I think about pressing myself against him, but I can't, because all our secrets would keep a space between us.

She taught me all about real sacrifice. That it should be done from love... That it should be done from necessity, not without exhausting all other options. That it should be done for people who need your strength because they don't have enough of their own.

I figured I would shoot the bullets out of my nostrils, so I left [the gun] upstairs.

It's wrong," he says. "It doesn't matter if your parents are in a better place, they aren't here with you, and that's wrong, Tris. It shouldn't have happened. It shouldn't have happened to you. And anyone who tells you it's okay is a liar.

When you're a writer, you hear your internal critic, and that's really hard to get over. And then sometimes you hear critiques from classmates and stuff. But when a book comes out, it's just hundreds of opinions and you have to learn to separate out the ones you want to listen to or figure out many you want to listen to.

You can't be fearless, remember? Because you still care about things. About your life.

But there's so much that was a lie, it's hard to figure out what was true, what was real, what matters.