"Since I was young, I have always known this: Life damages us, every one. We can't escape that damage. But now, I am also learning this: We can be mended. We mend each other."

"Why do you care? I ask myself. He betrayed you. He didn't try to stop your execution. I don't care. I do care. I don't know."

"I know what my mother is—she is someone for whom the end of a thing justifies the means of getting there, the same as my father, and the same, sometimes, as me."

"I thought that when I received Christina's forgiveness, the hard part of Will's death would be over. But when you kill someone you love, the hard part is never over. It just gets easier to distract yourself from what you've done."

"I squeeze her shoulder with one hand and run my other hand over her hair, still surprised when her hair stops above her neck instead of below it. I was happy when she cut it, because it was hair for a warrior and not a girl, and I knew that was what she would need."

"ONE CHOICE WILL DEFINE YOU"

""Can we do it please? I would like to avoid having to break you out of prison," I say. Suddenly desperate for comfort, I reach for Tris's hand, and she brings her fingers up to meet mine. We are not people who touch each other carelessly; every point of contact between us feels important, a rush of energy and relief."

"This isn't about what would they would want, Tris."

"I look around. We are inside the incinerator, which would be completely dark if not for the lines of light glowing in the shape of a small door on the other side. The floor is solid metal in some places and metal grating in others. Everything smells like rotting garbage and fire. "Don't say I never took you anywhere nice," Peter says. "Wouldn't dream of it," I say."

""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's strange how time can make a place shrink, make its strangeness ordinary."

""I don't…" I sound like I am being strangled. "My family is all dead, or traitors; how can I…" I am not making any sense. The sobs take over my body, my mind, everything. He gathers me to him, and bathwater soaks my legs. His hold is tight. I listen to his heartbeat and, after a while, find a way to let the rhythm calm me. "I'll be your family now," he says."

"Peter slips an electrode beneath the collar of my shirt and presses it to my chest, right over my heart. He then attaches a wire to the electrode and switched on the heart monitor. I hear my heartbeat, fast and strong. Soon, where that steady rhythm was, there will be nothing. And then rising from within me is a single thought: I don't want to die."

"I nod. Its sounds like a good plan—a smart plan. But I don't believe him—I don't believe it's more important to move forward that to find out the truth. When I found out that I was Divergent…when I found out that Erudite would attack Abnegation…those revelations changed everything. The truth has a way of changing a person's plans."

"One choice can destroy you"

"Tobias Eaton is a powerful name."

"You are not your parents. You are a sixteen-year-old girl—" I grit my teeth. "How dare you—" "—who doesn't understand the value of sacrifice lies in its necessity, not in throwing your life away! And if you do that again, you and I are done." I wasn't expecting him to say that. "You're giving me an ultimatum?" I try to keep my voice down so the others can't hear. He shakes his head. "No, I'm telling you a fact." His lips are just a line. "If you throw yourself into danger for no reason again, you will have become nothing more than a Dauntless adrenaline junkie looking for a hit, and I'm not going to help you do it." He spits the words out bitterly. "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 believe you're still in there," he says against my mouth. "Come back."

"Breathing—who cares about breathing? I turn from the sight, listening to my heart beat in my ears. Christina's mouth moves. I ignore her, and walk to the door and down the stairs and down the hallway and into the elevator. The doors close and as I drop to the earth, just as Marlene did a"

"I read somewhere, once, 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 me is a beast that snarls and growls, and strains toward freedom, toward Tobias, and above all, toward life. And as hard as I try, I cannot kill it. So I sob into my hands instead."

"I'm going to die tomorrow. It has been a long time since I felt certainty about anything, so this feels like a gift. Tonight, nothing. Tomorrow, whatever comes after life."

"My toes are cold. My feet stick to the tiles. We turn a corner, and I hear muffled shouts. At first I can't tell what the voice is saying, but as we draw closer, it takes shape. "I want to…her!" Tobias. "I…see her!" I glance at Peter. "I can't speak to him on last time, can I?" Peter shakes his head. "There's a window, though. Maybe if he see's you he'll finally shut up." He takes me down a dead-end corridor that's only six feet long. At the end is a door, and Peter is right, there's a small window near the top, about a foot above my head. "Tris!" Tobias's voice is even clearer here. "I want to see her!" I reach up and press my hand to the glass. The shouts stop, and his face appears behind the glass. His eyes are red; his face, blotchy. Handsome. He stares at me for a few seconds and then presses his hand to the glass so it lines up with mine. I pretend I can feel the warmth of it through the window."

"“Divergent” clearly has thrills, but it also movingly explores a more common adolescent anxiety — the painful realization that coming into one’s own sometimes means leaving family behind, both ideologically and physically."

