Chosen Ones (The Chosen Ones, #1)

by Veronica Roth

carrying ghosts of their younger selves in their faces.

Sometimes Sloane wondered if the world had been worth saving.

My real problem is contented people who smile while refusing to lift a finger for anyone who isn’t them.

Magic was not a weapon or even an amoral source of energy—it was an infection.

for something to be magic, it must be an impossible want.

Some things split your life in half.

She was beginning to understand the Unrealists—how could you trust reality when reality was so easily manipulated?

Sloane had believed in souls, she would have hoped that Cameron’s existed in Genetrix, that he was an architect building houses that defied logic and sense. But she didn’t. Sometimes she still hoped anyway.

floating castles paper fireflies frozen flames we make the impossible possible

chaos and fury.

a big, star-dusted sky.

living in a moment of held breath. The exhale had always been coming.

Those shards became magical objects of legend on Earth—but there are so many false legends that it has been difficult to discern the true ones.

The pen stood upright, shivering in anticipation of his voice.

She was in the monument, the light of dead names glowing around her, and— She was sitting with Albie at the bar, the line of empty shot glasses in front of them, and— She was walking along the road barefoot, a piece of glass buried in her heel, and—

There was no exertion of will, just an extraction of want,