Suzanne Collins

"The Hunger Games is a reality television program. An extreme one, but that's what it is. And while I think some of those shows can succeed on different levels, there's also the voyeuristic thrill, watching people being humiliated or brought to tears or suffering physically. And that's what I find very disturbing. There's this potential for desensitizing the audience so that when they see real tragedy playing out on the news, it doesn't have the impact it should. It all just blurs into one program. And I think it's very important not just for young people, but for adults to make sure they're making the distinction. Because the young soldier's dying in the war in Iraq, it's not going to end at the commercial break. It's not something fabricated, it's not a game. It's your life."

"“In our world, I rank music somewhere between hair ribbons and rainbows in terms of usefulness.”"

"BEWARE UNDERLANDERS, TIME HANGS BY A THREAD, THE HUNTERS ARE HUNTED, WHITE WATER RUNS RED. THE GNAWERS WILL STRIKE TO EXTINGUISH THE REST. THE HOPE OF THE HOPELESS RESIDES IN A QUEST."

"Luxa and I do not serve food, we are royalty." "Yeah, well, I'm the warrior and Boots is a princess. And you two are going to get pretty hungry if you're waiting for me to serve you." "Tell him, boy. Tell him your country fought a war so you wouldn't have to answer to kings and queens."

"You know, where I come from, we don't think much of someone who sneaks up and stabs a person in their sleep."

"I thought I detected in you a sense of fair play. Most dangerous in the Underland, boy."

"So, what brings the Children's Crusade into the Firelands? I don't flatter myself you were looking for me." "We got lost on a picnic."

"If you think back, my comments were very open to interpretation. And you happen to be easily misled. As for the queen, who is difficult to lead anywhere... I have always been and intend to be entirely straightforward."

"Gregor turned on the television and flipped through the channels. He stopped at the news. A bomb had blown up in a marketplace somewhere, killing forty-nine. There were body parts and smoke and relatives wailing. The next story was about refugees dying on the road, driven from their homes by an enemy army. The news anchor was just starting to show a grainy video of a soldier who had been taken hostage when his mother reached in and switched off the television. She looked so sad. "I think you've seen enough, Gregor." It had all looked pretty familiar. The bodies, the fear, the desperation. These things had always been here in the Overland, he supposed, but he had never really paid any attention to them until now."

"Winning means fame and fortune. Losing means certain death. The Hunger Games have begun."

"She must have had bad dreams and climbed in with our mother. Of course, she did. This is the day of the reaping."

"So I learned to hold my tongue and to turn my features into an indifferent mask so that no one could ever read my thoughts."

"And may the odds—" He tosses a berry in a high arc toward me. I catch it in my mouth and break the delicate skin with my teeth. The sweet tartness explodes across my tongue. "—be ever in your favor!"

"Then something unexpected happens. At least, I don't expect it because I don’t think of District 12 as a place that cares about me. But a shift has occurred since I stepped up to take Prim's place, and now it seems I have become someone precious. At first one, then another, then almost every member of the crowd touches the three middle fingers of their left hand to their lips and holds it out to me. It is an old and rarely used gesture of our district, occasionally seen at funerals. It means thanks, it means admiration, it means good-bye to someone you love."

""So you're supposed to give us some advice", I say to Haymitch. "Here's some advice. Stay Alive," says Haymitch and bursts out laughing."

""I want the audience to recognize you when you're in the arena," says Cinna dreamily. "Katniss, the girl who was on fire." It crosses my mind that Cinna's calm and normal demeanor masks a complete madman."

"You don't forget the face of the person who was your last hope."

"So, here's what you do. You win, you go home. She can‘t turn you down then, eh?" says Caesar encouragingly. "I don't think it‘s going to work out. Winning...won‘t help in my case," says Peeta. "Why ever not?" says Caesar, mystified. Peeta blushes beet red and stammers out. "Because...because...she came here with me."

""Only I keep wishing I could think of a way to...to show the Capitol they don't own me. That I'm more than just a piece in their Games," says Peeta."

"Ladies and gentlemen, let the Seventy-fourth Hunger Games begin!"

"I wonder what Gale made of the incident for a moment and then I push the whole thing out of my mind becouse for some reason Gale and Peeta do not coexist well together in my thoughts."

"I enter a nightmare from which I wake repeatedly only to find a greater terror awaiting me. All the things I dread most, all the things I dread for others manifest in such vivid detail I can’t help but believe they're real. Each time I wake, I think, At last, this is over, but it isn't. It's only the beginning of a new chapter of torture. How many ways do I watch Prim die? Relive my father's last moments? Feel my own body ripped apart? This is the nature of the tracker jacker venom, so carefully created to target the place where fear lives in your brain."

""Come on," says Cato. He thrusts a spear into the hands of the boy from District 3, and they head off in the direction of the fire. The last thing I hear as they enter the woods is Cato saying, "When we find her, I kill her in my own way, and no one interferes." Somehow I don't think he's talking about Rue. She didn't drop a nest of tracker jackers on him."

