Ally Condie, Matched
32 quotes
"Lightning. Once it has forked, hot-white, from sky to earth, there is no going back"
"They could not write their names, but I can write mine, and I will again, somewhere where it will last for a long, long time. I will find Ky, and then I will find that place."
"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."
"Do not go gentle. So I fight. I fight the only way I know how."
"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."
"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."
"Now that I've found the way to fly, which direction should I go into the night?"
"I wonder if I will ever have the strength to hold onto something. Or if I will always be someone who destroys."
"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."
"I can trust in my parents' love. And it strikes me that is a big thing to trust, a big thing to have had, no matter what else happens."
"Nothing is really lost as long as you remember it"
"It is strange how we hold on to the pieces of the past while we wait for our futures."
"All of the things that were shown in early studies to be good for longevity—happy marriages, healthy bodies—are ours to have. We live long,good lives. We die on our eightieth birthdays, surrounded by our families, before dementia sets in. Cancer, heart disease, and most debilitatingillnesses are almost entirely eradicated. This is as close to perfect as any society has ever managed to get."
"For we are all walking each other to our deaths, and the journey between footsteps makes up our lives."
"Ky gives me three gifts for my birthday. A poem, a kiss and the hopeless, beautiful belief that things might work. When I open my eyes... I say, "I didn't give you anything for your birthday, i don't even know when it is." And he says, "Don't worry about that" and I say, "What can I do?" and he answers, "Let me believe in this, all of this, and you believe it too."And I do."
"What did you think about?" I wish I could tell him that I thought about him, but I lied to him once and I won't do it again. And besides, I wasn't thinking about Xander either. "I thought about angels," I say."Angels?""You know. The ones in the old stories. How they can fly to heaven." "Do you think anyone believes in them anymore?" He asks."I don't know. No. Do you?""I believe in you," he says, his voice hushed and almost reverent. "That's more faith than I ever thought I'd have."
"But if you were matched," I say softly, "What do you think she'd be like?""You," he says, almost before I've finished. "You,"
"This is a difficult balance, telling the truth: how much to share, how much to keep, which truths will wound but not ruin, which will cut too deep to heal."
"Blue is the most common eye color in Oria Province, but there is something different about his eyes and I'm not sure what it is. More depth? I wonder what he sees when he looks at me. If he seems to have depth to me, do I seem shallow and transparent to him?"
"Ky still looks at me and I wonder for a moment if he is going to ask me what I am thinking about. But of course, he doesn't. He doesn't learn things by asking questions... He learns by watching."
"I'm falling in love. I am in love. and it's not with Xander, though I do love him. I'm sure of that, as sure as I am of the fact what I feel for Ky is something different."
"They were too much to carryso i left them behindfor a new life, in a new placebut no one forgot who i wasi didn'tand neither did the people who watchthey watched for yearsthey watch now"
"It strikes me that perhaps this is part of what we are fighting to choose. Which pain to feel."
"It was a little thing, a baby tree, but still it tangled with things around it and required care to move. And when she pulled it out, it's roots still clung to Earth from it's old home."
"For one entire day I let his kiss burn on my cheek and into my blood and I don't push the memory away... This kiss, these words, they feel like beginning."