Hunger Games Book Quotes

I'm not Team Gale or Team Peeta. I'm Team Katniss...the core story in the Hunger Games trilogy has less to do with who Katniss ends up with and more to do with who she is - because sometimes, in books and in life, it's not about the romance. Sometimes, it's about the girl.

No matter how old you are now. You are never too young or too old for success or going after what you want. Here’s a short list of people who accomplished great things at different ages 1) Helen Keller, at the age of 19 months, became deaf and blind. But that didn’t stop her. She was the first deaf and blind person to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree. 2) Mozart was already competent on keyboard and violin; he composed from the age of 5. 3) Shirley Temple was 6 when she became a movie star on “Bright Eyes.” 4) Anne Frank was 12 when she wrote the diary of Anne Frank. 5) Magnus Carlsen became a chess Grandmaster at the age of 13. 6) Nadia Comăneci was a gymnast from Romania that scored seven perfect 10.0 and won three gold medals at the Olympics at age 14. 7) Tenzin Gyatso was formally recognized as the 14th Dalai Lama in November 1950, at the age of 15. 8) Pele, a soccer superstar, was 17 years old when he won the world cup in 1958 with Brazil. 9) Elvis was a superstar by age 19. 10) John Lennon was 20 years and Paul Mcartney was 18 when the Beatles had their first concert in 1961. 11) Jesse Owens was 22 when he won 4 gold medals in Berlin 1936. 12) Beethoven was a piano virtuoso by age 23 13) Issac Newton wrote Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica at age 24 14) Roger Bannister was 25 when he broke the 4 minute mile record 15) Albert Einstein was 26 when he wrote the theory of relativity 16) Lance E. Armstrong was 27 when he won the tour de France 17) Michelangelo created two of the greatest sculptures “David” and “Pieta” by age 28 18) Alexander the Great, by age 29, had created one of the largest empires of the ancient world 19) J.K. Rowling was 30 years old when she finished the first manuscript of Harry Potter 20) Amelia Earhart was 31 years old when she became the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean 21) Oprah was 32 when she started her talk show, which has become the highest-rated program of its kind 22) Edmund Hillary was 33 when he became the first man to reach Mount Everest 23) Martin Luther King Jr. was 34 when he wrote the speech “I Have a Dream." 24) Marie Curie was 35 years old when she got nominated for a Nobel Prize in Physics 25) The Wright brothers, Orville (32) and Wilbur (36) invented and built the world's first successful airplane and making the first controlled, powered and sustained heavier-than-air human flight 26) Vincent Van Gogh was 37 when he died virtually unknown, yet his paintings today are worth millions. 27) Neil Armstrong was 38 when he became the first man to set foot on the moon. 28) Mark Twain was 40 when he wrote "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer", and 49 years old when he wrote "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" 29) Christopher Columbus was 41 when he discovered the Americas 30) Rosa Parks was 42 when she refused to obey the bus driver’s order to give up her seat to make room for a white passenger 31) John F. Kennedy was 43 years old when he became President of the United States 32) Henry Ford Was 45 when the Ford T came out. 33) Suzanne Collins was 46 when she wrote "The Hunger Games" 34) Charles Darwin was 50 years old when his book On the Origin of Species came out. 35) Leonardo Da Vinci was 51 years old when he painted the Mona Lisa. 36) Abraham Lincoln was 52 when he became president. 37) Ray Kroc Was 53 when he bought the McDonalds Franchise and took it to unprecedented levels. 38) Dr. Seuss was 54 when he wrote "The Cat in the Hat". 40) Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger III was 57 years old when he successfully ditched US Airways Flight 1549 in the Hudson River in 2009. All of the 155 passengers aboard the aircraft survived 41) Colonel Harland Sanders was 61 when he started the KFC Franchise 42) J.R.R Tolkien was 62 when the Lord of the Ring books came out 43) Ronald Reagan was 69 when he became President of the US 44) Jack Lalane at age 70 handcuffed, shackled, towed 70 rowboats 45) Nelson Mandela was 76 when he became President

Our lives aren't just measured in years. They're measured in the lives of people we touch around us

Krista asks,"What is it about society that disappoints you so much?" Elliot thinks, "Oh I don't know, is it that we collectively thought Steve Jobs was a great man even when we knew he made billions off the backs of children? Or maybe it's that it feels like all our heroes are counterfeit; the world itself's just one big hoax. Spamming each other with our burning commentary of bullshit masquerading as insight, our social media faking as intimacy. Or is it that we voted for this? Not with our rigged elections, but with our things, our property, our money. I'm not saying anything new. We all know why we do this, not because Hunger Games books makes us happy but because we wanna be sedated. Because it's painful not to pretend, because we're cowards. Fuck Society." "Mr. Robot" season 1 episode 1, 'ohellofriend.mov

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.

I search his eyes for the slightest sign of anything, fear, remorse, anger. But there's only the same look of amusement that ended our last conversation. It's as if he's speaking the words again. "Oh, my dear Miss Everdeen. I thought we had agreed not to lie to each other." He's right. We did. The point of my arrow shifts upward. I release the string. And President Coin collapses over the side of the balcony and plunges to the ground. Dead.

I like to watch his hands as he works, making a blank page bloom with strokes of ink, adding touches of color to our previously black and yellowish book. His face takes on a special look when he concentrates. His usual easy expression is replaced by something more intense and removed that suggests an entire world locked away inside him. I've seen flashes of this before: in the arena, or when he speaks to a crowd, or that time he shoved the Peacekeepers' guns away from me in District 11. I don't know quite what to make of it. I also become a little fixated on his eyelashes, which ordinarily you don't notice much because they're so blond. But up close, in the sunlight slanting in from the window, they're a light golden color and so long I don't see how they keep from getting all tangled up when he blinks.

