Ballad Of Songbirds And Snakes Book Quotes

Coriolanus could see that Festus was falling for her. Did you tell your best friend his crush was a cannibal? Never a rule book when you needed one.

Watching the bright pages of his picture books — the very ones he’d pored over with his mother — reduced to ashes had never failed to bring him to tears. But better off sad than dead.

It's the things we love most that destroy us'" - Coriolanus Snow (The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes)

Watching the bright pages of his picture books — the very ones he’d pored over with his mother — reduced to ashes had never failed to bring him to tears. But better off sad than dead.

Did you tell your best friend his crush was a cannibal? Never a rule book when you needed one.

People aren't so bad really," she said, " It's what the world does to them.

Dystopian fiction isn't a prediction of the future but an interpretation of the present.

It's not immoral to defend ourselves," Livia shot back. "And who wouldn't rather be the victor than the defeated?

People aren't so bad, really. It's what the world does to them. Like us, in the arena. We did things in there we'd never have considered if they'd just left us alone.

A tendency toward obsession was hardwired into his brain and would likely be his undoing if he couldn't learn to outsmart it.

Sad, really, as they were both rather exceptional people, for whom the world had reserved its harshest punishment

Cómo los odiaba. Se regodeaban. Lo atormentaban. Aún así, no podía más que encogerse de hombros y fingir indiferencia. «Bueno, como dicen, el espectáculo no se acaba hasta que el sinsajo canta».

The edges of Lucy Gray's mouth curled up. As she took his hand, her touch sent a tiny electrical spark up his arm, and he felt as if a bit of her onstage charisma had been transferred to him.

Her hand found his, intertwining their fingers and sending a buzz through his body at their

It matched the one on his lapel, just in case anyone needed a reminder of who Lucy Gray belonged to.

And last but least, District Twelve girl ... she belongs to Coriolanus Snow.

His girl. His. Here in the Capitol, it was a given that Lucy Gray belonged to him, as if she'd had no life before her name was called out at the reaping.

Lucy Gray Baird, tribute of District 12, and her mentor, Coriolanus Snow, had won the Tenth Hunger

He'd won glory, and a future, and maybe love,

Sejanus's' lips formed his name, Coryo, and his face contorted in pain. But whether it was a plea for help or an accusation of his betrayal he couldn't tell.

We both know careers end. Sometimes it's not your choice.

We are all born with the capacity for good and evil. It's our choices that determine which path we take.

Without the threat of death, it wouldn’t have been much of a lesson,” said Dr. Gaul. “What happened in the arena? That’s humanity undressed. The tributes. And you, too. How quickly civilization disappears. All your fine manners, education, family background, everything you pride yourself on, stripped away in the blink of an eye, revealing everything you actually are. A boy with a club who beats another boy to death. That’s mankind in its natural state.

The odds are never in our favor, but it's our choices that determine our destiny.

Without the threat of death, it wouldn’t have been much of a lesson,” said Dr. Gaul. “What happened in the arena? That’s humanity undressed. The tributes. And you, too. How quickly civilization disappears. All your fine manners, education, family background, everything you pride yourself on, stripped away in the blink of an eye, revealing everything you actually are. A boy with a club who beats another boy to death. That’s mankind in its natural state.” - Dr. Gaul

Fear is the fuel for hate. And hate is the parent of revenge.

Power has a way of corrupting, even those with the best intentions.

We were all so busy trying to kill each other that we forgot how to have fun.

For a minute, he drifted into a daydream of Lucy Gray winning, leaving the arena, and coming to live with him in the Snows' penthouse, which was somehow saved from taxes. He'd attend the University on his plinth Prize, while she headlined at Pluribus's newly reopened nightclub, because the Capitol would agree to let her stay and, well, he hadn't worked out all of the details, but the point was, he got to keep her. And he wanted to keep her. Safe and close at hand.

If people who were supposed to protect you played so fast and loose with your life...then how did you survive? Not by trusting them, that was for sure. p116

Her kindness transformed to insipidity, her existance a joke to those she had to please to earn her keep.

It crossed his mind that, given his rescue of Sejanus, the Plinths might provide a loan, or even a payout for his silence, but the Grandma’am would never allow that, and the idea of a Snow groveling before a Plinth was unthinkable

Sometimes we went north,” said Tam Amber, and Coriolanus realized it was the first time he’d heard him speak. “To what district?” asked Coriolanus. “No district, really,” said Barb Azure. “Up where the Capitol didn’t care about.” Coriolanus felt embarrassed for them. No such place existed. At least not anymore. The Capitol controlled the known world. For a moment, he imagined a group of people in wild animal furs scraping out an existence in a cave somewhere. He supposed such a thing could happen, but that life would be a big step down from even the districts. Barely human.

Especially using the children.”“And why is that?” asked Dean Highbottom.“Because we credit them with innocence. And if even themost innocent among us turn to killers in the HungerGames, what does that say? That our essential nature isviolent,” Snow explained

The show’s not over until the mockingjay sings,” she said.

O show só acaba quando o tordo canta.

Courage in battle was often necessary because of someone else’s poor planning

A note about the songs: “The Raven” by Edgar Allan Poe was first published in 1845. “Ah! Sun-flower” by William Blake appeared in his Songs of Experience in 1794. “The Goose and the Common” was written by an unknown author in the seventeenth or eighteenth century. “Ladybug, Ladybug” is a District 12 variation of a centuries-old nursery rhyme. I wrote both “Wiress’s Arena Song” and “The Harvest Song” for this story. “The Happy Birthday Song” and “Gem of Panem” first appeared in the novel The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes; James Newton Howard wrote the music to the latter for the screen. “The Hanging Tree” lyrics originated in the book Mockingjay, and the film version was composed by Jeremiah Caleb Fraites & Wesley Keith Schultz of the Lumineers and arranged by James Newton Howard. “Nothing You Can Take From Me,” “The Ballad of Lucy Gray Baird,” and “The Old Therebefore” all first appeared in the Ballad novel and Dave Cobb wrote their music for the film. Much gratitude goes to all these artists, from long ago to the present, whose brilliant, whimsical, and soulful works have enriched Panem.