Crossed Ally Condie Quotes

In the end you can't always choose what to keep. You can only choose how you let it go.

Love changes what is probable and makes unlikely things possible.

I love. The most reckless thing of all.

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

I climb into the dark for you Are you waiting in the stars for me?

Everyone has something of beauty about them. But loving lets you look, and look, and look again. You notice the back of a hand, the turn of a head, the way of a walk. When you first love, you look blind and you see it all as the glorious, beloved whole, or a beautiful sum of beautiful parts. But when you see the one you love as pieces, as why's, you can love those parts too, and it's a love at once more complicated and more complete.

It's not knowing how to write that makes you interesting, it's what you write.

This is a cruel thing to do because when someone knows your story they know you. And they can hurt you. It's why I give mine away in pieces, even to Cassia.

Everyone has something of beauty about them.

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

Love has different shades. Like the way I loved Cassia when I thought she'd never love me. The way I loved her on the Hill. The way I love her now that she came into the canyon for me. It's different. Deeper. I thought I loved her and wanted her before, but as we walk through the canyon together I realize this could be more than a new shade. A whole new color.

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

I didn't know all that was inside of him, either. I thought I did, but people run deep and complicated like rivers, hold their shape and are carved upon like stone.

Cassia and I sit as near to each other as we can. She leans into me and I keep my arms around her. I don't fool myself that I hold her together- she does that on her own- but holding her keeps me from flying apart.

We have all been carved out by our sorrow. Cut deep like canyon walls.

I run for her. I run for them. For me.

And it is strange that absence can feel like presence.

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

I decided that it was the thoughts in your own mind that mattered more than anything else.

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

Death,” I say. “ It’s the one thing they haven’t fully conquered. They want to know more about it.

I marked a map for every death For every ache and blow My world was all a page of black With nothing left but snow.

I have a sense that we have not yet arrived, that we are still reaching. For each other. For who we are meant to be.

Two little dark figures, looking up. Are they looking at me? Is is him? This far away there's only one way to know. I point to the sky.

I never named anything I've written before no reason to since it would all have the same title anyway -for you- but I would call this one one night that night when we let the world be only you and only me we stood on it while it spun green and blue and red the music ended but we were still singing

Time, Vick said, "is what we don't have.

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.

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.

She wraps her arms around me and speaks in my ear. Words just for me--the poetry of I love you--to keep me warm in the cold. With them she turns me back from ash and nothing into flesh and blood.

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

Watching Ky wake is better than a sunrise.

Everyday the sun rolls by Across the sky and through night's door Every night the stars light high Above the Earth and shine once more Any day her boat might fly Across the waves and to the shore

My mother painted with water," he says. "And my father played with fire.

No." "Why?" "No one needs to know," I say. "To know what?How long you've lasted?" Vick asks. "To know anything about me," I say.

I'm just a butterfly, a mourning cloak, sealed inside a cocoon with blnd eyes and stiky wings. And suddenly I wonder if the cocoons sometimes do not open, if the butterfly inside is ever simply not strong enough to break through.

For we are all walking each other to our deaths, and the journey between footsteps makes up our lives(Cassia 'Reached')

Not many people know how to make letters like this," he says. "Do you ever teach anyone?" "Only once," I say.

No one knows anything," Vick says. "Except Ky. He thinks he's found the truth in a girl.

Ky is heavy in my mind, deep in my heart, his palms warm on my empty hands. I have to try to find him. Loving him gave me wings and all my work has given me the strength to move them.

And it is strange that absence can feel like presence. A missing so complete that if it were to go away, I would turn around, stunned, to see that the room is empty after all, when before it at least had something, if not him.

Ky smiles then, a smile I've never seen before. It's the kind of daring, reckless smile that could make people follow him straight into a firing, a flood.

Because I feel no anger toward my mother. Only loss, and loss is a feeling you can’t fight your way out of as easily.

