Quotes By Author: Ally Condie

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

“at first when the rain fell from the sky so wide and deepit smelled like sage, my favorite smellI went up on the plateau to watch it cometo see the gifts it always broughtbut this rain changed from blue to black and leftnothing.”

“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.”

“Was [Sisyphus] from your province?’I don’t know. I don’t know if he’s real,’ Ky says. ‘If he ever existed.”Then why tell his story?’ I don’t understand, and for a second I feel betrayed. Why did Ky tell me about this person and make me feel empathy for him when there’s no proof that he ever lived at all?Ky pauses for a moment before he answers, …’Even if he didn’t live his story, enough of us have lived lives just like it. So it’s true anyway.”

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

“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.”

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

“That’s how I know they are dreams. Because the simple and plain and everyday things are the ones that we can never have. (Cassia Reyes)”