Ally Condie Quotes

And I wonder how the Society ever caught her that day on the ocean. ~ Ally Condie

And I realize that I can never stay in these hollowed-out places in the earth for long before I have to come up for air. ~ Ally Condie

I can't tell him that I didn't see him until they told me to look. ~ Ally Condie

Teens find out a lot from other teens. ~ Ally Condie

Of course, one person can be the world. ~ Ally Condie

But I feel separated now, as though a clear thin wall rises up distinctly between myself and those staring at me. We can see each other, but we can't cross over. ~ Ally Condie

Neither of us moves for a moment, locked instead in each other's eyes and in the branches of this Hill we might never finish climbing. ~ Ally Condie

Why are some things easier to write than say? ~ Ally Condie

I understood why Leo called the fountain Baby Niagara. Because once you see something big, you can't help seeing it in everything small. ~ Ally Condie

Is falling in love with someone's story the same thing as falling in love with the person himself? ~ Ally Condie

It's not exactly easy to save things for the future when the present is so uncertain. (Xander) ~ Ally Condie

I see his eyes, bright with life adnfire, and I know he won't stop fighting. Even if it's the kind of quiet fight on the inside that you can't always see. And I won't stop fighting either. ~ Ally Condie

Tell me a little every day and I'll remember it for you. Then there will be two of us who know. ~ Ally Condie

Rain falls in both pictures, but in the first one his mouth is open, his head tipped back, he drinks from the sky. In the second one his head is down, his eyes panicked, the rain thick around him, streaming off him like a waterfall. There is too much rain here. He could drown. ~ Ally Condie

To see how Grandfather handles leaving, and to
see how we manage being left. ~ Ally Condie

A little surge of bitterness goes through me like someone's shot it right into my veins with a syringe. But I know how to get over the feeling: remember that it doesn't do any good. ~ Ally Condie

I stand there, thinking about this. How much has changed. How little we knew. ~ Ally Condie

We can either try to change everything or just make the most of whatever time we have. ~ Ally Condie

Shallow roots. Sandy soil. The bark is gray and rough. The leaves are long gone but her name still looks beautiful to me. ~ Ally Condie

It could," Ky agrees. He's no longer smiling but his eyes are mischievous. ~ Ally Condie

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. ~ Ally Condie

My mother looks at me with love and understanding, and I realize: she knows what my father did. She knows what I want. She knows and even though she would not destroy a tissue sample or love someone who is not her Match, she still loves us, even though we have done those things. ~ Ally Condie

I wanted to know more about this boy who lives among us, but who never truly speaks. ~ Ally Condie

Cassia doesn't like to sort people. I'm all too good at it and I worry I'll grow to like it too much.It's a talent.[...]And all it takes is a misstep or two for that talent to become a liability instead of an asset. ~ Ally Condie

I nod, trying not to look too hard at the food on his dish. The flakiness of the sugared crust, which reminds me of crystals on an edge of snow. The red-stained berries smeared across the plate, ripe and surely ful of taste. The words I've said cling to my mind like the pastry does to the heavy silver fork. ~ Ally Condie

Cassia.
Even far away, I know it's her by the way her dark hair tangles with the wind and how she stands on the red rocks of the Carving. She's more beautiful than snow.
Is this real?
She points to the sky. ~ Ally Condie

Our time together feels like a storm, like a wild wind and rain, like something too big to handle but too powerful to escape. ~ Ally Condie

So many beginnings. I tell myself that in a way it's good that I haven't found Ky yet, because I still don't know what to whisper to him when I see him, which words would be the very best ones to give. ~ Ally Condie

Each word I write brings me closer to finding the right ones. ~ Ally Condie

His lips move silently, and I know what he says: the words of a poem that only two people in the world know. ~ Ally Condie

That part was easy. Tearing up the roots will be the hard part. ~ Ally Condie

Sometimes you can't speak, not because others won't let you, but because you are afraid of what you'll say. ~ Ally Condie

It's Ky's move. In the quiet before the Ky takes his turn, Xander watches him carefully. Ky's hand hovers over the board. For a moment, as he holds the piece in the air, I see where he could put it to win and I know he sees it, too, that he planned the whole game for that last move. He looks at Xander and Xander looks back, both of them locked in some kind of challenge that seems to run deeper and older than what's happening here on this board.
Then Ky moves his hand and puts his piece down in a spot where Xander can eventually overtake him for the win. Ky doesn't hessitate once he places the piece; he sets it down with a solid sound and leans back in his chair, looking up at the ceiling. I think I see the slightest hint of a smile on his lips but I can't be sure. ~ Ally Condie

The beauty of dystopia is that it lets us vicariously experience future worlds - but we still have the power to change our own. ~ Ally Condie

