Allegiant by Veronica Roth (Divergent series)

Notes from the reader: replace the concept of "factions" from the book with any label you may have put on yourself to help find like-minded people to fully understand what the author is saying. We all have our factions, even if they're chosen rather than forced upon us. (E.g.: nerd, jock... stoner?)

--13--

"From one tyrant to another. That is the world we know now."

--13--

'"I brought you the truth about our city and the reason we are in it. If you aren't thanking me for it, you should at least do something about it instead of sitting here on this mess you made, pretending it's a throne!"'

--67--

"I have never had parents who set good examples, parents whose expectations were worth living up to, but she did. I can see them within her, the courage and the beauty they pressed into her like a handprint."

--71--

"What do I need, to overcome my fears? 

I know the answer, of course I do: I need to deny them the power to control me. I need to know that I am stronger than they are."

--91--

"I wonder if that fear still creeps up on her now, though she worked so hard to face it--I wonder if fears ever really go away or if they just lose their power over us."

--95--

"Tobias can take care of himself, but in an attack, surviving is an accident. It doesn't take skill to stand in a place where no bullets find you, or to fire into the dark and hit a man you didn't see. It is all luck, or providence, depending on what you believe."

--125--

"They created us, they shaped our world, they told us what to believe.

If they told us what to believe and we didn't come to it on our own, is it still true?"

--134--

"I needed that word to tell me who I was when everything else was coming apart around me. But now I'm wondering if I need it anymore, if we ever really need these words, "Dauntless," "Erudite," "Divergent," "Allegiant," or if we can just be friends or lovers or siblings, defined instead by the choices we make and the love and loyalty that binds us."

--192--

"Or maybe we'll make a home somewhere inside ourselves, to carry with us wherever we go--which is the way I carry my mother now."

--219--

'"It's a little rudimentary, but this book helped to teach me what it is to be human. . . To be such a complicated, mysterious piece of biological machinery, and more amazing still, to have the capacity to analyze that machinery! That is a special thing, unprecedented in all of evolutionary history. Our ability to know about ourselves and the world is what makes us human."'

--262--

"I was so used to lying instead of telling difficult truths that I welcomed the chance to deceive her."

--271--

'"I never said this was all I was ever going to do. It's not always wise to strike as hard as you can at the first opportunity. This is a long race, not a sprint."'

--276--

'"I was beginning to feel that I had finally found a place to stay, a place that was not so unstable or corrupt or controlling that I could actually belong there. You would think that I would have learned by now--such a place does not exist."'

--278--

"I sit on top of the sweater and examine my knuckles. A few of them are split from punching Caleb, and dotted with faint bruises. It seems fitting that the blow would leave a mark on both of us. That's how the world works."

--315--

"My father has a way of persuading people without charm that has always confused me. He states his opinions as if they're facts, and somehow his complete lack of doubt makes you believe him."

--316--

"It seems like the rebellions never stop, in the city, in the compound, anywhere. There are just breaths between them, and foolishly, we call those breaths "peace."'

--345-6--

"Evelyn tried to control  people by controlling weapons, but Jeanine was more ambitious--she knew that when you control information, or manipulate it, you don't need force to keep people under your thumb. They stay there willingly."

--371--

'"If we stay together, I'll have to forgive you over and over again, and if you're still in this, you'll have to forgive me over and over again too. . . So forgiveness isn't the point. What I really should have been trying to figure out is whether we were still good for each other or not."'

--371-2--

"Then I thought of how strong I have become, how secure I feel with the person I now am, and how all along the way he has told me that I am brave, I am respected, I am loved and worth loving."

--372--

"I used to think that when people fell in love, they just landed where they landed, and they had no choice in the matter afterward. And maybe that's true of beginnings, but it's not true of this, now.

I fell in love with him. But I don't stay with him by default as if there's no one else available to me. I stay with him because I choose to, every day that I wake up, every day that we fight or lie to each other or disappoint each other. I choose him over and over again, and he chooses me."

Divergent by Veronica Roth

Notes from the reader: replace the concept of "factions" from the book with any label you may have put on yourself to help find like-minded people to fully understand what the author is saying. We all have our factions, even if they're chosen rather than forced upon us. (E.g.: nerd, jock... stoner?)

--43--

"In our factions, we find meaning, we find purpose, we find life. . . More than family, our factions are where we belong. . . Apart from them, we would not survive."

--45--

"His absence will haunt their hallways, and he will be a space they can't fill. And then time will pass, and the hole will be gone, like when an organ is removed and the body's fluids flow into the space it leaves. Humans can't tolerate emptiness for long."

--57--

"I am proud. It will get me into trouble someday, but today it makes me brave."

--60--

"A new place, a new name. I can be remade here."

--69--

"He stares at me, and I don't look away. He isn't a dog, but the same rules apply. Looking away is submissive. Looking him in the eye is a challenge. It's my choice."

--75--

"Maybe my problem isn't that I can't go home. I will miss my mother and father and Caleb and evening firelight and he clack of my mother's knitting needles, but that is not the onlu reason for this hollow feeling in my stomach.

My problem might be that even if I did go home, I wouldn't belong there."

--79--

"I lower the gun. There is power in controlling something that can do so much damage--in controlling something, period."

--81--

"Those who seek peace above all else, they say, will always deceive to keep the water calm."

--87--

"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."

