The collection / 88 fragments

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Passages, proverbs, and questions carried across the ages.

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01Undated

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?

Ally Condie / quote

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02Undated

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)

Ally Condie / quote

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03Undated

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.

Ally Condie / quote

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04Undated

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)

Ally Condie / quote

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05Undated

Love changes what is probable and makes unlikely things possible.

Ally Condie / quote

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06Undated

And I'll tell her that I don't want my life to be samples and scraps. A taste of everything but a meal of nothing.

Ally Condie / quote

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07Undated

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

Ally Condie / quote

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08Undated

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.

Ally Condie / quote

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09Undated

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.

Ally Condie / quote

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10Undated

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

Ally Condie / quote

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11Undated

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.

Ally Condie / quote

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12Undated

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

Ally Condie / quote

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13Undated

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.

Ally Condie / quote

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14Undated

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.

Ally Condie / quote

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15Undated

...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.

Ally Condie / quote

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16Undated

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

Ally Condie / quote

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17Undated

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

Ally Condie / quote

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18Undated

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.

Ally Condie / quote

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19Undated

Reaching and reached. Cassia

Ally Condie / quote

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20Undated

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

Ally Condie / quote

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21Undated

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

Ally Condie / quote

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22Undated

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.

Ally Condie / quote

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23Undated

She's right. We would compose poems about love and tell stories that have been heard in some form before. But it would be our first time feeling and telling.

Ally Condie / quote

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24Undated

At first, that's who I was. I wanted to know more about this boy who lives among us, but who never truly speaks... But now I feel like finding out about him is one of the ways I found out about myself. I did not expect to love his words. I did no expect to find myself in the.

Ally Condie / quote

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