Mockingjay (The Hunger Games, #3)

by Suzanne Collins

They have a whole team of people to make me over, dress me, write my speeches, orchestrate my appearances — as if that doesn’t sound horribly familiar — and all I have to do is play my part.

And it takes too much energy to stay angry with someone who cries so much.

The very notion that I’m devoting any thought to who I want presented as my lover, given our current circumstances, is demeaning.

Alone, I can’t be the Mockingjay.

“And if we burn, you burn with us!”

Because something is significantly wrong with a creature that sacrifices its children’s lives to settle its differences. You can spin it any way you like. Snow thought the Hunger Games were an efficient means of control. Coin thought the parachutes would expedite the war. But in the end, who does it benefit? No one. The truth is, it benefits no one to live in a world where these things happen.

That what I need to survive is not Gale’s fire, kindled with rage and hatred. I have plenty of fire myself. What I need is the dandelion in the spring. The bright yellow that means rebirth instead of destruction. The promise that life can go on, no matter how bad our losses. That it can be good again. And only Peeta can give me that.

when he whispers, “You love me. Real or not real?” I tell him, “Real.”

My children, who don’t know they play on a graveyard.

But there are much worse games to play.