I am trapped in glass and I want to break out and breath deep but I´m too afraid that it will hurt. ~ Ally Condie

There's a reason they didn't keep this poem. This poem tells you to fight. ~ Ally Condie

Does loving someone mean you want them to be safe? Or that you want them to be able to choose? ~ Ally Condie

This is the difference between us. I live to sort, he knows how to create. ~ Ally Condie

For a moment nothing happens. The figure stands still and I stand cold and alive and-
He starts to run. I make my way down the rocks, slipping, sliding, trying to get to the plain. I wish, I think, my feet clumsy, moving too fast, not fast enough, I wish i could run, I wish I'd written a whole poem, I wish I kept the compass-
And then I reach the plain and wish for nothing but what I have. Ky. Running toward me. I have never seen him run like this, fast, free, strong, wild. He looks so beautiful, his body moves so right. He stops just close enough for me to see the blue of his eyes and forget the red on my hands and the green I wish I wore. "You're here," he says, breathing hard and hungry. sweat and dirt cover his face, and he looks at me as though I'm the only thing he ever needed to see. I open my mouth to say yes. But I only have time to breathe in before he closes the last of the distance. All I know is the kiss. ~ Ally Condie

But my father goes on.And I've noticed other things,too.I think you're in love with Ky Markham.I think you want to find him,wherever he's gone. ~ Ally Condie

Come with me outside," he says, and I feel his hand on mine. "We won't go far." I can't see him; but I hear a complicated mix of emotion in his voice and feel it in the way he touches me. Love, concern, and something unusual, something bittersweet. ~ Ally Condie

It's good to see you jealous once in a while." He smiles, sun in the woods. ~ Ally Condie

Because either way, whichever life I build, has to be built on truth. ~ Ally Condie

I couldn't sleep all night,
worrying that I'd gotten you in trouble. I care about you. ~ Ally Condie

Only when I hold onto nothing can I be the best, only then can I be what they expect me to be. ~ Ally Condie

But I've already broken the glass; I've given the green away; I've made my choice. ~ Ally Condie

Did you know Grandfather would give the poems to me?" I ask.
"We thought he might," my mother says.
"Why didn't you stop him?"
"We didn't want to take away your choices," my mother says.
"But Grandfather never did tell me about the Rising," I say.
"I think he wanted you to find your own way," my mother says. She smiles. "In that way, he was a true rebel. I think that's why he chose that argument with your father as his favorite memory. Though he was upset when the fight happened, later he came to see that your father was strong in choosing his own path, and he admired him for it. ~ Ally Condie

In some ways, our being Matched is the biggest strike against me. How was she supposed to love me when the Society said she should? ~ Ally Condie

What would Grandfather think of this jump I'm taking? Would this be one time he would tell me to hang on to the edge with all my might? Would he say to cling to the side of the board until my fingers became bloody and scraped? Or would he say that it was all right to let go? ~ Ally Condie

If only it were real. ~ Ally Condie

Forgetting lets you live without the pain for a moment but remembering hits hard. ~ Ally Condie

Hope looks like a footprint, a half footprint where someone grew careless and stepped into soft mud that later hardened too thick to blow away in the evening and morning winds. ~ Ally Condie

But you came into the Carving to save yourself and get back to the girl you're in love with. That's all. ~ Ally Condie

I see a glint in her eye as she looks at me and it makes me smile. Hold our breath? she seems to say. Move the earth? We've been doing that all along. ~ Ally Condie

And then he says it, right there on the Hill, and of all the words I have hidden and saved and treasured, these are the ones I will never forget, the most important ones of all. 'I love you. ~ Ally Condie

I know you meant that you would always remember me, Cassia, but I'm afraid you might forget. ~ Ally Condie

Close your eyes," I say to Ky, and I bend down, his breathing above me while he waits. "There," I say, and he looks at what I've written. I love you. ~ Ally Condie

It's not their business unless the Society says that it is. ~ Ally Condie

He still thinks that knowing why might help. He doesn't yet know that the reason will never be good enough. ~ Ally Condie

I'm standing in a river. It's blue. Dark blue. Reflecting the color of the evening sky. ~ Ally Condie

All these years he's been so careful, but now he's willing to take a chance. Because he's found someone who wants to know. Someone he wants to tell. ~ Ally Condie

My father was never the Pilot, but he was one of the people standing in line. ~ Ally Condie

I weave the papers through the branches, in a long loop. Up and down, my knees bending. My arms above my head, like the girls I saw once in a painting in a cave. There is a rhythm to this, a keeping of time. I wonder if I'm dancing. ~ Ally Condie

Because in the end you can't always choose what to keep. You can only choose how to let it go. ~ Ally Condie