The salt of his tears tastes like the sea and I don't see the shore.

Good-byes are like this. You can’t always mark them well at the moment of separation—no matter how deep they cut. (Ky Markham)

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.

If you love someone, if someone loved you, if they taught you to write and made it so you could speak, how can you do nothing at all? You might as well take their words out of the dirt and try to snatch them from the wind. Because once you love, it is gone. You love and you cannot call it back.

The Society isn't human, but the people work for it sometimes are.

I don't fool myself that I hold her together—she does that on her own—but holding her keeps me from flying apart.

She cried before she slept. I reached out to touch the ends of her hair. She didn't notice. I didn't know what to do. Listening to her made me ache. I felt tears stream down my face too. And when I accidentally brushed Eli with my arm his face was wet where his tears ran down. We have all been carved out by our sorrow. Cut deep like canyon walls.

I'll go over again and again until I've finally crossed to where he is

One night," Ky says, "doesn't seem like much to ask." I don't speak. He moves closer and I feel his cheek against mine and breathe in the scent of sage and pine, of old dust and fresh water and of him. "For one night, can we just think of each other? Not the Society or the Rising or even our families?" "No," I say. "No what?" He tangles one of his hands in my hair, the other draws me closer still. "No, I don't think we can," I say. "And no, it isn't too much to ask.

The Society music plays around and over us, but our thoughts are our own.

I don't trust the Society, and I don't trust the rebelions, I don't choose either of them, I've seen what both can do.

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

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.

You have intuition, too. The Society says it doesn't really exist, but it does.

I will be strong enough to go without the tablet. But there are other things I’m not strong enough to go without, and I intend to fight for them. (Cassia Reyes)

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.

His uniform seems threadbare and tired, and so does he, as though he's coming apart along the edges.

Much as I love looking at the stars, I never learned to guide by them. I mark my course by people.

It's been so long since I've let myself feel anger that I don't just feel it. It covers my mouth and I swallow it down, the taste sharp and metal as though I'm gnawing through foilware.

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.

There is no place for someone like him in the Society, I think, for someone who can create. He can do so many things of incomparable value, things no one else can do, and the Society doesn't care about that at all.

Why won't you hold me?" I ask, drawing back a little. He laughs a little, holds out his hands as if in explanation. They are covered in dirt and paint and blood. I pull his hand to mine, put my palm against his. I can feel the grit of sand, the slick of paint, and the cuts and scrapes that speak of his own journey. "It will all come clean," I tell him.

I think of how many invisible injuries are possible. Ones scored on your heart, your brain, your bones. How do we all stand? I wonder. What is is that keeps us moving?

I wonder if there have been other errors.

You left me like he left you.

Everyone has something of beauty about them. In the beginning for me, it was Ky's eyes I noticed, and I love the, still. But loving lets you look, and look, and look again. You notice the back of a hand, the turn of a head, the way of a walk. When you first love, you look blind and you see it all as the glorious, beloved whole, or a beautiful sum of beautiful parts. But when you see the one you love as pieces, as whys-why he walks like this, why he closes his eyes like that-you can love those parts, too, and it's a love at once more complicated and more complete.

Pictures painted with water. Poetry breathed between kisses. Too beautiful to last.

It's as though she holds to the walls of a canyon. If I move wrong she will look over her shoulder, let go, and take her chances with the fall.

You can't kill anything that's always moving and changing

You're smiling," Indie says. "I know." I say.

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.

And I laugh at myself for thinking I could touch the sky.

I thought you had some kind of greater purpose," Vick says thoughtfully. "Gathering people to bring to the Rising. but you came into the Carving to save yourself and get back to the girl you're in love with. That's all." "That's all." I agree. He can think less of me if he wants. "Good enough," Vick says. "Good night.

Much as I love looking at the stars, I never learned to guide by them. I mark my course by people; Xander, a point in the map, my parents, another point; Ky, the final destination. When Xander moves, the geography of everything changes.

