Ally Condie Quotes & Sayings
Enjoy the top 100 famous quotes, sayings and quotations by Ally Condie.
Famous Quotes By Ally Condie
It doesn't matter much anyway. I haven't slept well since he left. I can't dream. In some ways, that's the hardest part of having him gone."
I understand. "Because if you can't dream you can't pretend that he's still here. — Ally Condie
It is strange that an 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 had something. — Ally Condie
I feel disgust when I think of how we climb our little hills when the Officials say the word. How we hand over our most precious items at their bidding. How we never, ever fight. — Ally Condie
We liked our grandparents. We liked our uncle and our aunt. They had known our dad and our brother Ben. They had some of the same memories we did. Sometimes they even brought things up, like, "Remember when your dad went out in the kayak at Aspen Lake and he flipped over and we had to save him in our paddleboat?" and we would all start laughing because we had the same picture in our minds, my dad with his sunglasses dangling from one ear and his hair all wet. And they knew that Ben's favorite kind of ice cream wasn't ice cream at all, it was rainbow sherbet, and he always ate green first, and so when I saw it in my grandma's freezer once and I started crying they didn't even ask why and I think I saw my uncle Nick, my mom's brother, crying too. — Ally Condie
Branches and bushes and mud and sunlight on the top of a hill with a boy who knows more than he will say. — 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
I could go above ground now and then to gather food and paper, and isn't that enough to live on? — 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
Perhaps this is what I learned in the canyons: What I am, what I'm not, what I'll give, and what I won't. — 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
It's raining. So I should remember.
Something.
Someone.
The water is gathering inside of me.
Who do I remember?
I don't know.
I'm drowning.
I remember to breathe.
I remember to breathe.
I remember.
I. — Ally Condie
Under star-dark seas and skies of gold
Live those Above and those Below
They sing and weep, both high and deep
While over and under the ocean rolls — 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
The pain wants to eat me away. I wish I could have one without the other, but that's the problem with being alive. You don't usually get to choose the measure of suffering or the degree of joy you have. I — Ally Condie
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. — Ally Condie
Isn't it funny how the memories you cherish before a breakup can become your worst enemies afterwards? The thoughts you loved to think about, the memories you wanted to hold up to the light and view from every angle
it suddenly seems a lot safer to lock them in a box, far from the light of day and throw away the key. It's not an act of bitterness. It's an act if self-preservation. It's not always a bad idea to stay behind the window and look out at life instead, is it? — Ally Condie
His tone is mild, but there is, and always has been, something a little deeper and more resonant about his voice. It has a slightly different timbre than more voices. Its the kind of thing you forget until you hear it again and remember. Oh yes, His voice has music. — Ally Condie
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 needed to see. — Ally Condie
You don't usually get to choose the measure of suffering or the degree of joy you have. (Ky Markham) — Ally Condie
At first, I thought it was having the picture that made it special, but it's not even that. It's looking at something without being watched, without being told how to see. That's what the picture has given us. — Ally Condie
And I guess that was right, but it also seemed to me like people who said Ben was special and had no worries were as wrong as the people long ago, but in a different way.
Because that's crappy. What if this life was all Ben got? People said he was sweet and special - and he was - but he was also sad and angry. More than most people. He cried. His own body seemed to feel weird to him sometimes - he would jump and move like he wanted to be free of his skin. I could see him looking at us like Get me out of here and we were never sure where to take him. You can't take someone away from their own body. And that seemed unfair. Would God really do that to someone so other people could feel like they were learning important lessons in the few minutes they spent with him? — Ally Condie
I think of my second lost compass sinking to the bottom of the river, like the stone it was before Ky changed it. — Ally Condie
Some people set them on the white tablecloths in front of them, but most hold the boxes carefully, unwilling to let their futures out of their hands so soon after receiving them. — Ally Condie
Death will not take the people I love. Our journey will end differently. — Ally Condie
Any other questions?"
"Just one," I say. "What color are your eyes?" I want to know what he thinks, how he sees himself - the real Ky - when he dares to look.
"Blue," he says sounding surprised, "they've always been blue."
"Not to me."
