Reached (Matched, #3)

by Ally Condie

I could write stories; I could hide from the world and make my own instead of trying to change it or live in it. I could write paper people and I would love them too; I could make them almost real.

If you let hope inside, it takes you over. It feeds on your insides and uses your bones to climb and grow. Eventually it becomes the thing that is your bones, that holds you together. Holds you up until you don’t know how to live without it anymore. To pull it out of you would kill you entirely.

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.

they are a little family, three generations, connected not by blood but by journeys and farewells.

I know that a virus doesn’t think or feel, but it still seems as if this one likes to take down those who were the most alive.

It’s just one person. Of course, one person can be the world.

But we do find answers in beauty, more often than not.