Suzanne Collins: Doing (page 3)

“Something inside me shuts down and I'm too numb to feel anything. It's like watching complete strangers in another Hunger Games. But I do notice they omit the part where I covered her in flowers.

Right. Because even that smacks of rebellion.”

“Life in District 12 isn’t really so different from life in the arena. At some point, you have to stop running and turn around and face whoever wants you dead. The hard thing is finding the courage to do it.”

“I don’t know what the explosion did, but it damaged something deep and irreparable. Never mind. If I get home, I’ll be so stinking rich, I’ll be able to pay someone to do my hearing.”

“I know he was desperate. That makes people do all kinds of crazy things.”

“Haymich finally drops the good-natured act. "you know who else, Katniss. You know who stepped up first."
Of course I do.
Gale.”

“Besides, it's the first gift that's always the hardest to pay back. I wouldn't even have been here to do it if you hadn't helped me then.”

“Maybe everyone is just trying to protect me by lying to me. I don’t care. I’m sick of people lying to me for my own good. Because really it’s mostly for their own good. Lie to Katniss about the rebellion so she doesn’t do anything crazy.”

“People don't need wings to survive"
"Mockingjays do.”

“And then, if you make it to bedtime, you feel the joy of cheating death out of one more day," she said. "Do you see?”

“Maybe… because for the first time… there was a chance I could keep him,” I say.
“So now that you've got me, what are you going to do with me?”
“Put you somewhere you can't get hurt.”
And when he kisses me, people in the room actually sigh.”

“Why… do you find this… distracting?”

“I do plan on saying one or two things to him when we're allowed an hour for goodbyes. To let him know how essential he's been to me all these years. How better my life has been for knowing him.”

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

“And then, when he’s been underwater so long I feel certain he’s drowned, his head pops up right next to me and I start. “Don’t do that,” I say. “What? Come up or stay under?” he says. “Either. Neither. Whatever”

“Just don't die for me, you won't be doing me any favour!”

“Do you really know what's going on And if you don't… find out”

“It's like being home again, when they bring in the hopelessly mangled person from the mine explosion, or the woman in her third day of labor, or the famished child struggling against pneumonia and my mother and Prim, they wear that same look on their faces. Now is the times to run away tho the woods, to hide in the trees until the patient is long gone and in another part of the Seam the hammers make the coffin. But I'm held here both by the hovercraft walls and the same force that holds the loved ones of the dying. How often I've seen them, ringed around our kitchen table and I thought, Why don't they leave? Why do they stay to watch?
And now I know. It's because you have no choice.”

“A shiver goes through me when I think of the proximity of my mother and sister to this man who despises me. Will always despise me. Because I outsmarted his sadistic Hunger Games, made the Capitol look foolish, and consequently undermined his control.
All I was doing was trying to keep myself and Peeta alive. Any act of rebellion was purely coincidental. But when the Capitol decrees that only one tribute can live and you have the audacity to challenge it, I guess that’s a rebellion in itself.”

“"I think we'll make this whole situation a lot simpler by agreeing not to lie to each other," he says. "What do you think?"
I think my tongue has frozen and speech will be impossible, so I surprise myself by answering back in a steady voice, "Yes, I think that would save time."”