"What do they look like to you?" he says puzzled, amused. Not looking at my mouth anymore, looking into my eyes.
"Lots of colors," I say. "At first I thought they were brown. Once I thought they were green ... "
"What are they now?" he asks. He widens his eyes a little, leans closer, lets me look as long and deep as I want.
"Well?"
"Everything," I tell him, "They're everything. — Ally Condie
I wonder if there have been other errors. — Ally Condie
It's hard to know which ways to be strong. — Ally Condie
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. — Ally Condie
You can take it but it will always be mine — Ally Condie
He said he thought it happened fast, both for my dad and Ben and for the drunk driver who hit them, but for the rest of the questions he said, We just don't know.
We just don't know.
Some things are gone for good. You can't get them back. You can't know what happened. Ever. — Ally Condie
I wonder what would have happened to her if I had died. Would she have cried for me, or would she have gone through my things, taken what she needed, and moved on? — 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
Once you want something, everything changes. — 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
If a graveyard floods, nothing is lost that wasn't already gone. — Ally Condie
Xander, that's nothing but a glorified work project. They want some free labor and they're bribing us with ice cream. — Ally Condie
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) — Ally Condie
I watched Leo and I realized that he also knew how it felt to be different. To want big things in a very small town. To get made fun of. He wasn't as different as I was. But he also wasn't one of those lucky people who fit in all the time. And I thought of the first time I worked with him, what I'd seen. He did like the world - that was the thing about him that I liked the best - but the world didn't always like him back. — Ally Condie
She is holding on tight to this talk of flowers, as I did before, when I was afraid and alone. If you sing and speak of blooms and petals that come back after a long time of being winter-still, you don't have to think about things that don't. — Ally Condie
The Rising is not what you imagine, it's not Aberations and Anomalies and rebels and rougues running free. It's a structure. A system. — Ally Condie
I have tried to be righteous all my life. Yet I have never been content. — Ally Condie
Have to believe in something to survive. She's picked the Rising. I chose Cassia. — Ally Condie
You don't have to know someone all the way to miss them. Or to feel bad when they're gone" -Leo — Ally Condie
What I did see was that Leo's face lit up and then the lady's face lit up and his smile seemed as big as the world. Like he loved the world. Like he had no idea what it could do. — Ally Condie
If you let hope inside, it takes you over. It feeds on your insides and uses your bones to climb and grow. Eventually it becomes the thing that is your bones, that holds you together. Holds you up until you don't know how to live without it anymore. To pull it out of you would kill you entirely. — Ally Condie
I can't hep but smile. We are here together. In this wide, wild world, we've managed to meet again. I reach out my hand and trace my finger along the path I took to get him until my hand meets his on the map. — Ally Condie
And I wonder how the Society ever caught her that day on the ocean. — Ally Condie
For some reason, the act of writing them down makes me remember. Each word I write brings me closer to finding the right one. — Ally Condie
I came up on the screen, too, Cassia. But he was the one you chose to see. — Ally Condie
The Society made it clear: we're not to injure each other. That's for the Enemy to do. — Ally Condie
Away from the Society, from Xander, from my family, from the life I knew. Away from the boy who led us here, from the light that creeps across this land, turning the sky blue and the stone red, the light that could get us killed. — Ally Condie
We do not kiss. We do nothing but hold on and breathe, but still I know. I cannot go gently now. Not even for the sake of my parents, my family.
Not even for Xander. — Ally Condie
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 — Ally Condie
There's nothing like reading about a world that feels dead to throw your own beautiful, colorful life into sharp relief. — Ally Condie
I wanted his hands at my back and his lips speaking poems on mine and our journey to each other to be completed, the miles between us consumed and all distance closed. — Ally Condie
No,' she says, as if the suggestion is ridiculous. 'I wouldn't go back to where I'm from. I'd go someplace I've never been. — Ally Condie
He unknowingly throws me a lifeline with those words. I am not drowning in worry anymore. I am neck deep and it still washes over me in cold waves, but now I can breathe. — Ally Condie
Maybe I'm making this up, but my portions seem to be smaller lately. I'm not sure why. The hiking and running on the tracker keep me fit. If anything, I should be getting more food, not less. It must be my imagination. — 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
Do not go gentle — Ally Condie
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. — Ally Condie
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. — Ally Condie
Hearing it, I wonder how I could have ever thought that the birdcall I heard earlier sounded anything like the Officer's whistle. — Ally Condie
That's when I realize that the statistics the Officials give us do not matter to me. I know there are many people who are happy and I am glad for them. But this is Ky. If he is the one person who falls by the wayside while the other ninety-nine are happy and fulfilled, that is not right with me anymore. I realize that I don't care about the Officer pacing below or the other hikers among the trees, or really anything else at all, and that is when I realize how dangerous this truly is. — Ally Condie
Newrose, Oldrose, Quean Anne's lace.
