I guess that’s just part of loving people: You have to give things up. Sometimes you even have to give them up.

When I’m running, there’s always this split second when the pain is ripping through me and I can hardly breathe and all I see is color and blur—and in that split second, right as the pain crests, and becomes too much, and there’s a whiteness going through me, I see something to my left, a flicker of color […]—and I know then, too, that if I only turn my head he’ll be there, laughing, watching me, and holding out his arms. I don’t ever turn my head to look, of course. But one day I will. One day I will, and he’ll be back, and everything will be okay. And until then: I run.

We should be protected from the people who will leave us in the end, from all the people who will disappear or forget us.

Things That Don't Matter When You've Lived the Same Day Six Times and Died on at Least Two of Them: Lunch meats and their relative coolness.

The priests and the scientists are right about one thing: At our heart, at our base, we are no better than animals.

This was what true fear was--that you could never know other people, not completely. That you were always just guessing blind.

Dystopian novels help people process their fears about what the future might look like; further, they usually show that there is always hope, even in the bleakest future.