Four: A Divergent Collection

One thing I know: For helping me forget how awful the world is, I prefer her to alcohol.

I stopped allowing myself to dream, because it was more painful to long for things and never get them than to deal with whatever was in front of me.

I want some kind of reminder that while wounds heal, they don't disappear forever- I carry them everywhere, always, and that is the way of things, the way of scars.

The ability to think isn't exclusive to erudite

I'll have to keep looking for more of them, more brief moments of freedom in a world that refuses to allow it.

One Choice, Breaks free of his past One Choice, Embraces his future One Choice, Exposes the dangers One Choice, Changes him- forever One Choice will free him

I'm not sure bravery is something you acquire more of with age, like wisdom --but maybe here, in Dauntless, bravery is the highest form of wisdom, the acknowledgement that life can and should be lived without fear.

Intentions are the only thing they care about. They try to make you think they care about what you do, but they don't. They don't want you to act a certain way, they want you to think a certain way. So you're easy to understand. So you wont pose a threat to them.

I am not Tobias Eaton, not anymore, never again. I am Dauntless.

Openness is a habit you form over time, and not a switch you flip whenever you want to.

I don't have the right word for how she looks, but even now, with parts of her face swollen and discolored, there's something striking about her, something I haven't seen before. 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'll have to start by telling her my name.

I will not belong to anyone but myself.

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.

I still want to smack him. Or remind him that the last transfer we had from Abnegation, who is sitting right next to him, managed to knock out some of his teeth, so who knows what this next one will do.

And I stand in the hallway, alone, grinning like an idiot.

I want her, in a way I haven't felt before, not just some kind of mindless physical drive but a real, specific desire. Not for someone, just for her.

This is how the Dauntless mourn: by chasing grief into the oblivion of alcohol and leaving it there.

But there is something appealing about it here too, a freedom, a refusal to belong to theses arbitrary categories we've made for ourselves.

Rule number one for not being creepy,” she says. “Announce your presence in a room if another person doesn’t see you come in.

Here, I've learned to defend myself, I've learned to be stronger, but one thing I haven't learned, won't let myself learn, is how to enjoy causing someone else pain. If I'm going to become Dauntless, I'm going to do it on my terms, even if that means that a part of me will always be a Stiff.

How is it possible to live the same story twice from different vantage points?

That's what I really want - to shed all the people who want to form and shape me, one by one, and learn instead to form and shape myself.

You know, the kind of person who gets this tattoo is probably the kind that should keep it very quiet," she says, looking at me from the corner of her eye. "Or else someone will start thinking they're Divergent.

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.

We should come up with another name for you," he says casually. "Something tougher than 'Stiff'. Like 'Blade' or 'Killer' or something.

Now it seems like no matter what I decide, I'll be betraying someone.

But becoming fearless isn’t the point. That’s impossible. It’s learning how to control your fear, and how to be free from it, that’s the point.