Water, river, stone and sun
Wind over hill, under tree.
Past the border none can see.
Climbing into dark for you,
Will you climb in stars for me?
P.124 — Ally Condie
We are not lost mermaids with seaweed hair and coins for eyes, but human girls, alive and found.
We are sisters, and we did not drown. — Ally Condie
And then I got it. Leo wanted to go so badly because he wanted not only to be in the presence of greatness, but because he wanted to share something he thought was amazing with his dad. — Ally Condie
Good-bye, I say to Grandfather, and to my father, and I hold the tube in the river and pause a moment. We hold the choices of our fathers and mothers in our hands and when we cling on or let them slip between our fingers, those choices become our own. — Ally Condie
I was trying to find a way to you," Ky says. "I wanted to cross the plain and get back to the Society somehow. We took some things from the farmers' township for trade. — Ally Condie
They did. And if any came, we cut them down. — Ally Condie
When we read dystopia, we root for these people to break free because we are these people; hoping and fighting against things that are bigger than ourselves. — Ally Condie
They were too much to carry
so i left them behind
for a new life, in a new place
but no one forgot who i was
i didn't
and neither did the people who watch
they watched for years
they watch now — 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
I admitted it to myself.
I had all kinds of dreams. I wanted to go skiing again and get fast and good. I wanted to go to London too someday. I wanted to fall in love.i wanted to own a bookstore or a restraunt and have people come in and say, "Hi, Cedar," and I wanted from ride a bike down the streets in a little town in a country where people spoke a different language. Maybe my bike would a basket and maybe the basket would have flowers in it. I wanted to live in a big city and wear lipstick and my hair in bun and buy groceries and carry them home in a paper bag. My high heels would click when I climbed the stairs to my apartment. I wanted to stand at the edge of a lake and listen. — Ally Condie
Death," I say. " It's the one thing they haven't fully conquered. They want to know more about it. — Ally Condie
In a story, you can turn to the front and begin again and everyone lives once more. That doesn't work in real life. — Ally Condie
There is satisfaction in knowing that something good and right and true was part of you. That you had the blessing, gift, good fortune, perfect luck, to know someone like this, to pass through fire and water and stone and sky together and emerge, all of you, strong enough to hold on, strong enough to let go. (Cassia) — Ally Condie
And I'll tell her that I don't want my life to be samples and scraps. A taste of everything but a meal of nothing. — Ally Condie
Suddenly, I see the other side of choice. Of all of us having it. Sometimes we will choose wrong. — Ally Condie
The darkness behind doesn't worry me; neither do the stars ahead. I think of how perhaps the best way to fly would be with hands full of earth so you always remember where you came from, how hard walking could be. — Ally Condie
But then I realize that even if I did have a soul, it's not as though someone else would be there. It would only be more of me. — Ally Condie
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 — Ally Condie
Virologist very long to respond. "What do we have?" he asks, his — Ally Condie
Now that I've found the way to fly, which direction should I go into the night? — Ally Condie
The only chance of success is to trust in your own power. — Ally Condie
Being a teen is past for me. Worrying about the world and my place in it is not. — Ally Condie
I think of how perhaps the best way to fly would be with hands full of earth, so you always remember where you came from. — Ally Condie
Dreams don't smell or sound as strong as this. — Ally Condie
I look at our tree, at its leaves still reaching for the sun, still working to turn light into food. They don't know they are dead yet. — Ally Condie