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

We don't know what's happened out there since they put us in here, or how many generations have lived and died since they did.We could be the last people left.

Fine," he says. "Then I love you.

I forget that he is another person; instead it feels like he is another part of me, just as essential as a heart or an eye or an arm.

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 don't want to stop you. I want you to stop yourself.

The official strategy is defensive pessimism, always.