Veronica Roth Quotes (95 Quotes)

Be brave, Beatrice. I love you.

Hearing him talk about his mother, about his intact family, makes my chest hurt for a second, like someone pierced it with a needle.

I ignore my fear. When I make decisions, I pretend it doesn't exist.

It was him or me. I chose me. But I feel dead too.

Sometimes I see him as just another person, and sometimes I feel the sight of him in my gut, like a deep ache.

We kiss again and this time, it feels familiar. I know exactly how we fit together, his arm around my waist, my hands on his chest, the pressure of his lips on mine. We have each other memorized.

Becoming fearless isn't the point. That's impossible. It's learning how to control your fear, and how to be free from it.

His absence will haunt their hallways, and he will be a space they can't fill. And then time will pass, and the hole will be gone, like when an organ is removed and the body's fluids flow into the space it leaves. Humans can't tolerate emptiness for long.

I kiss him as the train slides into unlit, uncertain land. I kiss him for as long as I want, for longer than I should, given that my brother sits three feet away from me.

It's easy to be brave when they're not my fears.

Sometimes it isn't fighting that's brave, its facing the death you know is coming.

What do I believe? I do not know; I do not know; I do not know.

But maybe what I saw as fearless was actually fear under control.

How can you fail a test you aren't allowed to prepare for?

I need the protection of seeming weak.

Learning how to think in the midst of fear is a lesson that everyone needs to learn.

Sometimes pain is for the greater good.

What good is a prepared body if you have a scattered mind?

Decades ago, our ancestors realized that it is not just political ideology, religious belief, race, or nationalism that is to blame for a warring world. Rather, they determined that it was the fault of human personality - of humankind's inclination towards evil, in whatever form that is. They divided into factions that sought to eradicate those qualities they believed responsible for the world's disarray.

Human beings as a whole cannot be good for long before the bad creeps back in and poisons us again.

I note how calm she looks and how focused she is. She is well-practiced in the art of losing herself. I can't say the same of myself.

Maybe there's more we all could have done, but we just have to let the guilt remind us to do better next time.

Sometimes, the best way to help someone is just to be near them.

What irritates me most about him is his natural goodness, his inborn selflessness.

Eric called Al's suicide brave, and he was wrong. My mother's death was brave. I remember how calm she was, how determined. It isn't just brave that she died for me; it is brave that she did it without announcing it, without hesitation, and without appearing to consider another option.

Human reason can excuse any evil.

I pause a second. He doesn't look at me the way Will, Christina, and Al sometimes do - like I am too small and too weak to be of any use, and they pity me for it.

My father says that those who want power and get it live in terror of losing it. That's why we have to give power to those who do not want it.

Suicide to them is an act of selfishness. Someone who is truly selfless does not think of himself often enough to desire death.

What's worse: to be idle while someone dies, or to be exiled and empty-handed?

Every faction conditions its members to think and act a certain way. And most people do it. For most people, it's not hard to learn, to find a pattern of thought that works and stay that way. But our minds move in a dozen different directions. We can't be confined to one way of thinking, and that terrifies our leaders. It means we can't be controlled. And it means that no matter what they do, we will always cause trouble for them.

Human reason can excuse any evil; that is why it's so important that we don't rely on it.

I settle into their pace. The uniform pounding of feet in my ears and the homogeneity of the people around me makes me believe that I could choose this. I could be subsumed into Abnegation's hive mind, projecting always outward.

My heart beats so hard it hurts, and I can't scream and I can't breathe, but I also feel everything, every vein and every fiber, every bone and every nerve, all awake and buzzing in my body as if charged with electricity. I am pure adrenaline.

That is death- shifting from is to was

When I look at the Abnegation lifestyle as an outsider, I think it's beautiful. When I watch my family move in harmony; when we go to dinner parties and everyone cleans together afterward without having to be asked; when I see Caleb help strangers carry their groceries, I fall in love with this life all over again.

Everything - our houses, our clothes, our hairstyles - is meant to help us forget ourselves and to protect us from vanity, greed and envy, which are just forms of selfishness. If we have little, and want for little, and we are all equal, we envy no one.

Humans can't tolerate emptiness for long.

I stare at him. I feel my heartbeat everywhere, even in my toes. I feel like doing something bold, but I could just as easily walk away. I am not sure which option is smarter, or better. I am not sure that I care.

My problem might be that even if I did go home, I wouldn't belong there, among people who give without thinking and care without trying.

The goal of my life isn't just... to be happy.

Who cares about pretty? I'm going for noticeable.

Fear doesn't shut you down; it wakes you up

I am fed up. I am fed up with tears and weakness. But there isn't much i can do to stop them.

I tell myself, as sternly as possible, that is how things work here. We do dangerous things and people die. People die, and we move on to the next dangerous thing. The sooner that lesson sinks in, the better chance I have at surviving initiation.

Our eyes meet. I hear a train horn, so faint it could be wind whistling through an alleyway. But I know it when I hear it. It sounds like the Dauntless, calling me to to them.

The theory is that if you spill all your secrets, you'll have no desire to lie about anything, ever again. Like the worst about you is already in the open, so why not just be honest?

Why do people want to pretend that death is sleep? It isn't. It isn't.

For a few minutes we kiss, deep in the chasm, with the roar of water all around us. And we rise, hand in hand, I realize that if we had both chosen differently, we might have ended up doing the same thing, in a safer place, in gray clothes instead of black ones.

I breathe in. The water will wash my wounds clean. I breathe out. My mother submerged me in water when I was a baby, to give me to God. It has been a long time since I thought about God, but I think about him now. It is only natural. I am glad, suddenly, that I shot Eric in the foot instead of the head.