Brianna Walker > Brianna's Quotes

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

“People, I have discovered, are layers and layers of secrets. You believe you know them, that you understand them, but their motives are always hidden from you, buried in their own hearts. You will never know them, but sometimes you decide to trust them.”
― Veronica Roth, Insurgent

“I have something I need to tell you," he says. I run my fingers along the tendons in his hands and look back at him. "I might be in love with you." He smiles a little. "I'm waiting until I'm sure to tell you, though."
"That's sensible of you," I say, smiling too. "We should find some paper so you can make a list or a chart or something."
I feel his laughter against my side, his nose sliding along my jaw, his lips pressing my ear.
"Maybe I'm already sure," he says, "and I just don't want to frighten you."
I laugh a little. "Then you should know better."
"Fine," he says. "Then I love you.”
― Veronica Roth, Divergent

“You think my first instinct is to protect you. Because you're small, or a girl, or a Stiff. But you're wrong."

He leans his face close to mine and wraps his fingers around my chin. His hand smells like metal. When was the last time he held a gun, or a knife? My skin tingles at the point of contact, like he's transmitting electricity through his skin.

"My first instinct is to push you until you break, just to see how hard I have to press." he says, his fingers squeezing at the word break. My body tenses at the edge in his voice, so I am coiled as tight as a spring, and I forget to breathe.

His dark eyes lifting to mine, he adds, "But I resist it."

"Why..." I swallow hard. "Why is that your first instinct?"

"Fear doesn't shut you down; it wakes you up. I've seen it. It's fascinating." He releases me but doesn't pull away, his hand grazing my jaw, my neck. "Sometimes I just want to see it again. Want to see you awake.”
― Veronica Roth, Divergent

“Cruelty does not make a person dishonest, the same way bravery does not make a person kind.”
― Veronica Roth, Insurgent

“I suppose a fire that burns that bright is not meant to last.”
― Veronica Roth, Allegiant

“Sleep,” he says. “I'll fight the bad dreams off if they come to get you.” “With what?” “My bare hands, obviously.”
― Veronica Roth, Insurgent

“...there is power in self-sacrifice.”
― Veronica Roth, Divergent

“There are so many ways to be brave in this world. Sometimes bravery involves laying down your life for something bigger than yourself, or for someone else. Sometimes it involves giving up everything you have ever known, or everyone you have ever loved, for the sake of something greater.

But sometimes it doesn't.

Sometimes it is nothing more than gritting your teeth through pain, and the work of every day, the slow walk toward a better life.

That is the sort of bravery I must have now.”
― Veronica Roth, Allegiant

“I fell in love with him. But I don't just stay with him by default as if there's no one else available to me. I stay with him because I choose to, every day that I wake up, every day that we fight or lie to each other or disappoint each other. I choose him over and over again, and he chooses me.”
― Veronica Roth, Allegiant

“She taught me all about real sacrifice. That it should be done from love... That it should be done from necessity, not without exhausting all other options. That it should be done for people who need your strength because they don't have enough of their own.”
― Veronica Roth, Allegiant

“When her body first hit the net, all I registered was a gray blur. I pulled her across it and her hand was small, but warm, and then she stood before me, short and thin and plain and in all ways unremarkable- except that she had jumped first. The stiff had jumped first.
Even I didn't jump first.
Her eyes were so stern, so insistent.
Beautiful.”
― Veronica Roth, Allegiant

“Knowledge is power. Power to do evil...or power to do good. Power itself is not evil. So knowledge itself is not evil.”
― Veronica Roth, Allegiant

“The first step to loving someone else is to recognize the evil in ourselves, so we can forgive them.”
― Veronica Roth, Allegiant

“But that wasn´t the first time I ever saw her. I saw her in the hallways at school, and at my mother’s false funeral, and walking the sidewalks in the Abnegation sector. I saw her, but I didn’t see her; no one saw her the way she truly was until she jumped.
I suppose a fire that burns that bright is not meant to last.”
― Veronica Roth, Allegiant