I guess there isn’t a rule book for what might be unacceptable to do to another human being.

SEPTEMBER 1, 1939 I sit in one of the dives On Fifty-second Street Uncertain and afraid As the clever hopes expire Of a low dishonest decade: Waves of anger and fear Circulate over the bright And darkened lands of the earth, Obsessing our private lives; The unmentionable odour of death Offends the September night. Accurate scholarship can Unearth the whole offence From Luther until now That has driven a culture mad, Find what occurred at Linz, What huge imago made A psychopathic god: I and the public know What all schoolchildren learn, Those to whom evil is done Do evil in return. Exiled Thucydides knew All that a speech can say About Democracy, And what dictators do, The elderly rubbish they talk To an apathetic grave; Analysed all in his book, The enlightenment driven away, The habit-forming pain, Mismanagement and grief: We must suffer them all again. Into this neutral air Where blind skyscrapers use Their full height to proclaim The strength of Collective Man, Each language pours its vain Competitive excuse: But who can live for long In an euphoric dream; Out of the mirror they stare, Imperialism's face And the international wrong. Faces along the bar Cling to their average day: The lights must never go out, The music must always play, All the conventions conspire To make this fort assume The furniture of home; Lest we should see where we are, Lost in a haunted wood, Children afraid of the night Who have never been happy or good. The windiest militant trash Important Persons shout Is not so crude as our wish: What mad Nijinsky wrote About Diaghilev Is true of the normal heart; For the error bred in the bone Of each woman and each man Craves what it cannot have, Not universal love But to be loved alone. From the conservative dark Into the ethical life The dense commuters come, Repeating their morning vow; 'I will be true to the wife, I'll concentrate more on my work,' And helpless governors wake To resume their compulsory game: Who can release them now, Who can reach the dead, Who can speak for the dumb? All I have is a voice To undo the folded lie, The romantic lie in the brain Of the sensual man-in-the-street And the lie of Authority Whose buildings grope the sky: There is no such thing as the State And no one exists alone; Hunger allows no choice To the citizen or the police; We must love one another or die. Defenseless under the night Our world in stupor lies; Yet, dotted everywhere, Ironic points of light Flash out wherever the Just Exchange their messages: May I, composed like them Of Eros and of dust, Beleaguered by the same Negation and despair, Show an affirming flame.

You call that a kiss?

And random bits of happiness, like Finnick and Annie's newborn boy.

Greeting to the final contestants of the Seventy-fourth Hunger Games. The earlier revision has been revoked. Closer examination of the rule book has disclosed that only one winner may be allowed," he says. "Good luck and may the odds be ever in your favor.

I think about going to the lake, but I'm so weak that I barely make it to my meeting place with Gale. I sit on the rock where Cressida filmed us, but it's too wide without his body beside me. Several times I close my eyes and count to ten, thinking that when I open them, he will have materialized without a sound as he so often did. I have to remind myself that Gale's in 2 with a fancy job, probably kissing another pair of lips.

Just because people starve in a book, doesn't mean that we will starve in the future....

It seems like everyone I know has very strong feelings about which boy is the best fit for Katniss, but also because the books themselves contain a commentary on the way audiences latch onto romance, even (and maybe especially) when lives are at stake.

That seems to be crossing some kind of line," I say. :So anything goes?" They both stare at me- Beetee with doubt, Gale with hostility. "I guess there isn't a rule book for what might be unacceptable to do to another human being.

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.

Barristan Semly was not a bookish man, but he had often glanced through the pages of the White Book, where the deeds of his predecessors had been recorded. Some had been heroes, some weaklings, knaves, or cravens. Most were only men - quicker and stronger than most, more skilled with sword and shield, but still prey to pride, ambition, lust, love, anger, jealousy, greed for gold, hunger for power, and all the other failing that afflicted lesser mortals. The best of them overcame their flaws, did their duty, and died with their swords in their hands. The worst ... The worst were those who played the game of thrones.

I raise an eyebrow, working to achieve the right tone of intellectual superiority. “If you've never read the Twilight books or the Hunger Games series you wouldn't understand. Not. One. Bit. They are complex stories. Big words. Probably beyond you.

Something that’s bothered me for a while now is the current profligacy in YA culture of Team Boy 1 vs Team Boy 2 fangirling. [...] Despite the fact that I have no objection to shipping, this particular species of team-choosing troubled me, though I had difficulty understanding why. Then I saw it applied to Suzanne Collins’s The Hunger Games trilogy – Team Peeta vs Team Gale – and all of a sudden it hit me that anyone who thought romance and love-triangles were the main event in that series had utterly missed the point. Sure, those elements are present in the story, but they aren’t anywhere near being the bones of it, because The Hunger Games, more than anything else, is about war, survival, politics, propaganda and power. Seeing such a strong, raw narrative reduced to a single vapid argument – which boy is cuter? – made me physically angry. So, look. People read different books for different reasons. The thing I love about a story are not necessarily the things you love, and vice versa. But riddle me this: are the readers of these series really so excited, so thrilled by the prospect of choosing! between! two! different! boys! that they have to boil entire narratives down to a binary equation based on male physical perfection and, if we’re very lucky, chivalrous behaviour? While feminism most certainly champions the right of women to chose their own partners, it also supports them to choose things besides men, or to postpone the question of partnership in favour of other pursuits – knowledge, for instance. Adventure. Careers. Wild dancing. Fun. Friendship. Travel. Glorious mayhem. And while, as a woman now happily entering her fourth year of marriage, I’d be the last person on Earth to suggest that male companionship is inimical to any of those things, what’s starting to bother me is the comparative dearth of YA stories which aren’t, in some way, shape or form, focussed on Girls Getting Boyfriends, and particularly Hot Immortal Or Magical Boyfriends Whom They Will Love For All Eternity. Blog post: Love Team Freezer

