It was him or me. I chose me. But I feel dead too.

That said, in the two weeks before I leave for the Dark Days tour, I am going radio silent, which means I will be avoiding the Internet at all costs in order to revise, revise, revise. I will miss you. Tris says hi, though.

And now that you are out? How does the world seem to you?" he says. "Mostly the same," I say. "People are just divided by different things, fighting different wars.

I think he came to die with me," I say. I clamp my hand over my mouth to stifle a sob. If I can keep breathing, I can stop crying. I didn't need or want him to die with me. I wanted to keep him safe. What an idiot, I think, but my heart isn't in it. "That's ridiculous," he says. "That doesn't make any sense. He's eighteen; he'll find another girlfriend once you're dead. And he's stupid if he doesn't know that." Tears run down my cheeks, hot at first and then cold. I close my eyes. "If you think that's what it's about..." I swallow another sob. "...you're the stupid one.

Trust me when I tell you, Eaton boy, that resisting is worth doing.

Everything - our houses, our clothes, our hairstyles - is meant to help us forget ourselves and to protect us from vanity, greed and envy, which are just forms of selfishness. If we have little, and want for little, and we are all equal, we envy no one.

Writing means not just staring ugliness in the face, but finding a way to embrace it.