"Peeta, how come I never know when you're having a nightmare?” I say.“I don't know. I don't think I cry out or thrash around or anything. I just come to, paralyzed with terror,” he says.“You should wake me,” I say, thinking about how I can interrupt his sleep two or three times on a bad night. About how long it can take to calm me down.“It's not necessary. My nightmares are usually about losing you,” he says. “I'm okay once I realize you're here."
"But I have to confess, I'm glad you two had at least a few months of happiness together."I'm not glad," says Peeta. "I wish we had waited until the whole thing was done officially."This takes even Caesar aback. "Surely even a brief time is better than no time?"Maybe I'd think that, too, Caesar," says Peeta bitterly, "If it weren't for the baby."
"Shame isn't a strong enough word for what I feel. "You could live a hundred lifetimes and not deserve him, you know," Haymitch says."
"hey. I just wanted to make sure you got home," I say. "Katniss, I live three houses away from you," he says."
"Having an eye for beauty isn't the same thing as a weakness."
"As coal pressured into pearls by our weighty existence. Beauty that arose out of pain."
"I thought he wanted it, anyway," I say. "Not like this," Haymitch says. "He wanted it to be real."
"Either you came in here a swimmer or you'd better be a really fast learner"
"I'm ordered to a week of bed rest and I don't object because I feel so lousy. Not just my heel and my tailbone. My whole body aches with exhaustion. So I let my mother doctor me and feed me breakfast in bed and tuck another quilt around me. Then I just lie there, staring out my window at the winter sky, pondering how on earth this will all turn out."
"I'm not prepared for Rue's family. Her parents, whose faces are still fresh with sorrow. Her fiver younger siblings, who resemble her so closely. The slight builds, the luminous brown eyes. They form a flock of small dark birds."
"Prim... Rue... aren't they the very reason I have to try to fight? Because what has been done to them is so wrong, so beyond justification, so evil that there is no choice? Because no one had the right to treat them as they have been treated? Yes. This is the thing to remember when fear threatens to swallow me up."
"but it's not safe and I can feel him slipping away, so I just get out one more sentence. "Stay with me." As the tendrils of sleep syrup pull me down, I hear him whisper a word back but I don't catch it."
"They're a little strange, but I'm pretty sure neither of them is going to try to make me uncomfortable by stripping naked."
"What did Finnick Odair want?” he asks.I turn and put my lips close to Peeta's and drop my eyelids in imitation of Finnick. “He offered me sugar and wanted to know all my secrets,” I say in my best seductive voice.Peeta laughs. “Ugh. Not really.”“Really,” I say. “I'll tell you more when my skin stops crawling."
"In my mind, President Snow should be viewed in front of marble pillars hung with oversized flags. It's jarring to see him surrounded by the ordinary objects in the room. Like taking the lid off a pot and finding a fanged viper instead of stew."
"Peeta" I said "Stay with me"I heard him say one word before the drigs pulled me under, I realised later that what he said was 'always"
"I act delighted, but I have zero interest in these Capitol people. They are only distractions from the food."
"We are what no one wants to miss at the party. I act delighted, but I have zero interest in these Capitol people. They are only distractions from the food."
"I look coolly in to the blue eyes of the person who is now my greatest opponent, the person who would keep me alive at his own expense. And I promise myself I will defeat his plan."
"I don't know what it is with Finnick and bread, but he seems obsessed with handling it."
"And it’s all my fault, Gale. Because of what I did in the arena. If I had just killed myself with those berries, none of this would’ve happened. Peeta could have come home and lived, and everyone else would have been safe, too.”“Safe to do what?” he says in a gentler tone. “Starve? Work like slaves? Send their kids to the reaping? You haven’t hurt people – you’ve given them an opportunity. They just have to be brave enough to take it."
"He could have had his choice of any woman in the district. And he chose solitude. Not solitude – that sounds too peaceful. More like solitary confinement."
"I had to do that. At least once."
"I go back to my room and lie under the covers, trying not to think of Gale and thinking of nothing else."
"So what should we do with our last few days?”“I just want to spend every possible minute of the rest of my life with you,” Peete replies.“Come on, then,” I say, pulling him into my room.It feels like a luxury, sleeping with Peeta again. I didn’t realize until now how starved I’ve been for human closeness. For the feel of him beside me in the darkness."