The collection / 151 fragments

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Passages, proverbs, and questions carried across the ages.

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01c. 1981 AD

But I guessed she would never stop wanting more for me, more from me. Maybe that’s what mothers did.

Kiera Cass / quote

02c. 1981 AD

I instantly dragged my fingers across a shelf of book spines, in love with each one already. Books were a safe place, a world apart from my own. No matter what had happened that day, that year, there was always a story in which someone overcame their darkest hour. I wasn't alone.

Kiera Cass / quote

03c. 1981 AD

Could it be that simple? Tell one story to one generation and repeat it until it was accepted as fact?

Kiera Cass / quote

04c. 1981 AD

At the end of the day, I can't force any of you to treat people the way you should. But it should be on your conscience that whatever law I pass won't do much unless each of you takes it upon yourself to show kindness to your fellow citizens.

Kiera Cass / quote

05c. 1981 AD

She wanted to be herself at all costs.

Kiera Cass / quote

06c. 1981 AD

I looked at him and the other two people whose names I’d just learned. “So . . . so this is home then?”Akinli looked at me, perplexed, then turned to Ben and Julie.“She said some girls left her here and told her it was home. That’s all she knows. She doesn’t even know you.” Julie wiped at her tears, trying to calm herself.He moved his eyes back to me as quickly as he could manage. “Kahlen? You remember me, right?”I stared into this face, searching for something familiar. I didn’t recognize the angle of his chin, the length of his fingers. I didn’t know the slope of his shoulder or the shape of his lips.“Akinli, right?” I asked. This poor boy. I pitied him in the depths of my heart. Clearly, he’d already been going through something, and I could see the last scrap of fight he had in him dying with those words.“Yes.”“I don’t remember ever seeing you before in my life. I’m sorry.”He pressed his lips together as if he was swallowing the urge to cry.“But,” I said, “I know your voice. I know it as if it were my own.

Kiera Cass / quote

07c. 1981 AD

I finally made eye contact with the boy in the bed. He lay on his side, a tube in his nose and another in his vein. His cheeks were sunken, and his skin was ghostly pale. His hair might have been blond, but it was fading into a gray, making it hard to tell. The only part of this boy that held any life at all were his eyes, which brimmed with tears when he saw me.“Kahlen?”I sat still. These three people all called me by the same name, which sounded sort of like Katlyn and Ellen and made me believe that maybe they actually knew me.“Where did you go? Where have you been? I thought you were dead.” His chest worked overtime, trying to keep up with his mouth, spilling over with words.“Can you get her a pen? Please?” He lifted an arm weakly. It was all bone. “I just need to know.”“A pen?” I asked.Once again his eyes lit up.“You can talk?”I stared at this boy, at how he was overjoyed at one of the most basic things a person could do. “So it would seem.” I smiled.He flopped onto his back, laughing from his gut, and based on Julie’s tears, I was guessing she’d been waiting a long time for that to come back.

Kiera Cass / quote