Matched Quotes

“I think of him risking everything each time he slips one napkin into his pocket. All these years he’s been so careful, but now he’s willing to take a chance. Because he’s found someone who wants to know. Someone he wants to tell.”

“Then, the question I asked myself was: Do I look pretty? Now, the question I ask is: Do I look strong?”

“The two desires struggle within me: the desire to be safe, and the desire to know. I cannot tell which one will win.”

“The Hundred Poems...this poem is not one of them. She took a great risk hiding this paper, and my grandfather and grandmother took a great risk keeping it. What poems could be worth losing everything for?”

“Being with Ky, being with Xander—both things feel like standing in the light. Different types of light, but neither feels dark.”

“My father sometimes bends the rules for those he loves.”

“My father has always broken the rules for those he loves, just as my mother has always kept them for the same reason.”

“It was as though for the first time I saw that life could branch into different paths, take different directions.”

“Nothing I have written or done has made any difference in this world, and suddenly I know what it means to rage, and to crave. I read the whole poem and eat it up, drink it up.”

“Grandfather looks at us and says the best words of all with which to end a life. “I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you.” We all say it back to him.”

“I feel like something is dying, ruined beyond repair. If the Officials orchestrated our whole love affair, the one thing I thought happened in spite of them…”

“Saving the compact would be selfish. It would only save a thing. Saving Ky’s artifact saves him from becoming an anomaly.”

“You have words of your own, Cassia,” Grandfather says to me. “I have heard some of them and they are beautiful.”

“There’s a reason they didn’t keep this poem. The poem tells you to fight.”

“You think there’s nothing here because we’re not putting up a fight. But there are words in our heads that no one else knows. And my grandfather died on his terms, not yours. We have things of value but you can never find them because you don’t even know how to look.”

“I feel disgust when I think of how we climb our little hills when the Officials say the word. How we hand over our most precious items at their bidding. How we never, ever fight.”

“They control the food, they control us. Some people know how to grow food, some know how to process it, others know how to cook it. But none of us know how to do it all. We could never survive on our own.”

“I think people should be able to choose who they Match with,” I say lamely. “Where would it end, Cassia?” she says, her voice patient. “Would you say next that people should be able to choose how many children they have, and where they want to live? Or when they want to die?”

“It is one thing to make a choice and it is another thing to never have the chance. What would it be like to know that you could never choose anything else?”

“They decided our culture was too cluttered. They created commissions to choose the hundred best of everything: Hundred Songs, Hundred Paintings, the rest were eliminated. How can we appreciate anything fully when overwhelmed with too much?”

“These words aren’t peaceful. Then why do they make me feel calm?” Ky asks. “I think it’s because when we hear it we know we’re not the only ones who ever felt this way.”

“We can also guarantee a high quality of life up until the very last breath. Do you know how many miserable people in how many miserable societies over the years would have given almost anything for that?”

“His life will be better. I could be the one to change that for him. And suddenly that desire, the desire to help him, is even stronger than my selfish desire to keep him close.”