I got the idea from our family’s plant book. The place where we recorded things you cannot trust to memory. The page begin’s with the person’s picture. A photo if we can find it. If not, a sketch or a painting by Peeta. Then, in my most careful handwriting, come all the details it would be a crime to forget. Lady licking Prim’s cheek. My father’s laugh. Peeta’s father with the cookies. The colour of Finnick’s eyes. What Cinna would do with a length of silk. Boggs reprogramming the Holo. Rue poised on her toes, arms slightly extended, like bird about to take flight. On and on. We seal the pages with salt water and promises to live well to make their deaths count. Haymitch finally joins us, contributing twenty-three years of tributes he was forced to mentor. Additions become smaller. An old memory that surfaces. A late promise preserved between the pages. Strange bits of happiness, like the photo of Finnick and Annie’s newborn son.

Whedon: Studios will tell you: A woman cannot headline an action movie. After The Hunger Games they might stop telling you that a little bit. Whatever you think of the movie, it’s done a great service. And after The Avengers, I think it’s changing. Johansson: A lot of the female superhero movies just suck really badly. Whedon: The suck factor is not small. Johansson: They are really not well made, and already you’re fighting against the tide. There are a couple [female-driven action movies] that have worked-ish, don’t you think? Hemsworth: Angelina Jolie tends to do it pretty well, as the dominant female. Jackson: They got to get The Pro to the screen! Whedon: [Groaning] See, that is the problem. Sam is the problem! Jackson: I love that book! Whedon: [Reluctantly] The Pro is hilarious. Jackson: The Pro’s hilarious. [To the group] You ever see or hear of it? Johansson: No, what’s The Pro? Jackson: It’s [a comic book] about a hooker who gets super powers! Johansson: [Pauses] That is exactly the problem right there. Whedon: That’s why I wasn’t going to bring up The Pro! (From an Entertainment Weekly interview)

Convince me, he says. He drops the napkin and retrieves his book. I don't watch him as he heads for the door, so I flinch when he whispers in my ear. By the way, I know about the kiss. Then the door clicks shut behind him.

Our original idea was to write a book titled Fifty Shades of the Hunger Games, by J.K. Rowling with Stephen King: A John Grisham Novel.

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

In The Hunger Games, there's something for everyone. A gripping adventure. A political commentary. A love story. A cautionary tale. Some call it science fiction, some call it potential reality. Some say it's for teenagers, some say it's for adults. The book--and now the film--captures themes and concerns that seem timely. But its real strength, in the end, is that it's timeless. It speaks to us today, and it will speak--even more powerfully--tomorrow.

I am not the kind of person who becomes so invested in a book or movie or television show that my interest becomes a hobby or intense obsession, one where I start to declare allegiances or otherwise demonstrate a serious level of commitment to something fictional I had no hand in creating. Or, I didn't used to be that kind of person. Let me be clear: Team Peeta. I cannot fathom how one could be on any other team. Gale? I can barely acknowledge him. Peeta, on the other hand, is everything. He frosts things and bakes bread and is unconditional and unwavering in his love, and also he is very, very strong. He can throw a sack of four, is what I'm saying. Peeta is a place of solace and hope, and he is a good kisser.

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.

What do you mean 'has to be?' and what are you smiling at?" I stopped contributing to this ridiculous dance. I grabbed the teapot and began to fill it with water in the sink. Suddenly I felt the slight weight go this body against my back and the corner of his mouth brushed adjacent my ear. "How human you are," he whispered.

So…you're not going to tell me what they mean? C'mon. What's the Hob? Why Forks?” When I stand, I switch to my blatantly rude, you're-an-idiot tone. This is the one that always pisses off my mom. To be sure he's not missing my insult this time, I also cross my arms and speak very slowly like I'm speaking to a toddler. “The Hob is from The Hunger Games books. It's the underground market where the characters trade food and information. Forks would be the town in Twilight. The setting. In boy-speak, Forks equals the planet Tatooine for Star Wars. You know—Anakin Skywalker's childhood home? Or are you not familiar with any global blockbusters? I suppose I could use Sesame Street or Pokémon for a reference—if it would help you understand better?” Bam. That should seal it. I couldn't have sounded more like a total bitch. He nods. “No, I've got it. My bedroom was Tatooine for all of third and fourth grade. Boy-speak…that's funny.” He laughs again, and it sounds warm and—and—not at all offended!

What do you mean 'has to be?' and what are you smiling at?" I stopped contributing to this ridiculous dance. I grabbed the teapot and began to fill it with water in the sink. Suddenly I felt the slight weight of his body against my back and the corner of his mouth brushed against my ear. "How human you are," he whispered.

Oh, I don't know. Is it that we collectively thought Steve Jobs was a great man, even when we knew he made billions off the backs of children? Or maybe it's that it feels like all our heroes are counterfeit? The world itself's just one big hoax. Spamming each other with our running commentary of bulls**t, masquerading as insight, our social media faking as intimacy. Or is it that we voted for this? Not with our rigged elections, but with our things, our property, our money. I'm not saying anything new. We all know why we do this, not because Hunger Games books makes us happy, but because we wanna be sedated. Because it's painful not to pretend, because we're cowards.

Oh my," she said as though to herself. "The rumors are true, you have been kept in the dark.

