Allegiant

I suppose a fire that burns that bright is not meant to last.

I fell in love with him. But I don't just stay with him by default as if there's no one else available to me. I stay with him because I choose to, every day that I wake up, every day that we fight or lie to each other or disappoint each other. I choose him over and over again, and he chooses me.

There are so many ways to be brave in this world. Sometimes bravery involves laying down your life for something bigger than yourself, or for someone else. Sometimes it involves giving up everything you have ever known, or everyone you have ever loved, for the sake of something greater. But sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes it is nothing more than gritting your teeth through pain, and the work of every day, the slow walk toward a better life. That is the sort of bravery I must have now.

I wonder if fears ever really go away, or if they just lose their power over us.

She taught me all about real sacrifice. That it should be done from love... That it should be done from necessity, not without exhausting all other options. That it should be done for people who need your strength because they don't have enough of their own.

When her body first hit the net, all I registered was a gray blur. I pulled her across it and her hand was small, but warm, and then she stood before me, short and thin and plain and in all ways unremarkable- except that she had jumped first. The stiff had jumped first. Even I didn't jump first. Her eyes were so stern, so insistent. Beautiful.

Knowledge is power. Power to do evil...or power to do good. Power itself is not evil. So knowledge itself is not evil.

I'll say it one last time: Be brave.

You're not very nice," I say, grinning. "You're one to talk." "Hey, I could be nice if I tried." "Hmm." He taps his chin. "Say something nice, then." "You're very good-looking." He smiles, his teeth a flash in this dark. "I like this 'nice' thing.

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.

Can I be forgiven for all I've done to get here? I want to be. I can. I believe it.

The person you became with her is worth being.

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.

You don’t believe things because they make your life better, you believe them because they’re true.

If I don't survive," I say, "tell Tobias I didn't want to leave him.

The first step to loving someone else is to recognize the evil in ourselves, so we can forgive them.

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.

I love you" I say. "I love you, too" he says. "I'll see you soon.

I didn't know that idiocy caused people to just start spontaneously bleeding from the nose.

But that wasn´t the first time I ever saw her. I saw her in the hallways at school, and at my mother’s false funeral, and walking the sidewalks in the Abnegation sector. I saw her, but I didn’t see her; no one saw her the way she truly was until she jumped. I suppose a fire that burns that bright is not meant to last.

Take a person’s memories, and you change who they are.

Sometimes I still forget to look for the gentler parts of her. For so long all I saw was the strength, standing out like the wiry muscles in her arms or the black ink marking her collarbone with flight.

I think you're still the only person sharp enough to sharpen someone like me.

It's what you deserve to hear," I say firmly, my eyes going cloudy with tears. "That you're whole, that you're worth loving, that you're the best person I've ever known.

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

I don’t know how long it takes for me to realize that isn’t going to happen, that she is gone. But when I do I 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.

We are not people who touch each other carelessly; every point of contact between us feels important, a rush of energy and relief.

Caleb," I say, "I love you." His eyes gleam with tear as he says, "I love you, too, Beatrice.

There is a difference between admitting and confessing. Admitting involves softening, making excuses for things that cannot be excused; confessing just names the crimes at its full severity.