If utopian fiction became the new trend, I wouldn't read it.

feel Tobias brushing my hair back before the first simulation. I hear him telling me to be brave. I hear my mother telling me to be brave(...) I am brave.

Hearing him talk about his mother, about his intact family, makes my chest hurt for a second, like someone pierced it with a needle.

...there is power in self-sacrifice.

The Candor sing the praises of the truth, but they never tell you how much it costs.

Sometimes you just need to talk to someone who is detached from you. They just listen to what you tell them and you get to form the way that they see you, whereas everyone else in your life already thinks they know what you're dealing with or what you're going through. That's my recommendation for actual anxiety.

I love you," I say. I said that once, before I went to Erudite headquarters, but he was asleep then. I don't know why I didn't say it when he could hear it. Maybe I was afraid to trust him with something so personal as my devotion. Or afraid that I did not know what it was to love someone. But now I think the scary thing was not saying it before it was too late. Not saying it before it was almost too late for me.