Quotes from Suzanne Collins

But better off sad than dead.

This perplexing, good natured boy who can spin out lies so convincingly to be hopelessly in love with me ... and I admit it there are moments when he makes me believe it myself.

I start to crack at four hundred to one.

For a moment he laughed, forgetting where they were, how depressing the backdrop. For a moment there was just her smile, the musical cadence of her voice, and the hint of flirtation. Then the world exploded.

And here I am, strapped into a tree, a stone's throw from the biggest idiot in the games.

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

It's not easy to find a topic. Talking of home is painful. Talking of the present unbearable.

Im still betting on you. - Cinna.

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.

There's no going back. So we might as well get on with things.

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

She must have really loved him to leave her home for the Seam. I try to remember that when all I can see is the woman who sat by, blank and unreachable, while her children turned to skin and bones. I try to forgive her for my father's sake. But to be honest, I'm not the forgiving type.

You're mine and I'm yours. It's written in the stars.

She genuinely likes people. All people, not just a select few she's spent years making up her mind about.

Then Octavia drops to her knees, rubs the hem of a skirt against her cheek, and burst into tears. "It's been so long," she gasps, "since I've seen anything pretty.

So it's you and a syringe against the Capitol.

Obviously this person's a hazard. Stupid people are dangerous.

Suddenly I am furious, that with my life on the line, they don't even have the decency to pay attention to me. That I'm being upstaged by a dead pig.

Taking the kids from our districts, forcing them to kill one another while we watch – this is the Capitol's way of reminding us how totally we are at their mercy.

They erase my face with a layer of pale makeup and draw my features back out.

Even if times got bad, he would never again deny himself the possibility that the future might be happy even if the present was painful. He would allow himself dreams.

My father got to know my mother because on his hunts he would sometimes collect medicinal herbs and sell them to her shop to be brewed into remedies. She must have really loved him to leave her home for the Seam. I try to remember that when all I can see is the woman who sat by, blank and unreachable, while her children turned to skin and bones. I try to forgive her for my father's sake. But to be honest, I'm not the forgiving type.

because I have learned the hard way how deadly these beauties can be.

The ones I loved fly as birds in the open sky above me. Soaring, weaving, calling to me to join them. I want so badly to follow them, but the seawater saturates my wings, making it impossible to lift them. The ones I hated have taken to the water, horrible scaled things that tear my salty flesh with needle teeth. Biting again and again. Dragging me beneath the surface.