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

All Summer in a Day” by Ray Bradbury Because of Winn-Dixie by Kate DiCamillo Big Nate series by Lincoln Peirce The Black Cauldron (The Chronicles of Prydain) by Lloyd Alexander The Book Thief  by Markus Zusak Brian’s Hunt by Gary Paulsen Brian’s Winter by Gary Paulsen Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson Bud, Not Buddy by Christopher Paul Curtis The Call of the Wild by Jack London The Cat in the Hat by Dr. Seuss Charlotte’s Web by E. B. White The Chronicles of Narnia series by C. S. Lewis Diary of a Wimpy Kid series by Jeff Kinney Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury The Giver by Lois Lowry Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown Harry Potter series by J. K. Rowling Hatchet by Gary Paulsen The High King (The Chronicles of Prydain) by Lloyd Alexander The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien Holes by Louis Sachar The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins I Am LeBron James by Grace Norwich I Am Stephen Curry by Jon Fishman Island of the Blue Dolphins by Scott O’Dell Johnny Tremain by Esther Hoskins Forbes Julie of the Wolves by Jean Craighead George Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson LeBron’s Dream Team: How Five Friends Made History by LeBron James and Buzz Bissinger The Lightning Thief  (Percy Jackson and the Olympians) by Rick Riordan A Long Walk to Water by Linda Sue Park The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood by Howard Pyle Number the Stars by Lois Lowry The Outsiders by S. E. Hinton The River by Gary Paulsen The Sailor Dog by Margaret Wise Brown Sarah, Plain and Tall by Patricia MacLachlan Shiloh by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor “A Sound of Thunder” by Ray Bradbury Star Wars Expanded Universe novels (written by many authors) Star Wars series (written by many authors) The Swiss Family Robinson by Johann D. Wyss Tales from a Not-So-Graceful Ice Princess (Dork Diaries) by Rachel Renée Russell Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing by Judy Blume “The Tell-Tale Heart” by Edgar Allan Poe Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson Tuck Everlasting by Natalie Babbitt Under the Blood-Red Sun by Graham Salisbury The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle

Once I am sure there's nothing going on I step inside, letting the door thud shut. Another church: matting, seats, and stone, And little books; sprawlings of flowers, cut For Sunday, brownish now; some brass and stuff Up at the holy end; the small neat organ; And a tense, musty, unignorable silence, Brewed God knows how long. Hatless, I take off My cycle-clips in awkward reverence. Move forward, run my hand around the font. From where I stand, the roof looks almost new - Cleaned, or restored? Someone would know: I don't. Mounting the lectern, I peruse a few Hectoring large-scale verses, and pronounce 'Here endeth' much more loudly than I'd meant. The echoes snigger briefly. Back at the door I sign the book, donate an Irish sixpence, Reflect the place was not worth stopping for. Yet stop I did: in fact I often do, And always end much at a loss like this, Wondering what to look for; wondering, too, When churches will fall completely out of use What we shall turn them into, if we shall keep A few cathedrals chronically on show, Their parchment, plate and pyx in locked cases, And let the rest rent-free to rain and sheep. Shall we avoid them as unlucky places? Or, after dark, will dubious women come To make their children touch a particular stone; Pick simples for a cancer; or on some Advised night see walking a dead one? Power of some sort will go on In games, in riddles, seemingly at random; But superstition, like belief, must die, And what remains when disbelief has gone? Grass, weedy pavement, brambles, buttress, sky, A shape less recognisable each week, A purpose more obscure. I wonder who Will be the last, the very last, to seek This place for what it was; one of the crew That tap and jot and know what rood-lofts were? Some ruin-bibber, randy for antique, Or Christmas-addict, counting on a whiff Of gown-and-bands and organ-pipes and myrrh? Or will he be my representative, Bored, uninformed, knowing the ghostly silt Dispersed, yet tending to this cross of ground Through suburb scrub because it held unspilt So long and equably what since is found Only in separation - marriage, and birth, And death, and thoughts of these - for which was built This special shell? For, though I've no idea What this accoutred frowsty barn is worth, It pleases me to stand in silence here; A serious house on serious earth it is, In whose blent air all our compulsions meet, Are recognized, and robed as destinies. And that much never can be obsolete, Since someone will forever be surprising A hunger in himself to be more serious, And gravitating with it to this ground, Which, he once heard, was proper to grow wise in, If only that so many dead lie round.

My face flushed scarlet. I was a stranger in my own skin. I had ever felt this kind of anger in my life. Fort and confusion grew. Its sensation was an overwhelming concoction of hate. The only things I knew - the only things keeping me remotely calm- was the following litany. My name is Eleanora Ada Stone. I was moved from home to home for seventeen years. I am now living on this god-forsaken island in Maine. I was being kept from a world of secrets. I have abilities. I am not human. I do not know what I am.

My love for these books, at its purest, is not really about Peeta or anything silly and girly. I love that a young woman character is fierce and strong but hum in ways I find believable, relatable. Katniss is clearly a heroine, but a heroine with issues. She intrigues me because she never seems to know her own strength. She isn't blandly insecure the way girls are often forced to be in fiction. She is brave but flawed. She is a heroine, but she is also a girl who loves two boys and can't choose which boy she loves more. She is not sure she is up to the task of leading a revolution, but she does her best, even as she doubts herself. Katniss endures the unendurable. She is damaged and it shows. At times, it might seem like her suffering is gratuitous, but life often presents unendurable circumstances people manage to survive. Only the details differ. The Hunger Games trilogy is dark and brutal, but in the end, the books also offer hope - for a better world and a better people and, for one woman, a better life, a life she can share with a man who understands her strength and doesn't expect her to compromise that strength, a man who can hold her weak places and love her through the darkest of her memories, the worst of her damage. Of course I love the Hunger Games. The trilogy offers the tempered hope that everyone who survives something unendurable hungers for.

