This perplexing, good natured boy who can spin out lies so convincingly to be hopelessly in love with me ... and I admit it there are moments when he makes me believe it myself.

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

I'd begun to think that he'd given up on me in the weeks that had passed. Or that he no longer cared about me. Hated me even. And the idea of losing him forever, my best friend, the only person I'd ever trusted with my secrets, was so painful I couldn't stand it.

I'm on a frosting sailboat, tossed around by blue-green waves, the deck shifting beneath my feet.

The hatred I feel for him, for the phantom girl, for everything, is so real and immediate it chokes me. Gale is mine. I am his. Anything else is unthinkable. Why did it take him being whipped within an inch of his life to see it?

I'm almost there, almost to the barricade, when I thinks she hears me. Because for just a moment, she catches sight of me, her lips form my name. And that's when the rest of the parachutes go off.

Remember that even in war there is a time for restraint. A time to hold back your sword.