Few people who are born into Abnegation choose to leave it. When they do, we remember.

It’s not a perfect situation. But when you have to choose between two bad options, you pick the one that saves the people you love and believe in most. You just do. Okay?

How strange that something so simple could have been instrumental in my decision to ruin one of my most relationships and friendships, and damage another.

I forget that he is another person; instead it feels like he is another part of me, just as essential as a heart or an eye or an arm.

It's not cruelty, maybe, but a desire to understand that motivates them.

That dot covers all the places we've ever been. You could cut that piece of land out of the ground and sing it into this ocean and no one would even notice. I feel that fear again, the fear of my own size. 'Right. So?' 'So? So everything I've ever worried about or said or done, how can it possibly matter?' He shakes his head. 'It doesn't.' 'Of course it does,' I say, 'All that land is filled with people, every one of them different, and the things they do to each other matter.

People talk about the pain of grief, but I don't know what they mean. To me, grief is a devastating numbness, every sensation dulled.