347 Quotes by Ally Condie

I believe in a new beginning. And so do many others out there – those writing on scraps to hang in the Gallery, those who continue to work hard to take care of the sick, those who dare to believe that we can all be the pilots of something new and better.

So in the middle of all the noise, I point to the sky. I hope he understands what I mean, because I mean so many things: My heart will always fly his name. I won’t go gentle. I’ll find a way to soar life the angels in the stories and I will find him.

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.

My dad used to say that life was like turning the pages in a book. ‘Oh, look,’ he’d say, pretending to flip the pages in the air after we’d had something bad happen to us. ‘Bad luck here on page ninety-seven. And on ninety-eight. But something good here on ninety-nine! All you had to do was keep reading!

We don’t need to understand everything.

So much of life is in the smallness of life. So much of life is in the smallness of moments. But they are harder to mark. So we need the grander celebrations and occasions. People like to feel significant.

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.

And it strikes me that this is how writing anything is, really. A collaboration between you who give the words and they who take them and find meaning in them, or put music behind them, or turn them aside because they were not what was needed.

Ky can play this game. He can play all of their games, including the one in front of him that he just lost. He knows exactly how to play, and that’s why he loses every time.