Quotes by Veronica Roth

(...) a man encased in ice, his eyes hard and his voice like a frosty exhale.

Every faction conditions its members to think and act a certain way. And most people do it. For most people, its not hard to learn, to find a pattern of thought that works and stay that way. But our minds move in a dozen different directions. We cant be confined to one way of thinking, and that terrifies our leaders. It means we cant be controlled. And it means that no matter what they do, we will always cause trouble for them.

- It doesnt do anything obvious. But it might be able to do something in here. - Then she touched her hand to her heart. - Beautiful things sometimes do.

Why is your heart racing Tris?

Its not cruelty, maybe, but a desire to understand that motivates them.

Thank you for your honesty, Niles says. The Candor repeat the phrase under their breath. All around me are the words Thank you for your honesty at different volumes and pitches, and my anger begins to dissolve.

no wonder you left.Yeah, i say, rolling my eyes. It was just because of the food.

Damn, someone behind me says. I was hoping we would get to scrape some Stiff pancake off the pavement later.

I open my eyes and for the first time stare openly at my own reflection. My heart rate picks up as I do, like I am breaking the rules and will be scolded for it. It will be difficult to break the habits of thinking Abnegation instilled in me, like tugging a single thread from a complex work of embroidery. But I will find new habits, new thoughts, new rules. I will become something else. …Looking at myself now isn’t like seeing myself for the first time; it’s like seeing someone else for the first time. Beatrice was a girl I saw in stolen moments at the mirror, who kept quiet at the dinner table. This is someone whose eyes claim mine and don’t release me; this is Tris.

Killing you is not the worst thing they can do to you, I say. Controlling you is.

If were afraid to be ourselves, then who are we? Wheres there left to hide?But if we could concur that fear, we just might be strong, powerful. We just might be unstoppable.

Youre the one who has to live with your choice, she says. Everyone else will get over it, move on, no matter what you decide. But you never will.

It is impossible to erase my choices.

I am wearing a gray shirt, blue jeans, black shoes--new clothes, but beneath them, my Dauntless tattoos. It is impossible to erase my choices. Especially these.

Its not often you encounter the real person behind a good-natured mask, the darkest parts of someone. Its not comfortable when you do.

(...) I do want to leave, in the desperate way that an animal wants to escape a trap. Wild and rabid. Ready to gnaw through bone.

If I let a little of the emotion out, all of it will come out, and it will never end.

She is a woman of muscle twisted around bone.

Sleep, he says. Ill fight the bad dreams off if they come to get you.With what?My bar hands, obviously.In the moments before i drift off to sleep, i hear him whisper, I love you, Tris.

Sometimes I forget that I can hurt you. That you are capable of being hurt