If you have to see me broken and beat-up to care about me, I will *never* care about you. If you only like me when I'm cast down, I will get back up and wipe the kindness right off your face. ~ Ally Condie

Watching Ky wake is better than a sunrise. ~ Ally Condie

You are strong enough to go without. ~ Ally Condie

I know nothing about and how else the Society might have altered maps over the years. There must be a world past the Enemy territory. How much has been erased and taken away? ~ Ally Condie

I'm not anyone. I'm just one of the people who happened to fall in the majority. All my life, the odds have been on my side. ~ Ally Condie

Was there a stolen touch before he found himself again at the bottom of the hill with the stone to push? Did he smile to himself as he set, again, to rolling it? ~ Ally Condie

Sometimes it's faster and more efficient to destroy. ~ Ally Condie

We need you."
"I'm sorry, but I can't let that keep me here anymore. ~ Ally Condie

People can be miracles. ~ Ally Condie

I love you.
lightning. Once it has forked, hot-white, from sky to earth, there is no going back.
It's time. I feel it, I know it. My eyes on him, his on me, and both of us breathing, watching, tired of of waiting. Ky close his eyes, but mine are still open. what will it feel like, his lips on mine? Like a secret told, a promise kept? Like that line in the poem-a shower of all my days- silvery rain falling all around me, where the lighting meets the earth?
The whistle blows below us and the moment breaks. We are safe.
For now. ~ Ally Condie

I don't cut deep-I don't want to kill the tree. I carve her name carefully on the trunk, thinking, as I always do, of when I held her hand in mine to teach her to write. ~ Ally Condie

It's good to know that Xander's here. So that when I go down, she won't be alone.
"You walked through the Carving to find me," I tell Cassia softly. "I'm going to walk through this to reach you. ~ Ally Condie

So much of life is in the smallness of moments ... but they are harder to mark. So we need the grander celebrations and occasions. People like to feel significant ~ Ally Condie

Maybe only parts of our stories can keep us safe. The whole can feel like too much to bear. ~ Ally Condie

For a moment on the top of that bare pain of rock I wonder if I should run behind or ahead-which is the best way to protect her-and then I find us just running side by side. ~ Ally Condie

Because once you love, it is gone. You love and you cannot call it back. ~ Ally Condie

She stands on top of the hill again. A small round piece of gold in her hands: the compass. A disk of brighter gold on the horizon: the sun rising. She opens the compass and looks at the arrow. Tears on her face, wind in her hair. She wears a green dress. Her skirt brushes the grass when she bends down to put the compass on the ground. When she stands up again her hands are empty. Xander waits behind her. He holds out his hand. "He's gone," he tells her. "I'm here." His voice sounds sad. Hopeful. No, I start to say, but Xander tells the truth. I'm not there, not really. I'm only a shadow watching in the sky. They're real. I'm not anymore. ~ Ally Condie

What is it about your voice that
makes me want to hear you speak? ~ Ally Condie

How can we appreciate anything fully when overwhelmed with too much? ~ Ally Condie

I didn't point out that I'm part Chinese-American and so the odds that I would have been in England back in Shakespeare's time were highly unlikely. "And, ~ Ally Condie

How we
never, ever fight. ~ Ally Condie

In Ky's eyes is such complete love and hunger that it goes through me like the sharp, high note of a bird in the canyon, echoing all the way through my body. I am seen and known, if not yet touched. The ~ Ally Condie

You always have more to lose, until you die. ~ Ally Condie

It gets harder and steeper, but not impossible. ~ Ally Condie

You can't let love make you afraid. ~ Ally Condie

I never needed the Society to Match me. ~ Ally Condie

I wouldn't have seen the light if she hadn't pointed out, but once sje did, it became impossible to ignore. ~ Ally Condie

I'm not Rising or Society ~ Ally Condie

Sometimes paper is just paper, words are just words. Ways to capture the real thing. Don't be afraid to remember that. ~ Ally Condie

Do you think you could let someone go if you thought it was best for them? ~ Ally Condie

It could have been different," I say, almost under my breath. If I'd kissed Indie again after she kissed me. If I hadn't known Cassia before I met Indie.
"But it's not," Indie says, and she's right. ~ Ally Condie

Cassia.
I know which life is my real one now, no matter what happens. It's the one with you. For some reason, knowing that even one person knows my story makes things different. Maybe it's like the poem says. Maybe this is my way of not going gentle.
I love you. (Ky Markham) ~ Ally Condie

There's got to be some light in a corner somewhere. ~ Ally Condie

I shouldn't have been surprised by the way at the way she fell in love with Ky because it's the way I wanted her to fall in love with me: completely. ~ Ally Condie

If I couldn't name it, would I even know what it is? Would I even feel it at all? ~ Ally Condie

I always carve myself into what others want me to be. ~ Ally Condie