Slowly, with many lost days, I come back to life. I try to follow Dr. Aurelius's advice, just going through the motions, amazed when one finally has meaning again. I tell him my idea about the book, and a large box of parchment sheets arrives on the next train from the Capitol

I felt that Lionsgate really understood the material and that they would let us make a faithful adaptation; that they wouldn't soften it, they wouldn't age up the characters, to make them older so that it would be more palatable. I felt that the power of the book was in the youth of these protagonists and that you couldn't cheat on that in terms of their age in the story. Lionsgate was on board for, of course, the PG-13 version of the movie, not something full of blood and guts, but something more thematically driven.

Most importantly, Mockingjay tells us something difficult, something readers don't necessarily want to her, but that is almost certainly the truth: when you get pushed as far as Katniss is, you are changed in fundamental ways. You can't go home again. War really is hell. Happily Ever After is a lie. That doesn't mean all is hopeless. Katniss isn't destroyed. This book is no simple-minded fantasy; no king is crowned to triumphant fanfare, no gold medals bestowed , and maybe there's not even any real wisdom gained. But life does go on.

He made me promise not to show you this book until you’d decided to be the Mockingjay on your own.

What do you read after the Hunger Games? Start the Octagon series for just 99c - Limited Time Only. For Sale on Amazon Kindle

I was in a place I had never visited before and I didn’t want to ever visit again. I was in hell, or so I thought…

My mother had a book she’d brought with her from the apothecary shop. The pages were made of old parchment and covered in ink drawings of plants.

Mockingjays are about as rare as rocks. And about as tough.

I like Books...

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

A bomb explodes. Time is allowed for people to rush to the aid of the wounded. Then a second, more powerful bomb kills them as well.

When i was 9 I didn't go to Narnia, when i grew 11 my Hogwarts letter didn't come, again when i was twelve my satyr didn't come and now I'll wait till I'm fifty maybe the hunger games will come

Men grow up expecting to be the hero of their own story. Women grow up expecting to be the supporting actress in somebody else's. As a kid growing up with books and films and stories instead of friends, that was always the narrative injustice that upset me more than anything else. I felt it sometimes like a sharp pain under the ribcage, the kind of chest pain that lasts for minutes and hours and might be nothing at all or might mean you're slowly dying of something mundane and awful. It's a feeling that hit when I understood how few girls got to go on adventures. I started reading science fiction and fantasy long before Harry Potter and The Hunger Games, before mainstream female leads very occasionally got more at the end of the story than together with the protagonist. Sure, there were tomboys and bad girls, but they were freaks and were usually killed off or married off quickly. Lady hobbits didn't bring the ring to Mordor. They stayed at home in the shire.

It doesn't matter what you do, you cannot please everyone. You can write the next Hunger Games and there are going to be people who hate your book with a fiery passion. You just gots to get up, brush yourself off, and start again.

Peeta says it will be okay. We have each other. And the book. We can make them understand in a way that will make them braver. But one day I'll have to explain about my nightmares. Why they came. Why they won't ever really go away.

Natalie, who was the author of a series of wildly successful Hunger Games meets Gossip Girl YA books about a clique of girls at a postapocalyptic prep school who have to simultaneously fight for popularity and for the survival of the planet—hadn

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The sentiment is clear though. They are truly thrilled to see me and I’m happy to see them, too, although not like I was to see Cinna. It’s more in the way one might be glad to see an affectionate trio of pets at the end of a particularly difficult day.

As we ride the elevator, Gale finally says, “You’re still angry.” “And you’re still not sorry,” I reply. “I still stand by what I said. Do you want me to lie about it?” he asks. “No, I want you to rethink it and come up with the right opinion,” I tell him.

All that is worshipped is but a reflection of the worshipper. A single god, no matter how benign, is tortured into a multitude of masks, each shaped by the secret desires, hungers, fears and joys of the individual mortal, who but plays a game of obsequious approbation.

I pick up a few remembrances: a photo of my parents on their wedding day, a blue hair ribbon for Prim, the family book of medicinal and edible plants. The book falls open to a page with yellow flowers and I shut it quickly because it was Peeta’s brush that painted them.

...I think a book adaptation doesn't have to be just like the book, it has to feel like the book. That's what you want. You wand to get the feeling from the movie that you got from the book, and you want the characters to evoke the characters that you fell in love with." -Nina Jacobson

Let’s each have three, and whoever is still alive at breakfast can take a vote on the rest,” says Johanna. I don’t know why this makes me laugh a little. I guess because it’s true. When I do, Johanna gives me a look that’s almost approving. No, not approving. But maybe slightly pleased.

I go anyway, walking in silent sock feet, so as not to awaken the ghosts. In the study, where I had my tea with President Snow, I find a box with my father’s hunting jacket, our plant book, my parents’ wedding photo, the spile Haymitch sent in, and the locket Peeta gave me in the clock arena.

The evil was not in bread and circuses, per se, but in the willingness of the people to sell their rights as free men for full bellies and the excitement of the games which would serve to distract them from their human hungers which bread and circuses can never appease.” ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero

What You Should Know to be a Poet" all you can know about animals as persons. the names of trees and flowers and weeds. the names of stars and the movements of planets and the moon. your own six senses, with a watchful elegant mind. at least one kind of traditional magic: divination, astrology, the book of changes, the tarot; dreams. the illusory demons and the illusory shining gods. kiss the ass of the devil and eat sh*t; fuck his horny barbed cock, fuck the hag, and all the celestial angels and maidens perfum’d and golden- & then love the human: wives husbands and friends children’s games, comic books, bubble-gum, the weirdness of television and advertising. work long, dry hours of dull work swallowed and accepted and lived with and finally lovd. exhaustion, hunger, rest. the wild freedom of the dance, extasy silent solitary illumination, entasy real danger. gambles and the edge of death.

