He smiles in my memory. A curled lip. Straight teeth. Light in his eyes. Laughing, teasing, more alive in memory than I m in reality. It was him or me. I chose me. But I feel dead too.

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.

Sorry, am I being rude?" she asks. "I'm used to saying whatever is on my mind. Mom used to say that politeness is deception in pretty packaging

There are so many ways to be brave in this world. Sometimes it involves giving up everything you have ever known, or everyone you have ever loved for the sake of something greater.

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

When I look at him, I don't see the cowardly young man who sold me out to Jeanine Matthews, and i don't hear the excuses he gave afterward. When I look at him, I see the boy who held my hand in the hospital when our mother broke her wrist and told me it would be all right. I see the brother who told me to make my own choices, the night before the Choosing Ceremony. I think of all the remarkable things he is--smart and enthusiastic and observant, quiet and earnest and kind.

I frown at him. How does he know all this information? And why, after two years of avoiding becoming a Dauntless leader at all costs, is he suddenly acting like one?