So I thought if I stopped being so, you know, wounded, we could take a shot at just being friends. - Peeta Mellark

Want a sugar cube?" he asks in his old seductive voice. That's how we met, with Finnick offering me sugar. Surrounded by horses and chariots, costumed and painted for the crowds, before we were allies. Before I had any idea what made him tick. The memory actually coaxes a smile out of me. "Here, it improves the taste," he says in his real voice, plunking three cubes into my cup.

I don't know how to make people like me. Cinna, how do you make people like you?

Maybe everyone is just trying to protect me by lying to me. I don't care. I'm sick of people lying to me for my own good.

Because something is significantly wrong with a creature that sacrifices its children’s lives to settle its differences.

Only I keep wishing I could think of a way...to show the Capitol they don't own me. That I'm more than just a piece in their Games.

In really bad times, the hungriest would gather at his door at nightfall, vying for the chance to earn a few coins to feed their families by selling their bodies. Had I been older when my father died, I might have been among them. Instead I learned to hunt.