"We believe in ordinary acts of bravery, in the courage that drives one person to stand up for another."

"Tris is not your usual Mary Sue. She’s selfish. She’s manipulative. She’s vindictive as hell – and I LOVED that about this book."

"I will be my undoing If I become my obsession."

"Fear doesn't shut you down; it wakes you up."

"Dishonesty is a veil that shields one person from another."

"His straight eyebrows are drawn low over his eyes. My stomach writhes, partly because I know he makes a good point but I don't want to admit it, and partly because I want something I don't know how to express; I want to press against the space between us until it disappears. I nod. "But please, when you see an opportunity…" He presses his hand to my cheek, cold and strong, and tilts my head up so I have to look at him. His eyes glint. They look almost predatory. "Ruin them." I laugh shakily. "You're a little scary, Four." "Do me a favor," he says, "and don't call me that." "What should I call you, then?" "Nothing." He takes his hand from my face. "Yet.""

"I sniff, wipe my face one more time, and smooth down my hair. "Do I look like I've been crying?" I say. "Hmm." He leans in close, narrowing his eyes like he's inspecting my face. A smile tugs at the corner of his mouth. Even closer, so we would be breathing the same air—if I could remember how to breathe. "No, Tris," he says. A more serious look replaces his smile as he adds, "You look tough as nails.""

"Somewhere inside me is a merciful, forgiving person. Somewhere there is a girl who tries to understand what people are going through, who accepts that people do evil things and that desperation leads them to darker places than they ever imagined, I swear she exists, and she hurts for the repentant boy I see in front of me."

"Intelligence is a gift, not a right. It must be wielded not as a weapon but as a tool for the betterment of others."

"I don't reward preying on the weak. That is cowardice."

"Every time I think about the word "Divergent", I hear Tori's warning—and now my mother's warning too. Don't tell anyone. Dangerous."

"The Dauntless-born initiates are like a pack of dogs. If I act the wrong way, they won't let me run with them."

"The uniform pounding of feet in my ears and the homogeneity of the people around me makes me believe that I could choose this. I could be subsumed into Abnegation's hive mind, projecting always outward."

"Faction customs dictate even idle behavior and supersede individual preference. I doubt all the Erudite want to study all the time, or that every Candor enjoys a lively debate, but they can't defy the norms of their factions any more than I can."

"I think it's important to protect people. To stand up for people. Like you did for me."

"My heart beats so hard it hurts, and I can't scream and I can't breathe, but I also feel everything, every vein and every fiber, every bone and every nerve, all awake and buzzing in my body as if charged with electricity. I am pure adrenaline."

"I used to think the Dauntless were fearless. That is how they seemed, anyway. But maybe what I saw as fearless was actually fear under control."

"Strength, confidence, humility, love. Hector Ricardo's four tenets of a happy life."

"You were right, it’s one big open-air asylum. Virtue nodded solemnly and glanced back at the church. Yeah, but there’s a couple of saints mixed in with the crazies."

"If you ever know a man who tries to drown his sorrows, kindly inform him his sorrows know how to swim."

"Do you really want to kill a little boy? No matter what your so-called God tells you, isn’t it wrong? When your beliefs tell you to murder, doesn’t a voice inside you tell you it is wrong?"

"God doesn’t ask for human sacrifices, Astrid said. Doesn’t He? Brittney smirked. What am I, Astrid? What are any of us? And what was Jesus? A sacrifice to appease a vengeful God, Astrid. Astrid had nothing to say. She knew all the right answers. But the will was gone. Did she herself even believe in God anymore? Why argue over a phantom? They were two fools arguing over lies."

"Right and wrong doesn’t come from God. It’s inside us. And we know it. And even if God appears right in front of us, and tells us to our faces to murder, it’s still wrong."

"Being in love is a very strange thing. Your thoughts constantly drift towards this other person, no matter what you're doing...And on top of this constant dream state you're in, your stomach feels like it's connected to a bungee cord, and it bounces and bounces until it finally lodges itself next to your heart."

"It ends with all of us dead, doesn’t it? she asked Little Pete. It ends when evil wins and we all surrender. The sad thing was, they were already lost, all of them."

"Of course he’s evil, Brittney enthused. Of course! Evil, good, there’s no difference, don’t you see that? They’re the same thing. Like me and Drake. Yin and yang, Sam. Two in one, a duality."

"Power would go to whoever won this fight. Still Caine hesitated. A big, warm bed. A beautiful girl to share it with. Food. Water. Everything he needed, just a few miles away on the island. The logical, rational answer was obvious. Which is why the world stays messed up, Caine said under his breath. People aren’t rational."