Unite Me
Quotes from the Book
And I've fallen. So hard. I've hit the ground. Gone right through it. Never in my life have I felt this. Nothing like this. I've felt shame and cowardice, weakness and strength. I've known terror and indifference, self-hate and general disgust. I've seen things that cannot be unseen. And yet I've known nothing like this terrible, horrible, paralyzing feeling. I feel crippled. Desperate and out of control. And it keeps getting worse. Every day I feel sick. Empty and somehow aching. Love is a heartless bastard.
People seldom realize that they tell lies with their lips and truths with their eyes all the time.
I almost forget that she still hates me, despite how hard I've fallen for her. And I've fallen. So hard. I've hit the ground.
I’ve come to believe that the most dangerous man in the world is the one who feels no remorse. The one who never apologizes and therefore seeks no forgiveness. Because in the end it is our emotions that make us week, not our actions.
My mind is a warehouse of carefully organized human emotions. I lock away the things that do not serve me.
She is a soft, deadly creature. Kind and timid and terrifying. She's completely out of control and has no idea what she's capable of. And even though she hates me, I can't help but be fascinated by her. I'm enchanted by her pretend-innocence; jealous, even, of the power she wields so unwittingly. I want so much to be a part of her world. I want to know what it's like to be in her mind, to feel what she feels. It seems a tremendous weight to carry. And now she's out there, somewhere, unleashed on society. What a beautiful disaster.
Because I want her. Now. Here. Everywhere. I want nothing between us. I want her clothes off and the lights on and I want to study her. I want to unzip her out of this dress and take my time with every inch of her.
Watching her talk to someone else made me crazy. I was jealous. Ridiculous. I wanted her to know me; I wanted her to talk to me. And I felt it then: this strange, inexplicable sense that she might be the only person in the world I could really care about.
These letters are all I have left. 26 friends to tell my stories to. 26 letters are all I need. I can stitch them together to create oceans and ecosystems. I can fit them together to form planets and solar systems. I can use letters to construct skyscrapers and metropolitan cities populated by people, places, things, and ideas that are more real to me than these 4 walls. I need nothing but letters to live. Without them I would not exist. Because these words I write down are the only proof I have that I’m still alive.
That this girl would know exactly how to shatter me.
Torture is not torture when there’s any hope of relief.
My opinions,” I say to him, quietly this time, “should not so easily break your own. Stand by your convictions. Form clear and logical arguments. Even if I disagree.
Sometimes I wish I could step outside of myself for a while. I want to leave this worn body behind, but my chains are too many, my weights too heavy.
She searches me with those odd, blue-green eyes and I feel guilty so suddenly, without understanding why. But there’s something about the way she looks at me that always makes me feel insignificant, as if she’s the only one who’s realized I’m entirely hollow inside. She’s found the cracks in this cast I’m forced to wear every day, and it petrifies me. That this girl would know exactly how to shatter me.
This girl is destroying me. A girl who has spent the last year in an insane asylum. A girl who would try to shoot me dead for kissing her. A girl who ran off with another man just to get away from me. Of course this is the girl I would fall for. I close a hand over my mouth. I am losing my mind.
Sometimes I close my eyes and paint these walls a different color. I imagine I’m wearing warm socks and sitting by a fire. I imagine someone’s given me a book to read, a story to take me away form the torture of my own mind. I want to be someone else somewhere else with something else to fill my mind. I want to run, to feel the wind tug at my hair. I want to pretend that this is just a story within a story. That this cell is just a scene, that these hands don’t belong to me, that this window leads to somewhere beautiful if only I could break it. I pretend this pillow is clean, I pretend this bed is soft. I pretend and pretend and pretend until the world becomes so breathtaking behind my eyelids that I can no longer contain it. But then my eyes fly open and I’m caught around the throat by a pair of hands that won’t stop suffocating suffocating suffocating. My thoughts, I think, will soon be sound. My mind, I hope, will soon be found.
Friendship is not a thing I have ever experienced. Not as a child, and not as I am now.
Only an idiot would rely on the energy of a bean or a leaf to stay awake throughout the day.
I want to be someone else somewhere else with something else to fill my mind.
I will give no one the satisfaction of my death.
There’s something simmering inside of me. Something I’ve never dared to tap into, something I’m afraid to acknowledge. There’s a part of me clawing to break free from the cage I’ve trapped it in, banging on the doors of my heart, begging to be free. Begging to let go. Every day I feel like I’m reliving the same nightmare. I open my mouth to shout, to fight, to swing my fists, but my vocal cords are cut, my arms are heavy and weighted down as if trapped in wet cement and I’m screaming but no one can hear me, no one can reach me and I’m caught. And it’s killing me. I’ve always had to make myself submissive, subservient, twisted into a pleading, passive mop just to make everyone else feel safe and comfortable. My existence has become a fight to prove I’m harmless, and I’m not a threat, that I’m capable of living among other human beings without hurting them. And I’m so tired I’m so tire I’m so tired I’m so tired and sometimes I get so angry. I don’t know what’s happening to me.
