Awkwardness aside, it's nice to be liked.

Not like Tobias, who is almost shy when he smiles, like he is surprised you bothered to look at him in the first place.

Scrubbing the floor when no one else wanted to was something that my mother would have done. If I can't be with her, the least I can do is act like her sometimes.

My Tris should look pale and small--she is pale and small, after all--but instead the room is full of her.

I get up, because I’m supposed to, but if it were up to me, I’d stay in my seat for the rest of time.

I read somewhere, one, that crying defies scientific explanation. Tears are only meant to lubricate the eyes. There is no real reason for tear glands to overproduce tears at the behest of emotion. I think we cry to release the animal parts of us without losing our humanity. Because inside of me is a beast that snarls, and growls, and strains toward freedom, toward Tobias, and, above all, towards life. And as hard as I try, I cannot kill it.

We both have war inside us. Sometimes it keeps us alive. Sometimes it threatens to destroy us.