believe.”pg 287
What a person did when they were in pain said a lot about them.pg 459
I wish I could tell him that we’re going through the same thing. I wish I could speak to him like I want to instead of like I’m supposed to. But the idea of admitting that I need help is too much to bear, so I turn away.
Scrubbing the floor when no one else wanted to was something that my mother would have done. If I can’t be with her, the least I can do is act like her sometimes.
There is power in controlling something that can do so much damage-in controlling something, period.
Sorry, am I being rude?” she asks.”I’m used to saying whatever is on my mind. Mom used to say that politeness is deception in pretty packaging
There is an art to Noavek bullshit,” Cyra said as she muted the feed. “We’re taught it from birth.
The knife will only hurt for a moment. Then your choice will be made, and it will all be over.
She’s a sailboat and I’m an anchor, pulling us both down.
But you should know that about Dauntless- girl, guy, whatever, it doesn’t matter here. What matters is what you’ve got in your gut.
You know, there’s a word for big, strong men who attack women, and it’s coward.
We don’t know what’s happened out there since they put us in here, or how many generations have lived and died since they did.We could be the last people left.
But there’s so much that was a lie, it’s hard to figure out what was true, what was real, what matters.
She said that everyone has some evil inside them, and the first step to loving anyone is to recognize the same evil inside ourselves,so we’re able to forgive them.
You won’t shoot me.””People tend to overestimate my character,” I say quietly. “They think that because I’m small, or a girl, or a Stiff, I can’t possibly be cruel. But they’re wrong.
But I know that for every good thing that comes along, there is always a cost.
If she’s in pain now she doesn’t show it; she just closes her eyes and surrenders, and that is worse than her screaming for help, somehow.
I didn’t scream I wasn’t afraid. I knew I was strong enough to survive it all.
Some days are harder than others, but I am ready to live each one of them. I can’t sacrifice myself, this time.
There was only one option left, and it was letting go.
Caleb told me that our mother said there was evil in everyone, and the first step to loving someone else is to recognize that evil in ourselves, so we can forgive them.
You’re the one who has to live whit your choice” she says.”Everyone else will get over it, move on, no matter what you decide. But you never will.
We believe in bravery. We believe in taking action. We believe in freedom from fear and in acquiring the skills to force the bad out of our world so that the good can prosper and thrive. If you also believe in those things, we welcome you.
It’s strange how a word, a phrase, a sentence, can feel like a blow to the head.
Maybe time would not feel as heavy if I didn’t have this guilt – the guilt of knowing the truth and stuffing it down where no one can see it.
It would be nice if life worked this way, stripping the dirt from our lives and sending us back out into the world clean. But some dirt is destined to lingered.
I laugh, and it’s laughter, not light, that casts out the darkness building within me, that reminds me I am still alive, even in this strange place where everything I’ve ever known is coming apart.
I hear something in her words that’s right, but it’s hard to believe her right now.
In that moment I’m able to accept the inevitability of how I feel, though not with joy. I need to talk to someone. I need to trust someone. And for whatever reason, I know, I know it’s her.
I think about pressing myself against him, but I can’t, because all our secrets would keep a space between us.
Can I be forgiven for all I’ve done to get here?I want to be.I can.I believe it.
I understand why she did all those things, but that doesn’t mean we aren’t still broken.
When someone wrongs you, you both share the burden of that wrongdoing – the pain of it weighs on both of you. Forgiveness, then, means choosing to bear the full weight all by yourself.
It reminds me that no embrace will ever feel the same again, because no one will ever be like her again, because she’s gone. She’s gone, and crying feels so useless, so stupid, but it’s all I can do.
I confessed to Tobias, soon after that, that I had lost my entire family.And he assured me that he was my family now. -Tris Prior
You don’t have to tell me everything right away, but I have to tell you everything right away? Can’t you see how stupid that is?
Grief is not as heavy as guilt, but it takes more away from you.
I have discovered that sitting still leaves little spaces for the grief to get in, so I stay busy.
He still smiles all the time, but now his smiles look like they’re made out of water, about to drip down his face.
