Sometimes when I'm alone, I take the pearl from where it lives in my pocket and try to remember the boy with the bread, the strong arms that warded off nightmares on the train, the kisses in the arena.

It's funny, because even though they're rattling on about the Games, it's all about where they were or what they were doing or how they felt when a specific event occurred. . . . Everything is about them, not the dying boys and girls in the arena

A verbal promise behind closed doors, even a statement written on paper-these could easily evaporate . . . .

There's no going back. So we might as well get on with things.

They hadn’t counted on the highly controlled jabberjay having the brains to adapt to the wild, to pass on its genetic code, to thrive in a new form. They hadn’t anticipated its will to live.

Either you came in here a swimmer or you'd better be a really fast learner

Let the Seventy-forth Hunger Games begin, Cato, I think. Let them begin for real.