Gale does look striking in the uniform, I guess. But the question just embarrasses us both, given our history. I’m trying to think of a witty comeback, when Boggs says brusquely, “Well, don’t expect us to be too impressed. We just saw Finnick Odair in his underwear.” I decide to go ahead and like Boggs.

I’ll tell them how I survive it. I’ll tell them that on bad mornings, it feels impossible to take pleasure in anything because I’m afraid it could be taken away. That’s when I make a list in my head of every act of goodness I’ve seen someone do. It’s like a game. Repetitive. Even a little tedious after more than twenty years. But there are much worse games to play.

Maybe it’s not that kids and teens of color and other marginalized and minoritized young people don’t like to read. Maybe the real issue is that many adults haven’t thought very much about the radicalized mirrors, windows, and doors that are in the books we offer them to read, in the television and movies we invite them to view, and in the fan communities we entice them to play in.

And of course, if there's one thing we feel we can take as truth in these books it's Katniss and her narrative. But we should ask ourselves whether even this should be above suspicion. Like all first-person narrators, Katniss is her own editor with her own biases: she chooses how to present herself and those around her. Katniss has a stake in the story she's telling and what that stake is changes how she portrays the events and her emotional reaction to them.

Despite a seemingly pervasive belief that only people of colour ‘play the race card’, it does not take anything as dramatic as a slave revolution or Japanese imperialism to evoke white racial anxieties, something as trivial as the casting of non-white people in films or plays in which a character was ‘supposed’ to be white will do the trick. For example, the casting of Olivier award-winning actress Noma Dumezweni to play the role of Hermione in the debut West End production of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child got bigots so riled up that J. K. Rowling felt the need to respond and give her blessing for a black actress to play the role. A similar but much larger controversy occurred when the character Rue in the film The Hunger Games was played by a black girl, Amandla Stenberg. Even though Rue is described as having brown skin in the original novel, ‘fans’ of the book were shocked and dismayed that the movie version cast a brown girl to play the role, and a Twitter storm of abuse about the ethnic casting of the role ensued. You have to read the responses to truly appreciate how angry and abusive they are.- As blogger Dodai Stewart pointed out at the time: All these . . . people . . . read The Hunger Games. Clearly, they all fell in love with and cared about Rue. Though what they really fell in love with was an image of Rue that they’d created in their minds. A girl that they knew they could love and adore and mourn at the thought of knowing that she’s been brutally killed. And then the casting is revealed (or they go see the movie) and they’re shocked to see that Rue is black. Now . . . this is so much more than, 'Oh, she’s bigger than I thought.’ The reactions are all based on feelings of disgust. These people are MAD that the girl that they cried over while reading the book was ‘some black girl’ all along. So now they’re angry. Wasted tears, wasted emotions. It’s sad to think that had they known that she was black all along, there would have been [no] sorrow or sadness over her death.

Of course Peeta’s right. The whole country adores Katniss’s little sister. If they really killed her like this, they’d probably have an uprising on their hands,” says Johanna flatly. “Don’t want that, do they?” She throws back her head and shouts, “Whole country in rebellion? Wouldn’t want anything like that!” My mouth drops open in shock. No one, ever, says anything like this in the Games. Absolutely, they’ve cut away from Johanna, are editing her out. But I have heard her and can never think about her again in the same way. She’ll never win any awards for kindness, but she certainly is gutsy. Or crazy. She picks up some shells and heads toward the jungle. “I’m getting water,” she says. I can’t help catching her hand as she passes me. “Don’t go in there. The birds —” I remember the birds must be gone, but I still don’t want anyone in there. Not even her. “They can’t hurt me. I’m not like the rest of you. There’s no one left I love,” Johanna says, and frees her hand with an impatient shake. When she brings me back a shell of water, I take it with a silent nod of thanks, knowing how much she would despise the pity in my voice.

Since I’ve been home I’ve been trying hard to mend my relationship with my mother. Asking her to do things for me instead of brushing aside any offer of help, as I did for years out of anger. Letting her handle all the money I won. Returning her hugs instead of tolerating them. My time in the arena made me realize how I needed to stop punishing her for something she couldn’t help, specifically the crushing depression she fell into after my father’s death. Because sometimes things happen to people and they’re not equipped to deal with them. Like me, for instance. Right now.

There’s only one last thing you could do to add fire to the rebellion.” “Die,” I say quietly. “Yes. Give us a martyr to fight for,” says Boggs. “But that’s not going to happen under my watch, Soldier Everdeen. I’m planning for you to have a long life.” “Why?” This kind of thinking will only bring him trouble. “You don’t owe me anything.” “Because you’ve earned it,” he says. “Now get back to your squad.” I know I should feel appreciative of Boggs sticking his neck out for me, but really I’m just frustrated. I mean, how can I steal his Holo and desert now? Betraying him was complicated enough without this whole new layer of debt. I already owe him for saving my life.

I got the idea from our family's plant book. The place where we recorded those things you cannot trust to memory. The page begins with the person's picture. A photo if we can find it. If not, a sketch or painting by Peeta. Then, in my most careful handwriting, come all the details it would be a crime to forget. Lady licking Prim's cheek. My father's laugh. Peeta's father with the cookies. The color of Finnick's eyes. What Cinna could do with a length of silk. Boggs reprogramming the Holo. Rue poised on her toes, arms slightly extended, like a bird about to take flight. On and on. We seal the pages with salt water and promises to live well to make their deaths count.

