“People, I have discovered, are layers and layers of secrets. You believe you know them, that you understand them, but their motives are always hidden from you, buried in their own hearts. You will never know them, but sometimes you decide to trust them.”
“We both have war inside us. Sometimes it keeps us alive. Sometimes it threatens to destroy us.”
“Cruelty does not make a person dishonest, the same way bravery does not make a person kind.”
“Sleep,” he says. “I'll fight the bad dreams off if they come to get you.” “With what?” “My bare hands, obviously.”
“Got that gun?” Peter says to Tobias. “No,” says Tobias, “I figured I would shoot the bullets out of my nostrils, so I left it upstairs.”
“It reminds me why I chose Dauntless in the first place: not because they are perfect, but because they are alive. Because they are free.”
“No matter how long you train someone to be brave, you never know if they are or not until something real happens.”
“I’ll be your family now,” he says.
“I love you,” I say.
I said that once, before I went to Erudite headquarters, but he was asleep then. I don’t know why I didn’t say it when he could hear it. Maybe I was afraid to trust him with something so personal as my devotion. Or afraid that I did not know what it was to love someone. But now I think the scary thing was not saying it before it was almost too late. Not saying it before it was almost too late for me.
I am his, and he is mine, and it has been that way all along.
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.”
His skin is slippery with water and he smells like sweat and my shirt sticks to his arms when he slides them around me. He presses his face to my neck and kisses me right above the collarbone, kisses my cheek, kisses my lips.
“I love you, too,” he says.”
“Like a wild animal, the truth is too powerful to remain caged.”
“I’m not important. Everyone will do just fine without me,” I say.
“Who cares about everyone? What about me?”
“Grief is not as heavy as guilt, but it takes more away from you.”
“I am his, and he is mine, and it has been that way all along.”
“I pout my lower lip for a second, but then I grin as the pieces come together.
"That's why you like me!" I exclaim. "Because you're not very nice either! It makes so much more sense now.”
“The truth has a way of changing people's plans.”
“We're all right, you know,' he says quietly. 'You and me. Okay?' My chest aches, and I nod. 'Nothing else is all right.' His whisper tickles my cheek. 'But we are.”
“I read somewhere, one, that 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 think we cry to release the animal parts of us without losing our humanity. Because inside of me is a beast that snarls, and growls, and strains toward freedom, toward Tobias, and, above all, towards life. And as hard as I try, I cannot kill it.”
“Insurgent, he says. Noun. A person who acts in opposition to the established authority, who is not necessarily regarded as a belligerent.”
“You die, I die too.” Tobias looks over his shoulder at me. “I asked you not to do this. You made your decision. These are the repercussions.”
“Sometimes,” he says, sliding his arm across my shoulders, “people just want to be happy, even if it’s not real.”
“I could never hurt him enough to make his betrayal stop hurting. And it hurts, in every part of my body.”
“You look older.”
“Yes, well. The passage of time tends to do that to a person.”
“Do remember, though, that sometimes the people you oppress become mightier than you would like.”
“Killing you is not the worst thing they can do to you," I say. "Controlling you is.”
“I love Tris the Divergent, who makes decisions apart from faction loyalty, who isn’t some faction archetype. But the Tris who’s trying as hard as she can to destroy herself … I can’t love her.”
I want to scream. But not because I’m angry, because I’m afraid he’s right. My hands shake and I grab the hem of my shirt to steady them.
He touches his forehead to mine and closes his eyes. “I believe you’re still in there,” he says against my mouth. “Come back.”
“And sometimes, if you want the truth, you have to demand it.”
“I do know who you are. I just needed to be reminded.”
“So, the thing we’re all not talking about,” he says. He gestures to me. “You almost died, a sadistic pansycake saved you, and now we’re all waging some serious war with the factionless as allies.”
“Pansycake?” says Christina.
“Dauntless slang.” Lynn smirks. “Supposed to be a huge insult, only no one uses it anymore.”
“Because it’s so offensive,” says Uriah, nodding.
“No. Because it’s so stupid no Dauntless with any sense would speak it, let alone think it. Pansycake. What are you, twelve?”
“And a half,” he says.”
“I think it would be easier to fight in a dress,” says Marlene, tapping her chin. “It would give your legs freer movement. And who really cares if you flash people your underwear, as long as you’re kicking the crap out of them?”
Lynn goes silent, like she recognizes that as a spark of brilliance but can’t bring herself to admit it.
“What’s this about flashing underwear?” says Uriah, sidestepping a bunk. “Whatever it is, I’m in.”
“Be careful, though."
"Aren't I always?"
"No, I think the word for how you usually are is 'reckless.”
“May the peace of God be with you," she says, her voice low, "even in the midst of trouble."
"Why would it?" I say softly, so no one else can hear. "After all I've done..."
"It isn't about you," she says. "It is a gift. You cannot earn it, or it ceases to be a gift.”
“It takes years as a woman to unlearn what you have been taught to be sorry for. It takes years to find your voice and seize your real estate.”
“The avenues he had taken as a young man had pretty much dictated what the remaining years of his life would be like.”
“No theory ever benefited by the application of data, Amy. Data kills theories. A theory has no better time than when it's lying there naked, pure, unsullied by facts. Let's just keep it that way for a while."
"So you don't really have a theory?"
"Clueless."
"You lying bag of fish heads."
"I can fire you, you know. Even if Clay was the one that hired you, I'm not totally superfluous to this operation yet. I'm kind of in charge. I can fire you. Then how will you live?"
"I'm not getting paid."
"See, right there. Perfectly good concept ruined by the application of fact.”
“Everybody wants something at the expense of everybody else and nobody thinks much of the other fellow,” Truman”
“When someone loves you up one side and down the other like that, you make every effort to stick around.”
BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.
We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.
Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.