If you loved someone, if someone loved you, if they taught you to write and made it so you could speak, how can you do nothing at all? You might as well take their words out of the dirt and try to snatch them from the wind. Because once you love, it is gone. You love and you cannot call it back.

Things here are so different. Poisoned rivers, softened stone. You never know exactly what you're getting into. What will hold and what will give way

The Society wants us to be afraid of dying. But I'm not. I'm only afraid of dying wrong.

But loving let's you look, and look, and look again. You notice the back of a hand, the turn of a head, the way of a walk.

Ky watches me with that look in his eyes, the one sad and full of love at the same time, the one he gives me when he knows something I don't, something he thinks has been stolen from me.

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.

Sé que querías decirme que siempre me recordarías, Cassia, pero tengo miedo de que me olvides.

Mountains, I realize. That's what the ocean is. Those waves are peaks. The stars are lights in houses and on streets. The earth reflects the sky and the sky meets the earth and, every now and then, if we're lucky, we have a moment to see how small we are

The rain turns lighter, turns to snow. And I have a sense that we have not yet arrived, that we are still reaching. For each other. For who we are meant to be.

They say you should always teach a person’s name first. That way, even if they never learn to write anything else, they’ll always have something.

Then she asked me the color of my eyes. In that moment I realized that loving each other felt more dangerous-more like a rebellion-than anything else ever could.

I climb into the dark for you. Are you waiting in the stars for me?

And even in my panic, I hear the music in his deep voice, the sounds of singing. I close my eyes, imagining my breath is his own, that he is with me

It's beautiful and it's real, but our time together could be as fleeting as snow on the plateau. We can either try to change everything or just make the most of whatever time we have.

You never cut notches into your boot," he sats his voice back to even and his eyes back to calm. "No,' I agree. "Why?" "No one needs to know," I say. "To know what? How long you've lasted?" Vick asks. "To know anything about me," I say.

For one night, can we just think of each other? Not the Society or the Rising or even our families?" "No," I say. "No what?" He tangles one of his hands in my hair, the other draws me closer still. "No, I don't think we can," I say. "And no, it isn't too much to ask.

-at least in the collective mind of the Society.

It's so huge," I say to him, and he nods.

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.

Watching Ky wake is better than a sunrise. One moment, he's still and down deep, and the next moment I can see him returning out of the dark, coming to the surface. His face shifts, his lips move, his eyes open. And then his smile, the sun At the same time that he bends down to me, I reach up and am warmed as our lips meet.

I don't know where I find the air and I keep getting the words wrong: From out our bourne of death and space the flood will wash me far- but it doesn't even matter. I never knew that words might not matter.

For some reason the neatly ordered and abandoned books make me feel sad. Tired. I wish Cassia were with me. She'd turn each page and read every word. I can picture her in the dim light of the cave with her bright eyes and her smile and I close my eyes. That shadowy memory might be as close as I come to seeing her again. We have the map, but the distance we still have to cross looks almost insurmountable.

Finding him has been the only thing for so long. Even without a map, even without the compass, I know I can do it. I've imagined the moment of meeting over and over again; how he'll pull me close, how I'll whisper a poem to him. The only flaw in my dream is that I haven't finished writing anything for him yet; I can never get the past the first line. I've written so many beginnings over the months out here and yet the middle and the end of our kind of love are things I haven't seen yet for myself.

When I was small my mother tried to teach me the colors. "Blue," she said, pointing to the sky. And "blue" again, the second time pointing to the water. She told me I shook my head because I could see that sky blue was not always the same as water blue. It took me a long time-until I lived in Oria- to use the same word for all the shades of a color... Love has different shades. Like the way I loved Cassia when I thought she'd never love me. The way I loved her on The Hill. The way I love her now that she came into the canyon for me. It's different. Deeper. I thought I loved her and wanted her before, but as we walk through the canyon together I realize this could be more than a new shade. A whole new color.