I don’t want to cry for Edward- at least not in the deep, personal way that you cry for a friend or loved one. I want to cry because something terrible happened, and I saw it, and I could not see a way to mend it.
Sometimes I feel like we are the same, but sometimes, like right now, I feel the separation between our personalities like I’ve just run into a wall.
I close my eyes. I don’t expect Four to reassure me, and he makes no effort to, but I feel better standing here than I did out there among the people who are my friends, my faction.
The tunnel is lit at long intervals, so in the dark space between each dim lamp, I fear that I am lost until a shoulder bumps mine. In the circles of light I am safe again.
Or maybe we’ll make a home somewhere inside ourselves, to carry with us wherever we go- which is the way I carry my mother now.
It’s strange to see people you don’t know well in the morning, with sleepy eyes and pillow creases in their cheeks
I shower in the dark, barely able to tell soap from conditioner, and tell myself that I will emerge new and strong, that the water will heal me.
I might be in love with you.” He smiles a little. “I’m waiting until I’m sure to tell you, though.
I like to think I’m helping them by hating them. I’m reminding them that they aren’t God’s gift to humankind.
Maybe there is some Abnegation in everyone. Well in everyone but Peter.”-Tris Prior
No,I just thought I’d shoot bullets out of my nose
I like to hurt people too. I can make the cruelest choice. The difference is, sometimes I don’t, and you always do, and that makes you evil.
I can’t imagine it’s easy to like someone, hate them, and then lose them before any of those feelings are resolved.
I am afraid that if I start to sob, I will never stop until I shrivel up like a raisin.
I guess I always knew there was something wrong with me, but I thought it was because of my father, or my mother, and the pain they bequeathed to me like a family heirloom, handed down from generation to generation.- Tobias Eaton
But a person can only keep reality – and anger – at bay for so long before the truth comes back again.
Some of my anger has faded, but it isn’t hard to call back. All I have to do is think about how cold the air was and how loud the laughter was. Look at her. She’s a child.
I still want to be angry, but I have to let my anger go.
Everything inside me screams for just one more kiss, one more word, one more glance, one more.
(…) a man encased in ice, his eyes hard and his voice like a frosty exhale.
– It doesn’t do anything obvious. But it might be able to do something in here. – Then she touched her hand to her heart. – Beautiful things sometimes do.
It’s not cruelty, maybe, but a desire to understand that motivates them.
Thank you for your honesty,” Niles says. The Candor repeat the phrase under their breath. All around me are the words “Thank you for your honesty” at different volumes and pitches, and my anger begins to dissolve.
no wonder you left.”Yeah,” i say, rolling my eyes. ” It was just because of the food.
Damn,’ someone behind me says. ‘I was hoping we would get to scrape some Stiff pancake off the pavement later.
Killing you is not the worst thing they can do to you,” I say. “Controlling you is.
If we’re afraid to be ourselves, then who are we? Where’s there left to hide?But if we could concur that fear, we just might be strong, powerful. We just might be unstoppable.
You’re the one who has to live with your choice,” she says. “Everyone else will get over it, move on, no matter what you decide. But you never will.
I am wearing a gray shirt, blue jeans, black shoes–new clothes, but beneath them, my Dauntless tattoos. It is impossible to erase my choices. Especially these.
It’s not often you encounter the real person behind a good-natured mask, the darkest parts of someone. It’s not comfortable when you do.
(…) I do want to leave, in the desperate way that an animal wants to escape a trap. Wild and rabid. Ready to gnaw through bone.
If I let a little of the emotion out, all of it will come out, and it will never end.
Sleep,” he says. “I’ll fight the bad dreams off if they come to get you.””With what?””My bar hands, obviously.”In the moments before i drift off to sleep, i hear him whisper, “I love you, Tris.
Sometimes I forget that I can hurt you. That you are capable of being hurt
Aren’t you going to ask me if I’m all right?” I say.“No, I’m pretty sure you’re not all right.”He shakes his head. “I’m going to ask you not to make any decisions until we’ve talkedabout it.