Sir, can you hear me?" Another cry. But this time, a voice I don't detest. "Sire, please, can you hear me-" "I've been shot, Delalieu," I manage to say. I open my eyes. Look into his watery ones. "I haven't gone deaf.
I have an extremely low threshold for disorder; it offends my very being.
In just two days, one girl has managed to cripple me.
Kenji is a walking paradox of Unflinchingly Serious Person and 12-Year-Old Boy Going Through Puberty all rolled into one.
That traitorous bastard. The idiot who thinks he's won himself a pretty girl. He has no idea who she is. No idea what she'd about to become. And if he thinks he's even remotely suited to match her, he's even more of an idiot than I gave him credit for.
I allowed myself to believe she’d seen a future for us; that she wanted to be with me and simply thought it impossible.
Good God, I have taken leave of my senses. I never thank Delalieu. I've likely given the poor man a heart attack.
Did you know?
- The novella is told entirely from the first-person point of view of Aaron Warner, rather than the series' usual narrator, Juliette.
- It is set chronologically between the novels Shatter Me and Unravel Me, and is numbered 1.5 in the series.
- Warner's father, the Supreme Commander of The Reestablishment, plays a central role in the story's conflict.
- The book was first released as an ebook novella in October 2012.
About Tahereh Mafi
More by Tahereh Mafi
All books by Tahereh Mafi →About the book
"Destroy Me" is a novella in Tahereh Mafi's dystopian Shatter Me series, set after the events of "Shatter Me" and before "Unravel Me." Unlike the main novels, which are narrated by Juliette, this short book is told entirely from the first-person perspective of Aaron Warner, the young and ruthless leader of Sector 45 within the oppressive regime known as The Reestablishment. Recovering from the near-fatal gunshot wound Juliette inflicted while escaping him, Warner works to keep his soldiers in line, suppress talk of rebellion, and track down the girl he cannot stop thinking about.
The novella's central tension deepens when the Supreme Commander of The Reestablishment arrives at the base with his own plans for Juliette, plans that Warner is unwilling to allow. By shifting the point of view to the story's antagonist, "Destroy Me" reframes Warner not simply as a villain but as a wounded, obsessive figure shaped by his relationship with a controlling and cruel father. The book explores themes of power, obsession, control, and the ways cruelty can be inherited.
As a bridging novella, "Destroy Me" is designed to add emotional and psychological texture to the larger series rather than advance its core plot. It became a fan favorite for complicating readers' understanding of Warner and setting up the character's larger arc across the subsequent Shatter Me books, contributing to the series' popularity among young adult readers.
Key characters
- Aaron WarnerNarrator and protagonist; the young leader of Sector 45
- JulietteThe girl Warner is obsessed with, who shot him to escape
- The Supreme CommanderWarner's cruel father and head of The Reestablishment
- AdamSoldier who helped Juliette escape
- KenjiSoldier who helped Juliette escape
- DelalieuWarner's loyal subordinate officer
Book details
- First published
- 2012
- Length
- 111 pages
- Reading time
- 2 hours
- Author
- Tahereh Mafi
- Genre
- Fantasy
- Goodreads rating
- 3.94 (377k ratings) →
Series & reading order
- 1 Shatter Me
- 2 Destroy Me
- 3 Unravel Me
- 4 Fracture Me
- 5 Ignite Me
- 6 Restore Me
- 7 Shadow Me
- 8 Defy Me
- 9 Reveal Me
- 10 Imagine Me
- 11 Believe Me
If you liked this, read…
- 1Unravel MeThe next novel in the Shatter Me series, continuing directly after this novella
- 2Shatter MeThe first book in the series, which this novella retells events from
Keep reading
Mind Games
Shatter Me
Volition
Shadow Me
Restore Me
4.48 Psychosis
Solipsist
Prisoner
American Psycho
The Portable Henry Rollins
Down the Drain
Torture to Her Soul
I Don't Want To Be Crazy
Fall for Anything
Perfect Lies
Wreck Me
Crave
This Shattered World
You Know Where to Find Me
Entangled
The Girl on the Train
Fallout
The Only Girl in the World
A Great and Terrible Beauty
Speechless
Before I Go to Sleep
Black Iris
Her Body and Other Parties
The Princess Diarist
This is Not a Test
Tricks
The Body Electric
The Last Girl
New Moon
Fear Me
Killing Sarai
I Would Leave Me If I Could: A Collection of Poetry
Sometimes Never
Eye Scream
I Am Her...
The Black Prince
Identical
Hold Still
Glass Sword
The Cruel Prince
Prodigy
In This Moment
Beauty from Pain
By the Time You Read This, I'll Be Dead
Girl in Pieces
Henry and June: From "A Journal of Love"--The Unexpurgated Diary of Anaïs Nin
The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath
If I Were You
Breakable
Sloppy Firsts
Left Drowning
Dreamfever
A Voice in the Distance
Broken
Good Me, Bad Me