My mother comes in, somewhat shyly, and says that Cinna has asked her to show the preps how she did my hair the day of the reaping. They respond with enthusiasm and then watch, thoroughly engrossed, as she breaks down the process of the elaborate braided hairdo. In the mirror, I can see their earnest faces following her every move, their eagerness when it is their turn to try a step. In fact, all three are so readily respectful and nice to my mother that I feel bad about how I go around feeling so superior to them. Who knows who I would be or what I would talk about if I’d been raised in the Capitol? Maybe my biggest regret would be having feathered costumes at my birthday party, too.

The page begins with the person’s picture. A photo if we can find it. If not, a sketch or painting by Peeta. Then, in my most careful handwriting, come all the details it would be a crime to forget. Lady licking Prim’s cheek. My father’s laugh. Peeta’s father with the cookies. The color of Finnick’s eyes. What Cinna could do with a length of silk. Boggs reprogramming the Holo. Rue poised on her toes, arms slightly extended, like a bird about to take flight. On and on. We seal the pages with salt water and promises to live well to make their deaths count. Haymitch finally joins us, contributing twenty-three years of tributes he was forced to mentor. Additions become smaller. An old memory that surfaces. A late primrose preserved between the pages. Strange bits of happiness, like the photo of Finnick and Annie’s newborn son. We learn to keep busy again. Peeta bakes. I hunt. Haymitch drinks until the liquor runs out, and then raises geese until the next train arrives. Fortunately, the geese can take pretty good care of themselves. We’re not alone. A few hundred others return because, whatever has happened, this is our home. With the mines closed, they plow the ashes into the earth and plant food. Machines from the Capitol break ground for a new factory where we will make medicines. Although no one seeds it, the Meadow turns green again. Peeta and I grow back together. There are still moments when he clutches the back of a chair and hangs on until the flashbacks are over. I wake screaming from nightmares of mutts and lost children. But his arms are there to comfort me. And eventually his lips. On the night I feel that thing again, the hunger that overtook me on the beach, I know this would have happened anyway. That what I need to survive is not Gale’s fire, kindled with rage and hatred. I have plenty of fire myself. What I need is the dandelion in the spring. The bright yellow that means rebirth instead of destruction. The promise that life can go on, no matter how bad our losses. That it can be good again. And only Peeta can give me that. So after, when he whispers, “You love me. Real or not real?” I tell him, “Real.

Making the most of an experience: Living fully is extolled everywhere in popular culture. I have only to turn on the television at random to be assailed with the following messages: “It’s the best a man can get.” “It’s like having an angel by your side.” “Every move is smooth, every word is cool. I never want to lose that feeling.” “You look, they smile. You win, they go home.” What is being sold here? A fantasy of total sensory pleasure, social status, sexual attraction, and the self-image of a winner. As it happens, all these phrases come from the same commercial for razor blades, but living life fully is part of almost any ad campaign. What is left out, however, is the reality of what it actually means to fully experience something. Instead of looking for sensory overload that lasts forever, you’ll find that the experiences need to be engaged at the level of meaning and emotion. Meaning is essential. If this moment truly matters to you, you will experience it fully. Emotion brings in the dimension of bonding or tuning in: An experience that touches your heart makes the meaning that much more personal. Pure physical sensation, social status, sexual attraction, and feeling like a winner are generally superficial, which is why people hunger for them repeatedly. If you spend time with athletes who have won hundreds of games or with sexually active singles who have slept with hundreds of partners, you’ll find out two things very quickly: (1) Numbers don’t count very much. The athlete usually doesn’t feel like a winner deep down; the sexual conqueror doesn’t usually feel deeply attractive or worthy. (2) Each experience brings diminishing returns; the thrill of winning or going to bed becomes less and less exciting and lasts a shorter time. To experience this moment, or any moment, fully means to engage fully. Meeting a stranger can be totally fleeting and meaningless, for example, unless you enter the individual’s world by finding out at least one thing that is meaningful to his or her life and exchange at least one genuine feeling. Tuning in to others is a circular flow: You send yourself out toward people; you receive them as they respond to you. Notice how often you don’t do that. You stand back and insulate yourself, sending out only the most superficial signals and receive little or nothing back. The same circle must be present even when someone else isn’t involved. Consider the way three people might observe the same sunset. The first person is obsessing over a business deal and doesn’t even see the sunset, even though his eyes are registering the photons that fall on their retinas. The second person thinks, “Nice sunset. We haven’t had one in a while.” The third person is an artist who immediately begins a sketch of the scene. The differences among the three are that the first person sent nothing out and received nothing back; the second allowed his awareness to receive the sunset but had no awareness to give back to it—his response was rote; the third person was the only one to complete the circle: He took in the sunset and turned it into a creative response that sent his awareness back out into the world with something to give. If you want to fully experience life, you must close the circle.

My head snaps around at the hiss, but it takes awhile to believe he’s real. How could he have gotten here? I take in the claw marks from some wild animal, the back paw he holds slightly above the ground, the prominent bones in his face. He’s come on foot, then, all the way from 13. Maybe they kicked him out or maybe he just couldn’t stand it there without her, so he came looking. “It was the waste of a trip. She’s not here,” I tell him. Buttercup hisses again. “She’s not here. You can hiss all you like. You won’t find Prim.” At her name, he perks up. Raises his flattened ears. Begins to meow hopefully. “Get out!” He dodges the pillow I throw at him. “Go away! There’s nothing left for you here!” I start to shake, furious with him. “She’s not coming back! She’s never ever coming back here again!” I grab another pillow and get to my feet to improve my aim. Out of nowhere, the tears begin to pour down my cheeks. “She’s dead.” I clutch my middle to dull the pain. Sink down on my heels, rocking the pillow, crying. “She’s dead, you stupid cat. She’s dead.” A new sound, part crying, part singing, comes out of my body, giving voice to my despair. Buttercup begins to wail as well. No matter what I do, he won’t go. He circles me, just out of reach, as wave after wave of sobs racks my body, until eventually I fall unconscious. But he must understand. He must know that the unthinkable has happened and to survive will require previously unthinkable acts. Because hours later, when I come to in my bed, he’s there in the moonlight. Crouched beside me, yellow eyes alert, guarding me from the night. In the morning, he sits stoically as I clean the cuts, but digging the thorn from his paw brings on a round of those kitten mews. We both end up crying again, only this time we comfort each other. On the strength of this, I open the letter Haymitch gave me from my mother, dial the phone number, and weep with her as well. Peeta, bearing a warm loaf of bread, shows up with Greasy Sae. She makes us breakfast and I feed all my bacon to Buttercup.