So this is where you grew up. Did you like it here? I guess you couldn’t have, if you wanted to leave.’ CHRISTINA’I liked some things and hated some things. And there were some things I didn’t know I had until I lost them.’ TRIS
She wanted us to have more than five choices. Now we have none.
I am proud. It will get me into trouble someday, but today it makes me brave
I regret…” Tobias tilts his head, and sighs. “I regret my choice.””What Ch
I can’t leave her now. I like her too much. There, I said it. But I won’t say it again.
If someone offers you an opportunity to get closer to your enemy, you always take it. I know that without having learned it from anyone.
I don’t need to relive my fears anymore. All I need to do now is try to overcome them.
It’s getting more difficult to be wise,” he says, laughing into my ear.I smile at him. “I think that’s how it’ssupposed to be.
Honor,” I said with a snort. “Honor has no place in survival.
… but in an attack, surviving is an accident. It doesn’t take skill to stand in a place where no bullets find you, or to fire into the dark and hit a man you didn’t see. It is all luck, or providence, depending on what you believe.
The scars on her face said something different about her, too-that she, like Cyra, knew what she was risking when she risked her life.”pg 337
Stupid. Why do people want to pretendthat death is sleep? It isn’t. It isn’t
A chasm reminds us that there is a fine line between bravery and idiocy.
I think I speak for everyone,” he says, “when I say you have earned the title of Dauntless”.
What is wrong with you?’ I shake my head. ‘Pull it together.’ And that’s what it feels like: pulling the different parts of me up and in like a shoelace. I feel suffocated, but at least I feel strong.
Sometimes it isn’t fighting that’s brave, it’s facing the death you know is coming.
Now it seems like no matter what I decide, I’ll be betraying someone.
maybe here, in dauntless, bravery is the highest form of wisdom. the acknowledgement that life can and should be lived without fear
But then he stops at the door frame and says, It’s 9:24. Telling me the time is a small act of betrayal-and therefore an ordinary act of bravery. It is maybe the first time I’ve seen Peter be truly Dauntless.
She must love me, to worry about me. She must still be capable of love.
That our world is so massive that it is completely out of our control, that we cannot possibly be as large as we feel.
The division is based on knowledge, based on qualifications – but as I learned from the factionless, a system that relies on a group of uneducated people to do its dirty work without giving them a way to rise is hardly fair.
The only reason I haven’t shot you yet is because he’s the one who should get to do it,” I say. “Stay away from him or I’ll decide I no longer care.
This is supposed to be a lighthearted session of symbolic document destruction, not a political debate.
And there were some things I didn’t know I had until I lost them.
And what this is, I realize, is life. I don’t want it. I want my parents and I have for weeks. I’ve been trying to claw my way back to them, and now I am so close and he is telling me not to.
I feel bare. I didn’t realize I wore my secrets as armor until they were gone and now everyone sees me as I really am.
I thought that when I spilled one secret, the rest would come tumbling after, but openness is a habit you form over time, and not a switch you flip whenever you want to, I’m finding,
I thought that when I spilled one secret, the rest would come tumbling after, but openness is a habit you form over time, and not a switch you flip whenever you want to, I’m finding.
…something important is lost if this man has been forced to deny his own nature.
You know,’ he said, the condition of sourness–or monstrousness, as you might call it–doesn’t have to be permanent.’P189
Some people might leave you,’ he said, for once ignoring a joke in favor of something real. ‘But it doesn’t mean you’re worth leaving. It doesn’t mean that at all.
This body had carried me through a hard life. It looked exactly the way it was supposed to.
I feel something hot and violent writhing in my stomach. I want to hurt them. I stare at my eyes in the mirror. I want so, so I will.
You’re desperate, and so am I,’ I said. ‘Desperate people make stupid decisions all the time.'”P244
I realize that the decision might be simple. It will require a great act of selflessness to choose Abnegation, or a great act of courage to choose Dauntless, and maybe just choosing one over the other will prove that I belong.
