Quotes from Crossed

Ally Condie ·  367 pages

Rating: (187.4K votes)


“In the end you can't always choose what to keep. You can only choose how you let it go.”
― Ally Condie, quote from Crossed


“Everyone has something of beauty about them. But loving lets you look, and look, and look again. You notice the back of a hand, the turn of a head, the way of a walk. When you first love, you look blind and you see it all as the glorious, beloved whole, or a beautiful sum of beautiful parts. But when you see the one you love as pieces, as why's, you can love those parts too, and it's a love at once more complicated and more complete.”
― Ally Condie, quote from Crossed


“Love changes what is probable and makes unlikely things possible.”
― Ally Condie, quote from Crossed


I love.
The most reckless thing of all.”
― Ally Condie, quote from Crossed


“I climb into the dark for you
Are you waiting in the stars for me?”
― Ally Condie, quote from Crossed



“Forgetting lets you live without the pain for a moment but remembering hits hard.”
― Ally Condie, quote from Crossed


“Love has different shades. Like the way I loved Cassia when I thought she'd never love me. The way I loved her on the Hill. The way I love her now that she came into the canyon for me. It's different. Deeper. I thought I loved her and wanted her before, but as we walk through the canyon together I realize this could be more than a new shade. A whole new color.”
― Ally Condie, quote from Crossed


“It's not knowing how to write that makes you interesting, it's what you write.”
― Ally Condie, quote from Crossed


“Everyone has something of beauty about them.”
― Ally Condie, quote from Crossed


“This is a cruel thing to do because when someone knows your story they know you. And they can hurt you. It's why I give mine away in pieces, even to Cassia.”
― Ally Condie, quote from Crossed



“We can either try to change everything or just make the most of whatever time we have.”
― Ally Condie, quote from Crossed


“For a moment nothing happens. The figure stands still and I stand cold and alive and-
He starts to run. I make my way down the rocks, slipping, sliding, trying to get to the plain. I wish, I think, my feet clumsy, moving too fast, not fast enough, I wish i could run, I wish I'd written a whole poem, I wish I kept the compass-
And then I reach the plain and wish for nothing but what I have. Ky. Running toward me. I have never seen him run like this, fast, free, strong, wild. He looks so beautiful, his body moves so right. He stops just close enough for me to see the blue of his eyes and forget the red on my hands and the green I wish I wore. "You're here," he says, breathing hard and hungry. sweat and dirt cover his face, and he looks at me as though I'm the only thing he ever needed to see. I open my mouth to say yes. But I only have time to breathe in before he closes the last of the distance. All I know is the kiss.”
― Ally Condie, quote from Crossed


“Cassia and I sit as near to each other as we can. She leans into me and I keep my arms around her. I don't fool myself that I hold her together- she does that on her own- but holding her keeps me from flying apart.”
― Ally Condie, quote from Crossed


“I didn't know all that was inside of him, either. I thought I did, but people run deep and complicated like rivers, hold their shape and are carved upon like stone.”
― Ally Condie, quote from Crossed


“Because once you love, it is gone. You love and you cannot call it back.”
― Ally Condie, quote from Crossed



“I run for her.
I run for them.
For me.”
― Ally Condie, quote from Crossed


“We have all been carved out by our sorrow. Cut deep like canyon walls.”
― Ally Condie, quote from Crossed


“Because in the end you can't always choose what to keep. You can only choose how you let it go.”
― Ally Condie, quote from Crossed


“Death,” I say. “ It’s the one thing they haven’t fully conquered. They want to know more about it.”
― Ally Condie, quote from Crossed


“I never named anything I've written before
no reason to
since
it would all have the same title anyway
-for you-
but I would call this one
one night
that night
when we let the world be only you
and only me
we stood on it while it spun
green and blue and red
the music ended
but we
were still
singing”
― Ally Condie, quote from Crossed



“I decided that it was the thoughts in your own mind that mattered more than anything else.”
― Ally Condie, quote from Crossed


“And it is strange that absence can feel like presence.”
― Ally Condie, quote from Crossed


“I marked a map for every death
For every ache and blow
My world was all a page of black
With nothing left but snow.”
― Ally Condie, quote from Crossed


“Maybe only parts of our stories can keep us safe. The whole can feel like too much to bear.”
― Ally Condie, quote from Crossed


“I have a sense that we have not yet arrived, that we are still reaching. For each other. For who we are meant to be.”
― Ally Condie, quote from Crossed



“Two little dark figures, looking up. Are they looking at me? Is is him? This far away there's only one way to know. I point to the sky.”
― Ally Condie, quote from Crossed


“One night," Ky says, "doesn't seem like much to ask."
I don't speak. He moves closer and I feel his cheek against mine and breathe in the scent of sage and pine, of old dust and fresh water and of him.
"For one night, can we just think of each other? Not the Society or the Rising or even our families?"
"No," I say.
"No what?" He tangles one of his hands in my hair, the other draws me closer still.
"No, I don't think we can," I say. "And no, it isn't too much to ask.”
― Ally Condie, quote from Crossed


“Time, Vick said, "is what we don't have.”
― Ally Condie, quote from Crossed


“She cried before she slept. I reached out to touch the ends of her hair. She didn't notice. I didn't know what to do. Listening to her made me ache. I felt tears stream down my face too. And when I accidentally brushed Eli with my arm his face was wet where his tears ran down. We have all been carved out by our sorrow. Cut deep like canyon walls.”
― Ally Condie, quote from Crossed


“I'm just a butterfly, a mourning cloak, sealed inside a cocoon with blnd eyes and stiky wings. And suddenly I wonder if the cocoons sometimes do not open, if the butterfly inside is ever simply not strong enough to break through.”
― Ally Condie, quote from Crossed



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About the author

Ally Condie
Born place: The United States
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