Twenty years? No kidding: twenty years? It’s hard to believe. Twenty years ago, I was—well, I was much younger. My parents were still alive. Two of my grandchildren had not yet been born, and another one, now in college, was an infant. Twenty years ago I didn’t own a cell phone. I didn’t know what quinoa was and I doubt if I had ever tasted kale. There had recently been a war. Now we refer to that one as the First Gulf War, but back then, mercifully, we didn’t know there would be another. Maybe a lot of us weren’t even thinking about the future then. But I was. And I’m a writer. I wrote The Giver on a big machine that had recently taken the place of my much-loved typewriter, and after I printed the pages, very noisily, I had to tear them apart, one by one, at the perforated edges. (When I referred to it as my computer, someone more knowledgeable pointed out that my machine was not a computer. It was a dedicated word processor. “Oh, okay then,” I said, as if I understood the difference.) As I carefully separated those two hundred or so pages, I glanced again at the words on them. I could see that I had written a complete book. It had all the elements of the seventeen or so books I had written before, the same things students of writing list on school quizzes: characters, plot, setting, tension, climax. (Though I didn’t reply as he had hoped to a student who emailed me some years later with the request “Please list all the similes and metaphors in The Giver,” I’m sure it contained those as well.) I had typed THE END after the intentionally ambiguous final paragraphs. But I was aware that this book was different from the many I had already written. My editor, when I gave him the manuscript, realized the same thing. If I had drawn a cartoon of him reading those pages, it would have had a text balloon over his head. The text would have said, simply: Gulp. But that was twenty years ago. If I had written The Giver this year, there would have been no gulp. Maybe a yawn, at most. Ho-hum. In so many recent dystopian novels (and there are exactly that: so many), societies battle and characters die hideously and whole civilizations crumble. None of that in The Giver. It was introspective. Quiet. Short on action. “Introspective, quiet, and short on action” translates to “tough to film.” Katniss Everdeen gets to kill off countless adolescent competitors in various ways during The Hunger Games; that’s exciting movie fare. It sells popcorn. Jonas, riding a bike and musing about his future? Not so much. Although the film rights to The Giver were snapped up early on, it moved forward in spurts and stops for years, as screenplay after screenplay—none of them by me—was

This isn’t the freaking Hunger Games, Laurie,” he shouted across the rink.

It is a major thesis of this book that the fantasy bond in the traditional family causes a tremendous amount of innocent, unnecessary suffering. Denying primitive hunger and pain and pretending connections that, in fact, do not exist, lead to fundamental distortions of each person’s sense of reality. It is a great burden on everyone to play this game of “let’s pretend.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

There were so many things he wanted to say to her, so many questions he wanted to ask, he didn’t know where he’d begin. Maybe with just another of those long, slow kisses

Women are huntresses until the day we die. Our perpetual thirst for the chase endures until our last breath. It remains while we are too focused on our careers to pursue love, when we have been burned by past relationships, and even when we are simply enjoying the freedom of being single. It does not miraculously vanish once we are settled down in a monogamous relationship – we merely make the conscious decision to remain faithful. But a lioness in a zoo is still a lioness. Romance novels are the remedy for our restless hearts. They invite us to explore and experiment within the safety of their pages. Every book is an opportunity to satisfy our unending desire to fall in love. They allow us to experience it all over again, right from the start: The intoxicating newness. The thrill of the hunt. The exhilaration of the game. The building anticipation. The worsening hunger. And finally, the fulfillment of a much-needed release. Each book offers a chance to achieve a state of blissful, glowing contentment… Until the next one catches our eye, that is.

Has anyone else considered "Young Adult," book authors as a bunch of geniuses? Life is basically "The Hunger Games," "The Maze Runner," etc. We are all just like Katniss, Tirs, and/or Thomas (for example) wondering why things in life are the way they are. Finding out that we were placed in some sort of game as a means of a test in order to find our real purpose for why we were given this life in the first place.

The Hunger Games. Kill or die, a difficult choice. This type books are the best

practise?   HG-

You can make a better axe and pickaxe using the same crafting recipe, but with cobblestone instead of planks. When the morning comes, it would be a good idea to find some sheep. You can kill them to get some wool and make a bed. This will help you pass the night peacefully. Place three wool in a line above three planks in a crafting bench to make it. Well done, you’ve survived your first night! You’ll probably need some breakfast. So let’s move on to satisfying that hunger.

18 But behold, this was an advantage to the Nephites; for it was impossible for the robbers to lay siege sufficiently long to have any effect upon the Nephites, because of their amuch bprovision which they had laid up in store, 19 And because of the scantiness of provisions among the robbers; for behold, they had nothing save it were meat for their subsistence, which meat they did obtain in the wilderness; 20 And it came to pass that the awild game became scarce in the wilderness insomuch that the robbers were about to perish with hunger.

There were so many things he wanted to say to her, so many questions he wanted to ask, he didn’t know where he’d begin. Maybe with just another of those long, slow kisses . . .

It suggested a tale that could only end in tragedy. Star-crossed lovers meeting their fate.