“Sometimes I still forget to look for the gentler parts of her. For so long all I saw was the strength, standing out like the wiry muscles in her arms or the black ink marking her collarbone with flight.”
― Veronica Roth, Allegiant

“I think you're still the only person sharp enough to sharpen someone like me.”
― Veronica Roth, Allegiant

“There is a difference between admitting and confessing. Admitting involves softening, making excuses for things that cannot be excused; confessing just names the crimes at its full severity.”
― Veronica Roth, Allegiant

“I don't belong to Abnegation, or Dauntless, or even the Divergent. I don't belong to the Bureau or the experiment or the fringe. I belong to the people I love, and they belong to me-they, and the love and loyalty I give them, form my identity far more than any word or group ever could.”
― Veronica Roth, Allegiant

“It reminds me that no embrace will ever feel the same again, because no one will ever be like her again, because she's gone. She's gone, and crying feels so useless, so stupid, but it's all I can do.”
― Veronica Roth, Allegiant

“People talk about the pain of grief, but I don't know what they mean. To me, grief is a devastating numbness, every sensation dulled.”
― Veronica Roth, Allegiant

“I feel the urge, familiar now, to wrench myself from my body and speak directly into her mind. It is the same urge, I realize, that makes me want to kiss her every time I see her, because even a sliver of distance between us is infuriating. Our fingers, loosely woven a moment ago, now clutch together, her palm tacky with moisture, mine rough in places where I have grabbed too many handles on too many moving trains. Now she looks pale and small, but her eyes make me think of wide-open skies that I have never actually seen, only dreamed of.”
― Veronica Roth, Allegiant

“I touch her cheek to slow the kiss down, holding her mouth on mine so I can feel every place where our lips touch and every place where they pull away. I savor the air we share in the second afterwards and the slip of her nose across mine. I think of something to say, but it is too intimate, so I swallow it. A moment later I decide I don't care.

"I wish we were alone," I say as I back out of the cell.

She smiles. "I almost always wish that.”
― Veronica Roth, Allegiant

“I just wanted to thank you' he says, his voice low.
'A group of scientists told you that my genes were damaged, that there was something wrong with me - they showed you the test results that proved it. And even I started to believe it.'
He touches my face, his thumb skimming my cheekbone, and his eyes are on mine, intense and insistent.
'You never believed it,' he says 'Not for a second. You always insisted I was... I don't know, whole.”
― Veronica Roth, Allegiant

“I keep finding myself stifled by the company of others and then crippled by loneliness when I leave them. I am terrified and I don't even know of what, because I have lost everything already.”
― Veronica Roth, Allegiant

“What did you do?” I mumble. He is just a few feet away from me now, but not close enough to hear me. As he passes me he stretches out his hand. He wraps it around my palm and squeezes. Squeezes, then lets go. His eyes are bloodshot; he is pale. “What did you do?” This time the question tears from my throat like a growl. I throw myself toward him, struggling against Peter’s grip, though his hands chafe. “What did you do?” I scream. “You die, I die too” Tobias looks over his shoulder at me. “I asked you not to do this. You made your decision. These are the repercussions.”
― Veronica Roth

“I don’t know how long it takes for me to realize that isn’t going to happen,
that she is gone. But when I do I feel all the strength go out of me, and I fall to my knees beside the table and I think I cry, then, or at least I want to, and everything inside me screams for just one more kiss, one more word, one more glance, one more.”
― Veronica Roth, Allegiant

“I didn't know that idiocy caused people to just start spontaneously bleeding from the nose.”
― Veronica Roth, Allegiant

“So this is life. Love. We spend all this time reaching for each other and mostly we end up hurting each other until it's over.”
― Amy McNamara, Lovely, Dark and Deep

“The thing about grief is that you have to let yourself feel it. Even the worst parts. Especially the worst parts. Pass through it. Let it pass through you.
It´s your strenght-your humanity-your openness to your feelings. Even when you think you might not come through.”
― Amy McNamara, Lovely, Dark and Deep