Veronica Roth: How is it I know this little about the boy who says he...

Human beings as a whole cannot be good for long before the bad creeps back in and poisons us again.

Veronica Roth

divergent poison long

I feel like someone breathed new air into my lungs. I am not Abnegation. I am not Dauntless. I am Divergent.

Veronica Roth

divergent air feels

I might be in love with you." He smiles a little. "I'm waiting until I'm sure to tell you, though.

Veronica Roth

divergent waiting love-you

Scrubbing the floor when no one else wanted to was something that my mother would have done. If I can't be with her, the least I can do is act like her sometimes.

Veronica Roth

like-her done mother

I think romance is friendship and attraction sort of meeting together and that does influence what I'm writing a lot. I try to establish the attraction, obviously, but I also think it's important to show the characters having actual conversations about things other than their feelings for each other - and to develop their friendship on the page.

Veronica Roth

writing character thinking

Peter would probably throw a party if I stopped breathing.' 'Well,' he says, 'I would only go if there was cake.

Veronica Roth

breathing cake party

Our eyes meet. I hear a train horn, so faint it could be wind whistling through an alleyway. But I know it when I hear it. It sounds like the Dauntless, calling me to to them.

Veronica Roth

eye sound wind

I am selfish. I am brave.

Veronica Roth

i-am-selfish selfish brave

And is it selfish of me to crave victory, or is it brave?

Veronica Roth

selfish victory brave

What's worse: to be idle while someone dies, or to be exiled and empty-handed?

Veronica Roth

idle empty dies

Why do people want to pretend that death is sleep? It isn't. It isn't.

Veronica Roth

want sleep people

If Eric thinks I did something right, I must have done it wrong.

Veronica Roth

eric done thinking

Who is he when he isn't Dauntless, isn't an instructor, isn't Four, isn't anything in particular? Whoever he is, I like him. It's easier to admit that to myself now, in the dark, after all that just happened. He is not sweet or gentle or particularly kind. But he is smart and brave, and even though he saved me, he treated me like I was strong. That is all I need to know.

Veronica Roth

smart strong sweet

Do the elevators work?" I ask Uriah, as quietly as I can. "Sure they do." says Zeke, rolling his eyes, "You think I'm stupid enough not to come here early and turn on the emergency generator?" "Yeah," says Uriah. "I kinda do.

Veronica Roth

eye stupid thinking

It isn't the height that scares me - the height makes me feel alive with energy, every organ and vessel and muscle in my body singing at the same pitch. Then I realize what it is. It's him. Something about him makes me feel like I am about to fall. Or turn to liquid. Or burst into flames.

Veronica Roth

flames singing fall

I breathe in. The water will wash my wounds clean. I breathe out. My mother submerged me in water when I was a baby, to give me to God. It has been a long time since I thought about God, but I think about him now. It is only natural. I am glad, suddenly, that I shot Eric in the foot instead of the head.

Veronica Roth

mother baby thinking

Living without virtues is to live divorced from society, seperated from the most important thing in life, community.

Veronica Roth

things-in-life community important

People tend to overestimate my character," I say quietly. "They think that because I'm small, or a girl, or a Stiff, I can't possibly be cruel. But they're wrong.

Veronica Roth

girl character thinking

This concept could easily have gone awry. Stories about love tend to go that way sometimes. They wander into the realm of cheese and never return, which I think is a shame, because there is a way to write about romantic love without breaking out the Velveeta.

Veronica Roth

romantic-love writing thinking

One choice can transform you!

Veronica Roth

tris-prior determined choices

How is it I know this little about the boy who says he loves me -- the boy whose real name is powerful enough to keep us alive in a train car full of enemies?