Suzanne Collins Quotes

Fire beats roses again.

I don't know what I expected from my first meeting with Peeta after the announcement. A few hugs and kisses. A little comfort maybe. Not this. I turn to Haymitch. "Don't worry, I'll get you more liquor.

Remember, girl on fire,” he says, “I'm still betting on you.

We sit in silence awhile then I blurt out the thing that's on both our minds. "How are we going to kill these people, Peeta?

My nightmares are usually about losing you. I'm okay once I realize you're here.

Time and tragedy have forced her to grow too quickly, at least for my taste, into a young woman who stitches bleeding wounds and knows our mother can hear only so much.

You can’t miss your schedule. Every morning, you’re supposed to stick your right arm in this contraption in the wall. It tattoos the smooth inside of your forearm with your schedule for the day in a sickly purple ink. 7:00—Breakfast. 7:30—Kitchen Duties. 8:30—Education Center, Room 17. And so on. The ink is indelible until 22:00—Bathing

There's a chance that the old Peeta, the one who loves you, is still inside. Trying to get back to you. Don't give up on him.

My words hang in the air. I look to the screen, hoping to see them recording some wave of reconciliation going through the crowd. Instead I watch myself get shot on television.

Trapped for days, years, centuries maybe. Dead, but not allowed to die. Alive, but as good as dead. So alone that anyone, anything no matter how loathsome would be welcome.

A hysterical young woman with flowing brown hair is also called from 4, but she's quickly replaced by a volunteer, an eighty-year-old woman who needs a cane to walk to the stage.

Glimmer, I hear someone call her - ugh, the names the people in District 1 give their children are so ridiculous.

It's lovely. If only you could frost someone to death.

I curl up, make myself smaller, try to disappear entirely. Wrapped in silence, I slide my bracelet that reads 'mentally disoriented' around and around my wrist.

Whatever it takes to break you.

The rules of the Hunger Games are simple. In punishment for the uprising, each of the twelve districts must provide one girl and one boy, called tributes, to participate. The twenty-four tributes will be imprisoned in a vast outdoor arena that could hold anything from a burning desert to a frozen wasteland. Over a period of several weeks, the competitors must fight to the death. The last tribute standing wins.

Winning means fame and fortune. Losing means certain death. The Hunger Games have begun.

They can't hurt me. I'm not like the rest of you. There's no one left I love.

All the times these arms were my only refuge from the world. Perhaps not fully appreciated then, but so sweet in my memory, and now gone forever.

Because that's what you and I do, protect each other.

its not in my nature to go down without a fight even when things seem insurmountable

I swing my arms to loosen myself up. Place my fists on my hips. then drop them to my sides. Saliva's filling my mouth at a ridiculous rate and i feel vomit at the back of my throat. I swallow hard and open my lips so I can get the stupid line out and go hide in the woods and-that's when i start crying.

Behind a rack of framed photos of Snow, we encounter a wounded Peacekeeper propped up against a strip of brick wall. He asks us for help. Gale knees him in the side of the head and takes his gun.

She's Prim's size in diameter.

All those months of taking it for granted that Peeta thought I was wonderful are over. Finally, he can see me for who I really am. Violent. Distrustful. Manipulative. Deadly. And I hate him for it.

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

To the everlasting credit of the people of District 12, not one person claps. Not even the ones holding betting slips, the ones who are usually beyond caring. Possibly because they know me from the Hob, or knew my father, or have encountered Prim, who no one could help loving. So instead of acknowledging applause, I stand there unmoving while they take part in the boldest form of dissent they can manage. Silence. Which says we do not agree. We do not condone. All of this is wrong.

So, in a way, my name being drawn in the reaping was a real piece of luck," says Peeta.

Here's some advice. Stay alive.

Yeah, we wouldn't want to lose our little Mockingjay when she's finally begun to sing.

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

Then Octavia drops to her knees, rubs the hem of a skirt against her cheek, and burst into tears. "It's been so long," she gasps, "since I've seen anything pretty.

Want a sugar cube?- Finnick Odair,

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.

The awful thing is that if i can forget they're people, it will be no different at all

and when he kissed me i didn't know what to do.

I pull the sleeping bag up to his chin and kiss his forehead, not for the audience, but for me. Because I'm so grateful that he's here, not dead by the stream as I'd thought. So glad I don't have to face Cato alone.

When I was young I was trained in stage fighting and rapier and dagger, for several years.

You’ve got about as much charm as a dead slug.

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

I'll tell them that on bad mornings, it feels impossible to take pleasure in anything because I'm afraid it could be taken away.

Five years later I still wake up screaming for him to run

Vikus looked at Luxa and opened his arms. She stood, still frozen, staring at him as if he were a complete stranger. "Luxa, it's your grandpa," said Gregor. It seemed like the best and most important thing to say at the moment. "It's your grandpa." Luxa blinked. A tiny tear formed at the corner of her eye. A battle took place on her face as she tried to stop the feelings rising up inside her. The feelings won, and to Gregor's great relief, she ran into Vikus's arms.

Closing my eyes doesn't help. Fire burns brighter in the darkness.

She's really gone, then. The little girl with the back of her shirt sticking out like a duck tail.

A furious Peeta hammers Haymitch with the atrocity he could become party to, but I can feel Haymitch watching me. This is the moment, then. When we find out exactly just how alike we are, and how much he truly understands me. "I'm with the Mockingjay," he says.

So, what do you think they'll do to him?" I ask. Prim sounds about a thousand years old when she speaks. "Whatever it takes to break you.

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