I’m not abnegation, I’m not dauntless, I am Divergent
It’s when you’re acting selflessly that you are at you bravest
Doing a little at once can fix something, eventually, but i feel like when you believe something is truly a problem, you throw everything you have at it, because you just can’t help yourself.
Maybe there’s more we all could have done, but we just have to let the guilt remind us to do better next time.
I wish I could say I felt guilty for what I did. I don’t.
It happened. It was awful. You aren’t perfect. That’s all there is. Don’t confuse your grief with guilt.
If you see someone in trouble, you should help them. Experiment or not.
Because life is not fair, Albert. And the world is conspiring against you.
Are you asking me to undress, Tris?’A nervous laugh gurgles from my throat. ‘Only … partially
Chaos and destruction do tend to take away a person’s dating possibilities.
What did you do, memorize a map of the city for fun?” says Christina.“Yes,” says Will, looking puzzled. “Didn’t you?
Sometimes, the best way to help someone is just to be near them.
If they told us what to believe, and we didn’t come to it on our own, is it still true?
I fit my mouth to his and he tastes like water and smells like fresh air. I drag my hand from his neck to the small of his back and put it under his shirt. He kisses me harder.
Sometimes crying or laughing are the only options left, and laughing feels better right now.
Oh. I just assumed… That because I am so absorbed by him everyone must be too.
All three combined is…a different kind of stupid formerly unheard of by humankind.
I am not Tobias Eaton, not anymore, never again. I am Dauntless.
I don’t know how long i tis before we get cold again, and huddle under the blanket together.-It’s getting more difficult to be wise. – He says,laughing into my ear.I smile at him. – I think that’s how it’s supposed to be.
So you’re her brother?” says Lynn. “I guess we know who got the good genes.”I laugh at the expression on Caleb’s face, his mouth drawn into a slight pucker and his eyes wide.
If someone offer you an opportunity to get closer to your enemy, you always take it.
Becoming fearless isn’t the point. That’s impossible. It’s learning how to control your fear, and how to be free from it.
How many young men fear that there is a monster inside them? People are supposed to fear others, not themselves. People are supposed to aspire to become their fathers, not shudder at the thought.
… if they are persistent enough, even tiny drops of water, over time, can change the rock forever. And it will never change back.” – Zoe
I want to break something, or hit something, but I am afraid to move, so I start crying instead.
I don’t know why, but his reaction disappoints me.
Most of my life has been spent keeping information close, turning it over and over in my mind. The impulse to share anything is a new one, the impulse to hide as natural as breathing.
He is stronger than anyone I know, & warmer than anyone else realizes; he is a secret that I have kept, & will keep, for the rest of my life.
He should be the one to die, part of me thinks.I don’t want to lose him, another part argues.I don’t know which part to believe.
Caleb and Tris exchange a look. The skin on his face and on her knuckles is nearly the same colour, purple-blue-green, as if drawn with ink. This is what happens when siblings collide – they injure each other in the same way.
Looking away is submissive. Looking [..] in the eye is a challenge.
You’re my daughter. I don’t care about the factions.
Do remember, though, that sometimes the people you oppress become mightier than you would like.
We believe that preparation eradicates cowardice, which we define as the failure to act in the midst of fear.
Is it selfish for me to crave victory or is it brave?
Can I be forgiven for all I’ve done to get here?I don’t know. I don’t know.please.-Tris, DivergentCan I be forgiven for all I’ve done to get here?I want to be.I can.I believe it.-Tris, Allegiant
I also don’t believe that whatever come after life depends on my correctly reciting a list of my transgressions-that sounds too much like an Erudite afterlife to me, all accuracy and no feeling.
The hurts from my last day with my father are healed now, but I want to remember where they were; I want to remember what I escaped for as long as I live.
He wraps his arms around me and holds me tight for a few seconds. Hisbreaths tickle my ear, and I close my eyes, letting myself finally relax. Hesmells like wind and sweat and soap, like Tobias and like safety.
How strange that something so simple could have been instrumental in my decision to ruin one of my most relationships and friendships, and damage another.