Now he's [Cinna] arranging things around my living room: Clothing, fabrics, and sketchbooks with designs he's drawn. I pick one up and examine one of the dresses I supposedly created. You know, I think I show a lot of promise," I say. Get dressed, you worthless thing.

Fire beats roses again.

What I need is the dandelion in the spring. The bright yellow that means rebirth instead of destruction. The promise that life can go on, no matter how bad our losses. That it can be good again.

I see now that the circumstances of ones birth are irrelevent. it is what you do with the gift of life that determines who you are

They can fatten me up. They can give me a full body polish, dress me up, and make me beautiful again. They can design dream weapons that come to life in my hands, but they will never again brainwash me into the necessity of using them. I no longer feel allegiance to these monsters called human beings, despite being one myself.

Rue, who when you ask her what she loves most in the world, replies, of all things, “Music.

"Katniss," Gale says softly. I recognize that voice. It's the same one he uses to approach wounded animals before he delivers a deathblow. I Instinctively raise my hand to block his words but he catches it and holds on tightly. "Don't," I whisper. But Gale is not one to keep secrets from me. "Katniss, there is no District Twelve."