It's strange to see people you don't know well in the morning, with sleepy eyes and pillow creases in their cheeks

THE SERUM WEARS off five hours later, when the sun is just beginning to set. Tobias shut me in my room for the rest of the day, checking on me every hour. This time when he comes in, I am sitting on the bed, glaring at the wall. “Thank God,” he says, pressing his forehead to the door. “I was beginning to think it would never wear off and I would have to leave you here to … smell flowers, or whatever you wanted to do while you were on that stuff.

Sometimes I still forget to look for the gentler parts of her. For so long all I saw was the strength, standing out like the wiry muscles in her arms or the black ink marking her collarbone with flight.

I feel like what I have become is halfway between my mother and my father, violent and impulsive and desperate and afraid. I feel like I have lost control of what I have become.

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

Sometimes all I want is to be a few inches taller so the world does not look like a dense collection of torsos.

I slowly realized that perfectionism just not that important. What's more important is to try to love the people around you. Whatever that means at a particular time is the best you can do.