In the days that follow, it's movement, not stillness, that helps to keep the grief at bay.

That’s one way of looking at it. I prefer to look at it another way—which is that if they are persistent enough, even tiny drops of water, over time, can change the rock forever. And it will never change back.

She walks away, and I am too stunned to follow her. At the end of the hallways she turns and says, "Have a piece of cake for me, all right? The chocolate. It's delicious." She smiles a strange, twisted smile, and adds," I love you, you know." And then she's gone. I stand alone in the blue light coming from the lamp above me, and I understand: She has been to the compound before. She remembered this hallways. She knows about the initiation process. My mother was a dauntless.

There is power in controlling something that can do so much damage - in controlling something, period.

I don't want to try to live up to someone who's created something so incredible. I'm just trying to focus on what I'm doing and what I do best. It's sometimes hard to focus in and only think about my books rather than how they measure up to someone else's.

Because life is not fair, Albert. And the world is conspiring against you.

I also don't believe that whatever come after life depends on my correctly reciting a list of my transgressions-that sounds too much like an Erudite afterlife to me, all accuracy and no feeling.