Alexandra Bracken

“I can't--I can't think about anything or anyone else," he whispered. A hand drifted up, dragging back through his hair. "I can't think straight when you're around. I can't sleep. It feels like I can't breathe--I just--""Liam, please," I begged. "You're tired. You're barely over being sick. Let's just... Can we just go back to the others?""I love you." He turned toward me, that agonized expression still on his face. "I love you every second of everyday, and I don't understand why, or how to make it stop--" He looked wild with pain; it pinned me in place, even before what he had said registered in my mind."I know it's wrong; I know it down to my damn bones. And I feel like I'm sick. I'm trying to be a good person, but I can't. I can't do this anymore.”

“Being a very tall person, I have always felt a kinship with giraffes.”

“—I don't want to lose you—Then why are you the one that keeps letting go?”

“I would be honored if someone reads my books and it inspires them to write their own work.”

“Everything in New York is a fight. It's a fight to get on the subway. It's a fight to go to CVS. It's a fight to get a cab. And eventually, it wears you down.”

“It might be the history major in me, but I look to the past when I try to construct my fictional futures.”

“...crackers..." a voice breathed out nehind us, "yesss..."Both of us turned, watching as Chubs twisted around in his seat and settled back down, still fast asleep. I pressed a hand over my mouth to keep from laughing. Liam rolled his eyes, smiling. .”

“You are your abilities and they are you. I can't put it to you more plainly. Do you know why I hate this cure? It's a statement that what we are is inherently wrong. It's a punishment for something that isn't our fault - all because they can't control their fear about what we can do, anymore than they can control their resentment that there are people out there stronger and more powerful than they are. They want to strip you of yourself - your ability to protect and enforce your right to make decisions about your life. Your own body. Mark my words: in the end, it won't be a choice. They'll decide this for you.”

“Those rabbits stopped fighting the system, because it was easier to take the loss of freedom, to forget what it was like before the fence kept them in, than to be out there in the world struggling to find shelter and food. They had decided that the loss of some was worth the temporary comfort of many.”

“I think when we lose somebody, when we interact with those things that they also loved - like, you listen to their favorite music, or you read their favorite books - it's just a way to get in touch with them and your memories of them.”

“I had the strangest feeling -- like I had lost something without ever really having it in the first place -- that I wasn't what I once was, and wasn't at all what I was meant to be. The sensation made me feel hollow down to my bones.”

“Sometimes the darkness lives inside you, and sometimes it wins.”

“But hey, what's life without a little adversity?"That had to have been the fakest attempt at optimism since my fourth grade teacher tried reasoning that we were better off without the dead kids in our class because it'd mean more turns on the playground swings for the rest of us.”

“Now isn´t the time to change yourself to fit into the world... you should be changing the world to accept you. To let you exist as you are, without being cut open and damaged.”

“What mattered was that these beliefs had swept through the souls of everyone else like a plague. He couldn't see the end of it. Even a hundred years in the future, he knew, the roots still had not been fully pulled up from society. Wherever, whenever he went, the color of his skin set the boundaries of what he could achieve, and there was very little--if any--recourse for finding a way around it.”

“There's so much standing around and waiting with moviemaking!”