You'd have thought we planned it," says Peeta, giving me just the hint of a smile. "Didn't you?" asks Portia. Her fingers press her eyelids closed as if she's warding off a very bright light. "No," I say looking at Peeta with a new sense of apreciation. "Neither of us even knew what we were going to do before we went in." "And Haymitch?" says Peeta. "We decided we don't want any other allies in the arena." "Good. Then I won't be responsible for you killing off any of my friends with your stupidity," he says.

what is the worst pain? To me, it's always the pain that is present.

Entrails. No hissing. This is the closest we will ever come to love.

I know what blood poisoning is, Katniss," says Peeta. "Even if my mother isn't a healer." I'm jolted back in time, to another wound, another set of bandages. "You said that same thing to me in the first Hunger Games. Real or not real?" "Real," he says. "And you risked your life getting the medicine that saved me?" "Real." I shrug. "You were the reason I was alive to do it.

Just because people starve in a book, doesn't mean that we will starve in the future.

Mutually counting on each other, watching each other's backs, forcing each other to be brave.

And then, if you make it to bedtime, you feel the joy of cheating death out of one more day," she said. "Do you see?