"Deep in the meadow, hidden far away A cloak of leaves, a moonbeam ray Forget your woes and let your troubles lay And when again it's morning, they'll wash away. Here it's safe, here it's warm Here the daisies guard you from every harm The final lines are barely audible. Here your dreams are sweet and tomorrow brings them true Here is the place where I love you."

"Remember, we're madly in love, so it‘s all right to kiss me anytime you feel like it."

"And while I was talking, the idea of actually losing Peeta hit me again and I realized how much I don't want him to die. And it's not about the sponsors. And it's not about what will happen back home. And it's not just that I don't want to be alone. It's him. I do not want to lose the boy with the bread."

"Then for the next eleven years, I tried to work up the nerve to talk to you.". "Without success," I add. "Without success."

""You're not leaving me here alone," I say. Because if he dies, I'll never go home, not really. I'll spend the rest of my life in this arena trying to think my way out."

"It's like being home again, when they bring in the hopelessly mangled person from the mine explosion, or the woman in her third day of labor, or the famished child struggling against pneumonia and my mother and Prim, they wear that same look on their faces. Now is the times to run away tho the woods, to hide in the trees until the patient is long gone and in another part of the Seam the hammers make the coffin. But I'm held here both by the hovercraft walls and the same force that holds the loved ones of the dying. How often I've seen them, ringed around our kitchen table and I thought, Why don't they leave? Why do they stay to watch? And now I know. It's because you have no choice."

""One more time? For the audience?" he says. His voice wasn't angry. It's hollow, which is worse. Already the boy with the bread is slipping away from me. I take his hand, holding on tightly, preparing for the cameras, and dreading the moment when I finally have to let go."

"Hendrix has read the interviews where Collins has flatly denied knowing about Battle Royale before she wrote The Hunger Games. But Hendrix says the plots are eerily similar: school kids chosen by lottery, given a variety of weapons and survival packs and taken to a remote, restricted area to take part in a televised death match."

"Just like Battle Royale, it's supposed to communicate war's horrors to young teenagers."

"Hendrix says one of the most important things Battle Royale and The Hunger Games share is the idea of teenagers trapped in a ruined society, coerced by grownups into doing horrible things."

"I read The Hunger Games and didn't feel an urge to go on. It's not unlike [my novel] The Running Man, which is about a game where people are actually killed and people are watching: a satire on reality TV."

"You've got to go through it to get to the end of it."

"A shiver goes through me when I think of the proximity of my mother and sister to this man who despises me. Will always despise me. Because I outsmarted his sadistic Hunger Games, made the Capitol look foolish, and consequently undermined his control. All I was doing was trying to keep myself and Peeta alive. Any act of rebellion was purely coincidental. But when the Capitol decrees that only one tribute can live and you have the audacity to challenge it, I guess that’s a rebellion in itself."

"I think we'll make this whole situation a lot simpler by agreeing not to lie to each other," he says. "What do you think?" I think my tongue has frozen and speech will be impossible, so I surprise myself by answering back in a steady voice, "Yes, I think that would save time."

"Whatever problems anyone may have with the Capitol, believe me when I say that if it released its grip on the districts for even a short time, the entire system would collapse." [...] "It must be very fragile, if a handful of berries can bring it down."

"Katniss Everdeen, the girl who was on fire, you have provided a spark that, left unattended, may grow to an inferno that destroys Panem."

"Because sometimes things happen to people and they're not equipped to deal with them. Like me, for instance. Right now."

"No wonder I won the games. No decent person ever does."

"Life in District 12 isn’t really so different from life in the arena. At some point, you have to stop running and turn around and face whoever wants you dead. The hard thing is finding the courage to do it."

"Let them go, I tell myself. Say good-bye and forget them. I do my best, thinking of them one by one, releasing them like birds from the protective cages inside me, locking the doors against their return."

"“When you’re on the chariot this time, no waving, no smiling. I just want you to look straight ahead, as if the entire audience is beneath your notice.” “Finally something I’ll be good at,” I say."

"Suddenly I remember how she volunteered to replace the young, hysterical woman in her district. It couldn't be because she thought she had any chance of winning. She did it to save the girl, just like I volunteered last year to save Prim. And I decide I want her on my team."

""I guess this is a bad time to mention I hung a dummy and painted Seneca Crane's name on it," I say."

"I wish I could freeze this moment, right here, right now, and live in it forever."

"I squint down at my feet and see that my metal plate is surrounded by blue waves that lap up over my boots. Slowly I raise my eyes and take in the water spreading out in every direction. I can only form one clear thought. This is no place for a girl on fire."

"What's going on down there, Katniss? Have they all joined hands? Taken a vow of nonviolence? Tossed the weapons in the sea in defiance of the Capitol?" Finnick asks. "No," I say. "No," Finnick repeats. "Because whatever happened in the past is in the past. And no one in this arena was a victor by chance." He eyes Peeta for a moment. "Except maybe Peeta."

"Poor Finnick. Is this the first time in your life you haven't looked pretty?" I say. "It must be. The sensation's completely new. How have you managed it all these years?"