Ally Condie Quotes - Page 2

What are the gifts given to we who live Below?""Long life, health, strength, and happiness.""What is the curse of those who live Above?""Short life, illness, weakness, and misery.""Is this fair?""It is fair. It is as the gods decreed at the time of the Divide. Some have to stay Above so that humanity might survive Below.""Then give thanks.

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.

He's in pain. I am, too. It strikes me that perhaps this is part of what we are fighting to choose. Which pain we feel.

Thank you," I tell Xander. "I didn't get anything for you -""It's all right," he says, "but maybe - you could -"He looks into my eyes and I know what he wants. A kiss. Even thought he knows about Ky. Xander and I are still connected; this is still good-bye. I know already that that kiss would be sweet. It would be what he would hold on to, as I hold on to Ky's.But that's something I don't think I can give. "Xander -""It's all right," he was, and then he stands up. I do too, and he reaches for me, pulls me close.

It strikes me that perhaps this is part of what we are fighting to choose. Which pain to feel.

...I do not know how I can feel this much pain and survive, and at the same time know how much I have to live.

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.

I draw in a ragged breath, the kind you take when the pain is too deep to cry, when you can't cry because all you are is pain, and if you let some of it out, you might cease to exist. I want to do something to make this better, even though I know that nothing can change the fact of my father gone and under ground.

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,

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.

Ky still looks at me and I wonder for a moment if he is going to ask me what I am thinking about. But of course, he doesn't. He doesn't learn things by asking questions... He learns by watching.

Isn't it funny how the memories you cherish before a breakup can become your worst enemies afterwards? The thoughts you loved to think about, the memories you wanted to hold up to the light and view from every angle--it suddenly seems a lot safer to lock them in a box, far from the light of day and throw away the key. It's not an act of bitterness. It's an act if self-preservation. It's not always a bad idea to stay behind the window and look out at life instead, is it?

Sometimes paper is only paper," my mothers says. "Words are just words. Ways to capture the real thing. Don't be afraid to remember that."I know what she means. Writing, painting, singing--it cannot stop everything. Cannot halt death in its tracks. But perhaps it can make the pause between death's footsteps sound and look and feel beautiful, can make the space of waiting a place where you can linger without as much fear. For we are all walking each other to our deaths, and the journey there between footsteps makes up our lives.

For we are all walking each other to our deaths, and the journey between footsteps makes up our lives.

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," I say."Angels?""You know. The ones in the old stories. How they can fly to heaven." "Do you think anyone believes in them anymore?" He asks."I don't know. No. Do you?""I believe in you," he says, his voice hushed and almost reverent. "That's more faith than I ever thought I'd have.

I wonder if I will ever have the strength to hold onto something. Or if I will always be someone who destroys.

And I'll tell her that I don't want my life to be samples and scraps. A taste of everything but a meal of nothing.

For we are all walking each other to our deaths, and the journey between footsteps makes up our lives

That’s how I know they are dreams. Because the simple and plain and everyday things are the ones that we can never have. (Cassia Reyes)

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 even know when it is." And he says, "Don't worry about that" and I say, "What can I do?" and he answers, "Let me believe in this, all of this, and you believe it too."And I do.

Because I feel no anger toward my mother. Only loss, and loss is a feeling you can’t fight your way out of as easily.

It is strange how we hold on to the pieces of the past while we wait for our futures.

I want to reach out and grab his hand and hold it to me, right over my heart, right where it aches the most. I don't know if doing that would heal me or make my heart break entirely, but either way this constant hungry waiting would be over.

at first when the rain fell from the sky so wide and deepit smelled like sage, my favorite smellI went up on the plateau to watch it cometo see the gifts it always broughtbut this rain changed from blue to black and leftnothing.

Once you want something, everything changes. Now I want everything. I feel it so much that I am water, a river of want,pooled in the shape of a girl.

If you stay here, you become lost. And no one can find you. I like lost.

Reaching and reached. Cassia

She's right. We would compose poems about love and tell stories that have been heard in some form before. But it would be our first time feeling and telling.

It dances on the air for a moment before it falls, too. A fresh gust of wind almost saves it, but a worker catches sight of it and lifts a tube up to suck the paper from the air, to suck the words from the sky.I'm sorry, Grandfather.