Nat > Recent Status Updates

“You got something eating at you, Catharine. Something gnawing at your guts. Something so bitter it simmers in your eyes and grits your teeth together. I know your kind.”

“I was dumped down in a large room cluttered with toys and games and massive dark furniture, and pictures of hell on the walls. I sat in an old wooden rocker half coming apart, and on my lap I held a ghostly, small brother who called me mama. And on, and on we rocked… and below us, around us, above us, the enormous house of countless rooms was waiting to eat us up.”

“So don’t you dare talk to me of forgiving and forgetting, i don’t know how to forgive and forget. All i know how to do is hate — and you don’t know what it’s like to hate as i do.”

“Can the Dark Ages’ doctors be blamed for their methods? The bloodletting, the leaches, the holes in skulls? They were feeling their way blind, grasping at mysteries in a world without science, but the plague was upon them; they had to do something. When our turn came, it was no different. Despite all our technology and enlightenment… it was no different. We were just as blind and just as desperate.”

“It frustrates and fascinates me that we’ll never know for sure, that despite the best effort of historians and scientists and poets, there are some things we’ll just never know. What the first song sounded like. How it felt to see the first photograph. Who kissed the first kiss, and if it was any good.”

“What happened to the world was gradual… A smoldering dread that never really caught fire until there wasn’t much left to burn. Each sequential step surprised us. Then one day we woke up, and everything was gone.”

“Are my words ever actually audible, or do they just echo in my head while people stare at me, waiting? I want to change my punctuation. I long for exclamation marks, but I’m drowning in ellipses.”

“It is not enough just to foresee a likely outcome for us to change or prevent that event. We must understand why it is coming, and we must work on the causes within ourselves for the things we do and the ways we react. Free will certainly exists, we just do not know how to use it.”

This is already 5 stars

“You are an animal of nature, fully endowed with hearing, sight, intellect, and dangerous defenses. You are not easy prey, so don’t act like you are.”

this is fucking DENSE jesus christ i feel im reading Tolkien

“‘The pair last year ate everything with their hands like a couple of savages…’

The pair last year were two kids from the Seam who’d never, not one day of their lives, had enough to eat… I hate Effie’s comment so much I make a point of eating the rest of my meal with my fingers. Then I wipe my hands on the tablecloth. This makes her purse her lips tightly together.”

“I know there must be more than they’re telling us, an actual account of what happened during the rebellion. But I don’t spend much time thinking about it. Whatever the truth is, I don’t see how it will help me get food on the table.”

“Starvation is never the cause of death officially. It’s always the flu, or exposure, or pneumonia. But that fools no one.”

“To the… credit of the people of District 12, not one person claps. Not even the ones holding betting slips, the ones who are usually beyond caring. Possibly because they know me… or knew my father, or have encountered Prim, who no one can help but loving... I stand there unmoving while they take part in the boldest form of dissent they can manage. Silence. Which says we do not agree. We do not condone”

“Taking kids from our districts… this is the Capitol’s way of reminding us how totally we are at their mercy. How little chance we would stand of surviving another rebellion.”

“The Treat of Treason gave us the new laws to guarantee peace and, as our yearly reminder that the Dark Days must never be repeated, it gave us the Hunger Games.”

“His rage seems pointless to me, although I never say so… what good is yelling about the Capitol in the middle of the woods? It doesn’t change anything. It doesn’t make things fair. It doesn’t fill our stomachs. In fact, it scares off the nearby game.”

“Entrails. No hissing. This is the closest we will ever come to love.”

“They always call depression the blues, but I would have been happy to waken to a periwinkle outlook. Depression to me is urine yellow. Washed out, exhausted miles of weak piss.”

“I know the wisdom, that no parents should see their child die, that such an event is like nature spun backward. But it’s the only way to truly keep your child. Kids grow up, they forge more potent allegiances. They find a spouse or a lover. They will not be buried with you. The Keenes, however, will remain the purest form of family. Underground.”

girl what??

It’s just sitting in my mailbox I’m dying to start it right NOW

I DNF’d because there’s a character named Reagan and ion fuck with those but the book is good so I picked it up again

“My father finally died. At night, in his sleep. A woman spooned his last meal into his mouth, a woman settled him into bed for his last rest, a woman cleaned him up after he died, and a woman phoned to give me the news.
‘He was a good man,’ she said…
‘No, he wasn’t,’ I said, and she laughed like she clearly hadn’t in a month.”

“You are an average, lazy, boring, cowardly, woman-fearing man. Without me, that’s what you would have kept on being, ad nauseam… You were the best man you’ve ever been with me. And you know it. The only time in your life you’ve ever liked yourself was pretending to be someone I might like. Without me? You’re just your dad.”