Ya Dystopian Quotes

“He didn’t save me, though. He allowed me the freedom to save myself, which is the very best type of rescue.”
― Amy Engel, The Book of Ivy

“That night we played truth or dare. You said that after a while you stopped trying to earn your mother's affection." I pause. "Why didn't you give up with me, too?"
"You know why," he says quietly. I close my eyes. I do know, but I'm not sure if I'm ready to hear it. But some part of me must be, because I wouldn't have asked the question otherwise, not of Bishop, the boy who never chooses to say something easy just because the truth is hard. Maybe I want to hear it so that i will know, once and for all, that there is no going back.
"Because I'm in love with you, Ivy," he whispers. "Giving up on you isn't an option." He lifts my hair away from the back of my neck and kisses the delicate skin there.
My breath shudders out of me. The silence spirals into the dark room, and maybe it was foolish to ask the question, but I'm not sorry. I uncurl his hand and kiss his palm, his skin cool and dry. I place his hand over my heart, cover it with my own.
We fall asleep that way. His lips on my neck. My heart in his hand.”
― Amy Engel, The Book of Ivy

“Bishop stares at me. "What do you want me to say, Ivy?" he asks finally. "That I agree with what my father did? That I don't? What's the answer you're looking for?"
"I'm not looking for a specific answer," I tell him, although the part of me that's been coached to kill him hopes he agrees with his father. "I want to know what you think."
"I think," Bishop says, "that we can love our families without trusting everything they tell us. Without championing everything they stand for." He delivers the words matter-of-factly, but his eyes are locked on mine. "I think that sometimes things aren't as simple as our fathers want us to believe.”
― Amy Engel, The Book of Ivy

“Who do you want to turn into?" I mean the question to be mocking, but that's not how it comes out. I sound interested. I reach down and scratch my leg, trying to hid my embarrassment.
Bishop looks at me. "Someone honest. Someone who tries to do the right thing. Someone who follows his own heart, even if it disappoints people." He pauses. "Someone brave enough to be all those things."
A boy who doesn't want to lie, married to a girl who can't tell the truth. If there is a God, he has a sick sense of humor.”
― Amy Engel, The Book of Ivy

“People. And the brutal things we do to one another.
The fence shakes against my cheek and I turn, careful to keep my gaze lifted. I don't have it in me to look at her again. Bishop is grasping the chain-link with both hands, knuckles white, his eyes closed. His whole body is wound tight as a spring, like if I reached for him he would simply break apart at the joints, splinter into a hundred pi8eces. I don't try to touch him.
He lets out a yell and then another and another, loud and wild and out of control. He shakes the fence hard with both hands. His anger and frustration are more potent somehow because they are unexpected. When his scream fades into silence, he rests his forehead against the metal. "Sometimes," he says, voice raw, "I hate this place." He twists his neck and looks at me, hands still hooked in the fence above his head.
"I know," I say, barely a whisper. "Me, too.”
― Amy Engel, The Book of Ivy

“I'm not a complete idiot, you know," I tell him. "I do think about alternatives if things were to change in Westfall."
Bishop swings his legs off the sofa and sits forward, facing me. "I have never, not for a single second, thought you were an idiot, Ivy."
"You listen to your father, too, don't you?" I ask him.
Bishop looks down at his clasped hands, then back up at me. "Sometimes I just think that because of who we are... the president's son and the founder's daughter..." He rolls his eyes, making me smile. "It's doubly important that we think for ourselves. We're not our parents. We don't have to agree with everything they stand for.”
― Amy Engel, The Book of Ivy

“But there's something fundamentally wrong in a system where a girl like Meredith would even consider staying with a boy like Dylan if she has the chance to be free of him.”
― Amy Engel, The Book of Ivy

“He glances back at me. "But there's hardly ever any activity outside the fence these days, at least close by. Only the people we put out, and they rarely try to get back into Westfall. I guess they figure it's better to take your chances out there than be guaranteed a death sentence in here."
"Either option sounds pretty horrible to me."
Bishop shrugs. "I don't know, sometimes I think we should just tear down the fence. Towns didn't have fences around them before the war and everything was fine. I think it was supposed to keep us safe, but instead it's made us scared.”
― Amy Engel, The Book of Ivy

“You’re going to castrate them if they give me a sideways glance?”
He looked at the ground. “I’m not bringing you to the safest place and you’re beautiful, so I needed to warn them.”
“I’m beautiful?” I repeated trying not to smile.
“Don’t let it go to your head, darling.” He said holding his hand out for me.
“You’re not too bad yourself.”
“I know. I saw the way you stared at me when I took my shirt off.” Hunter said.”
― Cassandra Giovanni, In Between Seasons

“The corners of my mouth twitched. Wait. Did this boy just make me smile in the middle of the apocalypse?”
― Candice Jarrett, Mortal Tether

“They’re connected,’ he continued, his voice husky. ‘What one sees, they all see. What one experiences, they all feel. And when one finds prey, more follow.’ He swallowed hard. ‘They’re faster than us, stronger than us, and when there’s more than one you’ve got next to no chance, which is why we have to—’
‘What do they do once they find you?’
His dark eyes fixed on mine, the bad one open just a crack.
‘They feed.”
― Emma Lord, Anomaly

“On clear nights, I’d sit out on the porch and gaze up at the stars.
So many of them, scrawled across a sky so vast it made my head
hurt. And I’d tell myself that if the stars could do it – if they could
exist for billions of years in isolation – I could do it, too. I’d just
pretend I was a star, that’s all. A ball of energy, burning up, light
years from anyone and anything.”
― Emma Lord, Anomaly

“I backed out of the kitchen. Griff was a rigid shadow halfway
down the hall, his gaze trained on the door at the end. His snarls
shook the air. The hall lights flickered, illuminating the hackles
along his spine. My insides turned liquid.
They weren’t coming.
They were here.”
― Emma Lord, Anomaly