Suzanne Collins’ “The Hunger Games” Quotes (138 Quotes)

But don't worry; as I've been saying - and this has been very clever of me, I'm sure you'll agree - if you put enough pressure on coal, it'll turn to pearls!

He's dozed off again, but I kiss him awake, which seems to startle him. Then he smiles as if he's be happy to lie there gazing at me forever.

I take his hand, holding it tightly, preparing for the cameras, and dreading the moment I will finally have to let go.

It's not easy to find a topic. Talking of home is painful. Talking of the present unbearable.

My nightmares are usually about losing you.

Scores only matter if they're very good, no one pays much attention to the bad or mediocre ones.

The most exciting thing either of us does is nap.

Whatever the truth is, I don't see how it will help me get food on the table.

But just the fact that he was sparkling leads me to doubt everything that happened.

Hope is the only thing stronger than fear.

I want to show them that they don't own me. That I'm more than just a piece in their Games.

It's old, very old I think. Made up long ago in our hills. What my music teacher calls a mountain air. But the words are easy and soothing, promising tomorrow will be more hopeful than this awful piece of time we call today.

Myself? That's no good, either.

She must have had bad dreams and climbed in with our mother. Of course, she did. This is the day of the reaping.

The numbness of his loss had passed, and the pain would hit me out of nowhere, doubling me over, racking my body with sobs. Where are you? I would cry out in my mind. Where have you gone? Of course, there was never any answer.

When I break into the clearing, she's on the ground, hopelessly entangled in a net. She just has the time to reach her hand through the mesh and say my name before the spear enters her body.

But the words are easy and soothing, promising tomorrow will be more hopeful than this awful piece o time we call today.

I also want to tell him how much I already miss him. But that wouldn't be fair on my part.

I wish I could think of a way to show them that they don't own me. If I'm going to die, I still want to be me.

It's the final word in camouflage. Forget chucking weights around. Peeta should have gone into his private session with the Gamemakers and painted himself into a tree. Or a boulder. Or a muddy bank full of weeds.

Never having been in love, this is going to be a real trick. I think of my parents. The way my father never failed to bring her gifts from the woods. The way my mother's face would light up at the sound of his boots at the door. The way she almost stopped living when he died.

She's Prim's size in diameter.

The only indication of the passage of time lies in the heavens, the subtle shift of the moon. So Peeta begins pointing it out to me, insisting I acknowledge its progress and sometimes, for just a moment I feel a flicker of hope before the agony of the night engulfs me again.

Why am I hopping around like some trained dog trying to please people I hate?

But there's food if you know how to find it. My father knew and he taught me some before he was blown to bits in a mine explosion. There was nothing even to bury. I was eleven then. Five years later, I still wake up screaming for him to run.

I can almost hear Haymitch groaning as I team up with this wispy child. But I want her. Because she's a survivor, and I trust her, and why not admit it? She reminds me of Prim.

If I'm going to cry, now is the time. By morning, I'll be able to wash all the damage done by the tears from my face. But no tears come. I'm too tired or too numb to cry. The only thing I feel is a desire to be somewhere else. So I let the train rock me into oblivion.

It's the first time I've ever kissed a boy, which should make some sort of impression I guess, but all I can register is how unnaturally hot his lips are from the fever.

No more fear of hunger. A new kind of freedom. But what then ... what? What would my life be like on a daily basis? Most of it has been consumed with the acquisition of food. Take that away and I'm not really sure who I am, what my identity is. The idea scares me some.

So I learned to hold my tongue and to turn my features into an indifferent mask so that no one could ever read my thoughts.

The realization that I'd have nothing to take home had finally sunk in. My knees buckled and I slid down the tree trunk to its roots. It was too much. I was too sick and weak and tired, oh, so tired. Let them call the Peacekeepers and take us to the community home, I thought. Or better yet, let me die right here in the rain.

Yes, frosting. The final defense of the dying.

And here I am, strapped into a tree, a stone's throw from the biggest idiot in the games.

Come to finish me off sweetheart?

I can see the first apple teetering when I let the third arrow go, catching the torn flap and ripping it from the bag. For a moment, everything seems frozen in time. Then the apples spill to the ground and I'm blown backward into the air.

If you appeal to the crowd, either by being humorous or brutal or eccentric, you gain favor.

It's weird, how much he's noticed me... And apparently, I have not been as oblivious to him as I imagined, either.

No, when the time comes, I'm sure I'll kill just like everybody else. I can't go down without a fight. Only I keep wishing I could think of a way to…to show the Capitol they don't own me.

So we both strip off our boots and socks and, while there's some improvement, I could swear he's making an effort to snap every branch we encounter

The rules of the Hunger Games are simple. In punishment for the uprising, each of the twelve districts must provide one girl and one boy, called tributes, to participate. The twenty-four tributes will be imprisoned in a vast outdoor arena that could hold anything from a burning desert to a frozen wasteland. Over a period of several weeks, the competitors must fight to the death. The last tribute standing wins.

Yes, it's your fault I'm alive.

And may the odds be ever in your favour

Destroying things is much easier than making them.

I don't know what the explosion did, but it damaged something deep and irreparable. Never mind. If I get home, I'll be so stinking rich, I'll be able to pay someone to do my hearing.

If you won't talk about yourself, at least compliment the audience. Just keep turning it back around, all right. Gush.

Just because people starve in a book, doesn't mean that we will starve in the future....

No. Now, shut up and eat your pears.

So what I'd really like is to try and conceal him somewhere safe, then go hunt, and come back and collect him. But I have a feeling his ego isn't going to go for that suggestion.

The walls of this elevator are made of crystal so that you can watch the people on the ground floor shrink to ants as you shoot up into the air. It's exhilarating and I'm tempted to ask Effie Trinket if we can ride it again, but somehow that seems childish.

You can tell by the way the girls whisper about him when he walks by in school that they want him. It makes me jealous but not for the reason people would think. Good hunting partners are hard to find.