My heart beats so hard it hurts, and I can't scream and I can't breathe, but I also feel everything, every vein and every fiber, every bone and every nerve, all awake and buzzing in my body as if charged with electricity. I am pure adrenaline.

You need to be passionate about the creative work that you're doing, but you need to be kind of emotionally separated from how people react to it or how it does. Those things should be secondary, and primary should be your love of the creative act.

How can you fail a test you aren't allowed to prepare for?

We believe that preparation eradicates cowardice, which we define as the failure to act in the midst of fear.

I will be my undoing If I become my obsession.

That execution will take place here." She runs her fingertips over the table beneath her. "On this table. I thought it would be interesting to show you." "I knew what would happen when I came here," I say. "It's just a table. And I'd like to go back to my room now.

I close my eyes. I don't expect Four to reassure me, and he makes no effort to, but I feel better standing here than I did out there among the people who are my friends, my faction.