Allegiant (novel)

"ONE CHOICE WILL DEFINE YOU"

"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."

""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."

"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."

"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 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."

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

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

"My mother wasn't a fool," I say. "She just understood something you didn't. That it's not sacrifice it it's someone else's life you're giving away, it's just evil." I take another step and say, "She taught me all about real sacrifice. That it should be done from love, not misplaced disgust for another person's genetics. That it should be done from necessity, not without exhausting all other options. That it should be one for people who need your strength because they don't have enough of their own."

"Can I be forgiven for all I've done to get here? I want to be. I can. I believe it."

"I keep finding myself stifled by the company of others and then crippled by loneliness when I leave them. I am terrified and I don't even know of what, because I have lost everything already."

"People talk about the pain of grief, but I don't know what they mean. To me, grief is a devastating numbness, every sensation dulled."

"There are so many ways to be brave in this world. Sometimes bravery involves laying down your life for something bigger than yourself, or for someone else. Sometimes it involves giving up everything you have ever known, or everyone you have ever loved, for the sake of something greater. But sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes it is nothing more than gritting your teeth through pain, and the work of every day, the slow walk toward a better life. That is the sort of bravery I must have now."

"Yeah, sometimes life really sucks," she says. "But you know what I'm holding on for?" I raise my eyebrows. She raises hers too, mimicking me. "The moments that don't suck," she says. "The trick is to notice them when they come around."

"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."

"If this is the last message I send you… well, let's just say I hope you burn for this."

"There’s no way to please everyone, because that mythical book with the ending that every single person wants can’t exist—you want different things, each one of you. The only thing I can do, in light of that fact, is write an honest story as best I can."

"I thought about reaching out with my authorial hand and snatching her from that awful situation. I thought about it and I agonized over it. But to me, that felt dishonest and emotionally manipulative. This was the end she had chosen, and I felt she had earned an ending that was as powerful as she was."

"[P]erhaps, taking a cue from Dauntless, Veronica Roth’s intent was to be brave in how she ended the story."

"Not everything needs to have a happily ever after and it fits (for me) that Allegiant doesn’t."