--94--

"I like to think I'm helping them by hating them. . . I'm reminding them that they aren't God's gift to humankind."

--97--

"Leaving us with Eric is like hiring a babysitter who spends his free time sharpening his knives."

--117--

"I clench my teeth as the tears come. I am fed up. I am fed up with tears and weakness. But there isn't much I can do to stop them."

--128--

"Besides, Robert. The goal of my life isn't just. . . to be happy."

"Wouldn't it be easier if it was though?"

--176--

"If Eric thinks I did something right, I must have done it wrong."

--205--

"Sometimes crying or laughing are the only options left, and laughing just feels better right now."

--219--

"Still, there is a part of me that groans, I have to wait for seven people? It is a strange blend of terror and eageress, unfamiliar until now."

--221--

"My heart beats so hard it hurts, and I can't scream and I can't breathe, but I also feel everything, every vein and every fiber, every bone and every nerve, all awake and buzzing in my body as if chared with electricity. I am pure adrenaline."

--239--

'"So they don't go away?"

"Sometimes they do. And sometimes new fears replace them. . . But becoming fearless isn't the point. That's impossible. It's learning how to be free from it, that's the point."

I nod. I used to think the Dauntless were fearless. That is how they seemed, anyway. But maybe what I saw as fearless was actually fear under control.'

--294--

"But my mother would tell me that people are flawed and I should be lenient with them."

--299-300--

"Somewhere inside me is a merciful, forgiving person. Somewhere there is a girl who tries to understand what people are going through, who accepts that pepole do evil things and that desperation leads them to darker places than they ever imagined. I swear she exists, and she hurts for the repentant boy I see in front of me.

But if I saw her, I wouldn't recognize her."

--311--

"I fear his shifting moods. They show me somehing unstable inside of him, and instability is dangerous."

--312--

"Intentions are the only thing they care about. They try to make you think they care about what you do, but they don't. They don't want you to act a certain way. They want you to think a certain way. So you're easy to understand. So you won't pose a threat to them."

--313-4--

"Fear doesn't shut you down; it wakes you up. I've seen it. It's fascinating. . . Sometimes I just. . . want to see it again. Want to see you awake."

--336--

"I have a theory that selflessness and bravery aren't all that different. All your life you've been training to forget yourself, so when you're in danger, it becomes your first instinct."

--441-2--

"Every faction conditions its members to think and act a certain way. And most people do it. For most people, it's 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 can't be confined to one way of thinking and that terrifies our leaders. It means we can't be controlled. And it means that no matter what they do, we will always cause trouble for them."

--484--

"The cruelty of fate is that I must travel with the people I hate when the people I love are dead behind me."

A Brave New World by Alduous Huxley

---42---

"Stability. No civilization without social stability. No social stability without individual stability."

---49---

"Government'san affair of sitting, not hitting. You rule with the brains and the buttocks, never with the fists."

---64---

"Bernard gave his orders in the sharp, rather arrogant and even offensive tone of one who does not feel himself too secure in his superiority."

---65---

"The mockery made him feel like an outsider; and feeling like an outsider he behaved like one, which increased the contempt and hostility aroused by his physical defects. Which in turn increased his sense of being alien and alone. A chronic fear of being slighted made him avoid his equals, made him stand, where his inferiors were concerned, self conciously on his dignity."

---70---

Words can be like X-rays, if you use them properly--they'll go through anything. You read and you're pierced."

---90---

"But I do. . . It makes me feels as though. . . as though I were more me, if you see what I mean. More on my own, not so completely a part of something else. Not just a cell in the social body. "

---148---

"Murder kills only the individual--and, after all, what is an individual?We can make a new one with the greatest ease-- as many as we like.  Unorthodoxy threatens more than the life of a mere individual; it strikes Society itself. "

---157---

"Success went fizzily to Bernard's head, and in the process completely reconciled him (as any good intoxicant should do) to a world which, up until then, he had found very unsatisfactory. In so far as it recognized him as important, the order of things was good."

---221---

"Actual happiness always looks pretty squalid in comparison with the overcompensations for misery. And, of course, stability isn't nearly so spectacular as instability. And being contented has none of the glamour of a good fight against misfortune, none of the picturesqueness of a struggle with temptation, or a fatal overthrow by passion or doubt. Happiness is never grand."

---222-3---

"Only an Epsilon can be expected to make Epsilon sacrifices, for the good reason that for him they aren't sacrifices; they're the line of least resistance. His conditioning has laid down rails along which he's got to run. He can't help himself; He's fordoomed. Even after decanting he's still inside a bottle--an invisible bottle of infantile and embryonic fixations. Each one of us, of course, goes through life inside a bottle. But if we happen to be Alphas, our bottles are, relatively speaking, enormous. We should suffer acutely if we were confined in a narrower space."

---223---

"The optimum population is modelled on the iceberg--eight-ninths below the water line, one-ninth above."

---228---

"One can't have something for nothing. Happiness has got to be paid for. You're paying for it, Mr. Watson--paying because you happen to be too much interested in beauty. I was too much interested in truth; I paid too."

---233---

"Yes, we inevitably turn to God; for this religious sentiment is of its nature so pure, so delightful to the soul the experiences it, that it makes up to us for all our other losses."

---235-6---

"The gods are just. No doubt. But their code of law is dictated, in the last resort, by the people who organize society; Providence takes its cue from men."