“ For one entire day I let his kiss burn on my cheek and into my blood and I don't push the memory away... This kiss, these words, they feel like beginning. Ally Condie
“ The earth reflects the sky and the sky meets the earth and, every now and then, if we're lucky, we have a moment to see how small we are. Ally Condie
“ It was a little thing, a baby tree, but still it tangled with things around it and required care to move. And when she pulled it out, it's roots still clung to Earth from it's old home. Ally Condie
“ It strikes me that perhaps this is part of what we are fighting to choose. Which pain to feel. Ally Condie
“ They were too much to carryso i left them behindfor a new life, in a new placebut no one forgot who i wasi didn'tand neither did the people who watchthey watched for yearsthey watch now Ally Condie
“ Did you know Grandfather would give the poems to me?” I ask.“We thought he might,” my mother says.“Why didn’t you stop him?”“We didn’t want to take away your choices,” my mother says.“But Grandfather… Ally Condie
“ Good-bye,” I say to Grandfather, and to my father, and I hold the tube in the river and pause a moment. We hold the choices of our fathers and mothers in our hands and when we cling on or let them sli… Ally Condie
“ Until now, I've never been able to see while I fly, and I feel a dizzying lightness as I look out at the land bel Ally Condie
“ This is a difficult balance, telling the truth: how much to share, how much to keep, which truths will wound but not ruin, which will cut too deep to heal. Ally Condie
“ But if you were matched," I say softly, "What do you think she'd be like?""You," he says, almost before I've finished. "You, Ally Condie
“ What did you think about?" I wish I could tell him that I thought about him, but I lied to him once and I won't do it again. And besides, I wasn't thinking about Xander either. "I thought about angels… Ally Condie
“ Ky gives me three gifts for my birthday. A poem, a kiss and the hopeless, beautiful belief that things might work. When I open my eyes... I say, "I didn't give you anything for your birthday, i don't… Ally Condie
“ If you love someone, if someone loved you, if they taught you to write and made it so you could speak, how can you do nothing at all? You might as well take their words out of the dirt and try to snat… Ally Condie
“ All of the things that were shown in early studies to be good for longevity—happy marriages, healthy bodies—are ours to have. We live long,good lives. We die on our eightieth birthdays, surrounded by… Ally Condie
“ The pain wants to eat me away. I wish I could have one without the other, but that's the problem with being alive. You don't usually get to choose the measure of suffering or the degree of joy you hav… Ally Condie
“ Inside me are the real things that give me strength—my thoughts, the small stones of my own choosing. They tumble in my mind, some polished from frequent turning, some new and rough, some that cut. Ally Condie
