"I glanced down at my Percy uniform, wondering if the administration knew the burgundy jackets and gray skirts we had to wear were the same colors that many doormen in the city had."

"Jeremiah watched her dance a hot loaf of bread from the oven to the table and wondered again how his father could have just fallen for someone else. Yeah, over and over, his father had tried to explain it to him, and each time Jeremiah thought he finally understood. But then he'd come home some evening and find his mother sitting in front of the television in the empty living room and his heart would tighten inside his chest. She looked lonely and lost sitting in the half-light."

"If this. If that. Would his life always be filled with "ifs"?"

""Last Saturday, after they left the library, he and Ellie had been walking alone Fifth Avenue holding hands when these white boys started acting stupid--saying stuff like "jungle fever" and "who turned out the lights?" Miah had clenched his jaw and held tighter to Ellie's hand. Walk through the rain, Ellie had said."

"Marion and my father had been right—Percy Academy did get me into a good college. When the letter came, Marion held it up proudly. "A thick envelope," she said. "You know what that means." Yes, I knew what it meant. All spring the envelopes had been coming—thin ones meant one-page rejections. Thick ones meant acceptances and more paperwork."

"I think only once in your life do you find someone that you say, "Hey, this is the person I want to spend the rest of my time on this earth with." And if you miss it, or walk away from it, or even maybe, blink—it's gone."

"This is how the time moves—an hour here, a day somewhere, and then and then it's night and then it's morning. A clock ticking on a shelf. A small child running to school, a father coming home. Time moves over us and past us, and the feeling of lips pressed against lips fades into memory. A picture yellows at its edges. A phone rings in its empty room."

"Times like that, I hate white people. Then I have to ask myself, How can I hate white people and love you?" He smiled. "And I don't know how to answer that."

"Time comes to us softly, slowly. It sits besides us for a while. Then, long before we are ready, it moves on."

"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."

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

"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."

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

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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?"

"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."

"Yeah. Rose." Jill sighed and stared vacantly ahead. "She's all he sees when he closes his eyes. Flashing dark eyes and a body full of fire and energy. No matter how much he tries to forget her, no matter how much he drinks ... she's always there. He can't escape her."

"Adrian paled and went perfectly still as he stared at the newcomer, and in that moment, all my hopes for him came crashing down. Earlier, I’d been certain that if Adrian could just stay away from his past and any traumatic events, he’d be able to find a purpose and steady himself. Well, it looked like his past had found him, and if this didn’t qualify as a traumatic event, I didn’t know what did. Adrian’s new research partner stepped through the door, and I knew the uneasy peace we’d just established in Palm Springs was about to shatter. Dimitri Belikov had arrived."

"But today we honor your differences.They have determined your future."

"But at the same time he was filled with fear. He did not know what his selection meant. He did not know what he was to become. Or what would become of him."

"It didn't worry him. How could someone not fit in? The community was so meticulously ordered, the choices so carefully made."

"His mind reeled. Now, empowered to ask questions of utmost rudeness-and promised answers-he could, conceivably (though it was almost unimaginable), ask someone, some adult, his father perhaps: "Do you lie?" But he would have no way of knowing if the answer he received was true."

"His feelings were too complicated this evening. He wanted to shared them, but wasn’t eager to begin the process of sifting through his own complicated emotions, even with the help that he knew his parents could give."

"No one mentioned such things; it was not a rule, but was considered rude to call attention to things that were unsettling or different about individuals."

"The Old were always given the highest respect."

"Better to steer clear of an occasion governed by a rule which would be so easy to break."

"There's much more. There's all that goes beyond—all that is Elsewhere—and all that goes back, and back, and back. I received all of those, when I was selected. And here in this room, all alone, I re-experience them again and again. It is how wisdom comes. And how we shape our future."

"It was not safe to spend time looking back."

"It was a game he had often played with the other children, a game of good guys and bad guys, a harmless pasttime that used up their contained energy and ended only when they all lay posed in freakish postures on the round. He had never recognized it before as a game of war."

"Jonas felt a ripping sensation inside."

"The worst part of holding the memories is not the pain. It's the loneliness of it. Memories need to be shared."

"But now Jonas had experienced real sadness. He had felt grief. He knew that there was no quick comfort for emotions like those."

"Honor," he said firmly. "I have great honor. So will you. But you will find that is not the same as power."

"For the first time, he heard something that he knew to be music. He heard people singing. Behind him, across vast distances of space and time, from the place he had left, he thought he heard music too. But perhaps, it was only an echo."

"..."Still," he said slowly, almost to himself, "I did like the light they made. And the warmth.""

"Do you love me?"

"There was an awkward silence for a moment. Then Father gave a little chuckle. "Jonas. You, of all people. Precision of language, please!""

"I liked the feeling of love," [Jonas] confessed. He glanced nervously at the speaker on the wall, reassuring himself that no one was listening. "I wish we still had that," he whispered. "Of course," he added quickly, "I do understand that it wouldn't work very well. And that it's much better to be organized the way we are now. I can see that it was a dangerous way to live."

"There are so many good memories, The Giver reminded Jonas."

"In one ecstatic memory he had ridden a gleaming brown horse across a field that smelled of damp grass, and had dismounted beside a small stream from which both he and the horse drank cold, clear water. Now he understood about animals; and in the moment that the horse turned from the stream and nudged Jonas's shoulder affectionately with its head, he perceived the bonds between animal and human."

"What do you mean? Jonas asked. Amusement was not at all what he had anticipated."

"He had walked through woods, and sat at night beside a campfire. Although he had through the memories learned about the pain of loss and loneliness, now he gained, too, an understanding of solitude and its joy."

"They have never known pain, he thought. The realization made him feel desperately lonely."

"The agony of the fractured leg began to seem no more than a mild discomfort as The Giver led Jonas firmly, little by little, in the deep and terrible suffering of the past."

"Overwhelmed by pain, he lay there in the fearsome stench for hours, listened to the men and animals die, and learned what warfare meant."

"Jonas tried to be brave. He remembered that the Chief Elder had said he was brave."

"Your father means that you used a very generalized word, so meaningless that it has become almost obsolete, his mother explained carefully."