Quotes from Suzanne Collins

Wars are won by heads not hearts.

Just last year i wanted to kill him, but now it is my duty to save him.

I look down at our linked fingers as I loosen my grasp, but he regains his grip on me. "No, don't let go of me," he says.

No wonder I won the Games. NO decent person ever does.

But more words tumble out. 'You're a painter. You're a baker. You like to sleep with the windows open. You never take sugar in your tea. And you always double-knot your shoelaces.' Then I dive into my tent before I do something stupid like cry.

Peeta would lose it if he knew I was thinking any of this, so I only say, "So what should we do with our last few days?" "I just want to spend every possible minute of the rest of my life with you," Peeta replies. "Come on, then," I say, pulling him into my room.

Entrails. No hissing. This is the closest we will ever come to love.

As coal pressured into pearls by our weighty existence. Beauty that arose out of pain.

What? My head doctor says I'm not supposed to censor my thoughts. It's part of my therapy.

But the words are easy and soothing, promising tomorrow will be more hopeful than this awful piece o time we call today.

See that little girl? I wanted to marry her mother, but she ran off with a coal miner," "A coal miner? Why did she want a coal miner if she could've had you?" "Because when he sings...even the birds stop to listen.

He hates me more," says Peeta. "I don't think people in general are his sort of thing.

But if you want to find peace, you must first be able to hope it is possible.

I'm running on hate.

We're supposed to be making up this stuff, playing at being in love, not actually being in love.

You know, I think this is the first time we've ever done anything normal together.

There is a point to everything or nothing at all, depending on your worldview.

One slip. One slip in thousands. The odds had been entirely in her favor. But it hadn't mattered.

We could do it, you know," Gale says quietly. "What?" I ask. "Leave the district. Run off. Live in the woods. You and I, we could make it," says Gale. I don't know how to respond. This idea is so preposterous.

By the end of the session, I am no one at all. Haymitch started drinking somewhere around witty, and a nasty edge has crept into his voice. "I give up, sweetheart. Just answer the questions and try not to let the audience see how openly you despise them.

I'm unaware that my feet are moving to the table until I'm inches from the holograph. My hand reaches in and cups a rapidly blinking green light. Someone joins me, his body tense. Finnick, of course. Because only a victor would see what I see so immediately. The arena. Laced with pods controlled by Gamemakers. Finnick's fingers caress a steady red glow over a doorway. "Ladies and gentlemen..." His voice is quiet, but mine rings through the room. "Let the Seventy-sixth Hunger Games begin!

So, in a way, my name being drawn in the reaping was a real piece of luck," says Peeta.

I cover my face with my arms because this isn't happening. It isn't possible. For someone to make Peeta forget he loves me . . . no one can do that.

The glue of mutual need that bonded us so tightly together for all those years is melting away. Dark patches, not light, show in the spaces between us.