One piece of advice I have is: Want something else more than success. Success is a lovely thing, but your desire to say something, your worth, and your identity shouldn’t rely on it, because it’s not guaranteed and it’s not permanent and it’s not sufficient. So work hard, fall in love with the writing — the characters, the story, the words, the themes — and make sure that you are who you are regardless of your life circumstances. That way, when the good things come, they don’t warp you, and when the bad things hit you, you don’t fall apart.

To live factionless Is not just to live in poverty and discomfort; it is to live divorced from society, separated from the most important thing in life: community. My mother once told me that we can’t survive alone,but even if we could, we wouldn’t want to. Without a faction, we have no purpose and no reason to live.

What do I believe? I do not know; I do not know; I do not know.

This concept could easily have gone awry. Stories about love tend to go that way sometimes. They wander into the realm of cheese and never return, which I think is a shame, because there is a way to write about romantic love without breaking out the Velveeta.

He holds my face in both hands and kisses me back. I press into the distance between us until it is gone, crushing the secrets we have kept and the suspicions we have harbored-for good, I hope.

Sometimes I forget that I can hurt you. That you are capable of being hurt

My parents did love each other. Enough to forsake plans and factions. Enough to defy “faction before blood.” Blood before faction--no, love before faction, always. - Tris Prior