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

May the peace of God be with you," she says, her voice low, "even in the midst of trouble." "Why would it?" I say softly, so no one else can hear. "After all I've done..." "It isn't about you," she says. "It is a gift. You cannot earn it, or it ceases to be a gift.

No matter how long you train someone to be brave, you never know if they are or not until something real happens.

I see a few hands stretching out to me at the edge of the net, so I grabbed the first one I could reach and pull myself across. I roll off, and would have fallen face-first onto a wood floor if he had not caught me. "He" is the young man attached to the hand I grabbed. He has a spare upper lip and a full lower lip. His eyes are so deep-set that his eyelashes touch the skin under his eyebrows, and they are dark blue, a dreaming, sleeping, waiting color.

Ignore them. They don't know what it is to make a difficult decision." "You wouldn't have done it, I bet." "That is only because I have been taught to be cautious when I don't know all the information, and you have been taught that risks can produce great rewards.

And sometimes, if you want the truth, you have to demand it.

I point at a window to my left, and it explodes. Particles of glass rain over us. ‘You’ll have to do better than that,' I say.