Ally Condie

Sometimes paper is only paper," my mothers says. "Words are just words. Ways to capture the real thing. Don't be afraid to remember that."I know what she means. Writing, painting, singing--it cannot stop everything. Cannot halt death in its tracks. But perhaps it can make the pause between death's footsteps sound and look and feel beautiful, can make the space of waiting a place where you can linger without as much fear. For we are all walking each other to our deaths, and the journey there between footsteps makes up our lives.

Do not go gentle. So I fight. I fight the only way I know how.

I wonder if I will ever have the strength to hold onto something. Or if I will always be someone who destroys.

Reaching and reached. Cassia

Everyone has something of beauty about them. But loving lets you look, and look, and look again. You notice the back of a hand, the turn of a head, the way of a walk. When you first love, you look blind and you see it all as the glorious, beloved whole, or a beautiful sum of beautiful parts. But when you see the one you love as pieces, as why's, you can love those parts too, and it's a love at once more complicated and more complete.

Some people think the stars must look closer from up here. They don't.When you're up here, you realize how distant they really are--how impossible to reach.

Some people think the stars must look closer from up here. They don't. When you're up here, you realize how distant they really are__ow impossible to reach.

The only chance of success is to trust in your own power.

Now that I've found the way to fly, which direction should I go into the night?

Cassia.I know which life is my real one now, no matter what happens. It__ the one with you. For some reason, knowing that even one person knows my story makes things different. Maybe it__ like the poem says. Maybe this is my way of not going gentle.I love you. (Ky Markham)

...I do not know how I can feel this much pain and survive, and at the same time know how much I have to live.

I want to reach out and grab his hand and hold it to me, right over my heart, right where it aches the most. I don't know if doing that would heal me or make my heart break entirely, but either way this constant hungry waiting would be over.

Ever since the day of the mistake with my Match. I've never known which life is my true one. Even with the reassurances of the Offical that day in the greenspace, I think a part of me hasn't felt at peace. It was as though I saw for the first time that life could branch into different paths, take different directions.

But then I realize that even if I did have a soul, it__ not as though someone else would be there. It would only be more of me.

He's in pain. I am, too. It strikes me that perhaps this is part of what we are fighting to choose. Which pain we feel.

Isn't it funny how the memories you cherish before a breakup can become your worst enemies afterwards? The thoughts you loved to think about, the memories you wanted to hold up to the light and view from every angle--it suddenly seems a lot safer to lock them in a box, far from the light of day and throw away the key. It's not an act of bitterness. It's an act if self-preservation. It's not always a bad idea to stay behind the window and look out at life instead, is it?

In the end you can't always choose what to keep. You can only choose how you let it go.

Lightning. Once it has forked, hot-white, from sky to earth, there is no going back