The Compound Quotes

“I’ve always been a passive kind of person; it is both my worst quality and the thing people like most about me.”
― Aisling Rawle, The Compound

“What did it matter to wake up at the same time every morning and wear the same clothes and try to eat more protein but less sugar, when an earthquake or a tsunami or a bomb might end it all at any minute? Or maybe we would all continue to boil, slowly but surely, in the mess that we pretended was an acceptable place to live.”
― Aisling Rawle, The Compound

“I know we told ourselves that we wanted to live peacefully, but I think we were looking for new ways to make ourselves miserable.”
― Aisling Rawle, The Compound

“I couldn’t bear to see him go, but I couldn’t fathom leaving. I didn’t want him to see just how small and insignificant my life had been before. If my greatest accomplishment had been getting onto the show, then everything beyond that would be a disappointment.”
― Aisling Rawle, The Compound

“There was no part of her beauty that didn’t make me question mine.”
― Aisling Rawle, The Compound

“She was a lot, but she was still someone you wanted to be around: she had that kind of energy.”
― Aisling Rawle, The Compound

“They didn’t know beauty, these boys. They saw blurred outlines and thought they knew the picture.”
― Aisling Rawle, The Compound

“Comrade,’ said Snowball, ‘those ribbons that you are so devoted to are the badge of slavery. Can you not understand that liberty is worth more than ribbons?”
― Aisling Rawle, The Compound

“I could see why I had gravitated toward him at the beginning—I liked beautiful things—but there was a part of me that was ashamed by the shallowness I had shown in betting on him with so little thought.”
― Aisling Rawle, The Compound

“Task: Each boy and girl must eat a handful of grass Reward: A whistle”
― Aisling Rawle, The Compound

“Reality had become a slippery thing; I wasn't certain on what part of my life I was an active park of, and what was a result of the machinations around me. But that, to me at least, felt no different from how it had been on the outside.”
― Aisling Rawle, The Compound

“And shall I still be allowed to wear ribbons in my mane?” asked Mollie. “Comrade,” said Snowball, “those ribbons that you are so devoted to are the badge of slavery. Can you not understand that liberty is worth more than ribbons?”
― Aisling Rawle, The Compound

“The compound, all to myself; I couldn’t imagine it. I didn’t want it. Why had I ever wanted it? “Please don’t go,” I said. “Please don’t leave me here.” “You won’t be alone,” he said. “We’ll be watching you, at home. We all will.”
― Aisling Rawle, The Compound

“We’ll be the last two, me and you.” He smiled a little but shook his head. “I don’t care about making it to the end.” I looked at him in shock. “Well, why are you here, then, if you don’t want to win?” “Lily,” he said, almost sadly. “I stayed for you.”
― Aisling Rawle, The Compound

“Pointing out that something is broken doesn’t count as a solution.”
― Aisling Rawle, The Compound

“knew that Ryan was being primitive, in a way, but I can’t say that it didn’t please me.”
― Aisling Rawle, The Compound

“My father had been gone long enough that I’d stopped expecting him to come home, but I liked to collect the experiences of other soldiers and pretend that they were his.”
― Aisling Rawle, The Compound

“You got a few scrapes, there,” I said. “What happened?” “There were some issues,” he said. “But we worked them out.” He smiled at me. “It’s good to be around women and be civilized again.”
― Aisling Rawle, The Compound

“I realized that as long as Susie lived in the compound, I would not be the dimmest person there. I’m not saying that to be disparaging—I don’t actually value intelligence that much in a person. Intelligence can be artificial, but charm is always real, and Susie had that in spades.”
― Aisling Rawle, The Compound

“Ever since I was a teenager, I worried that in a group of people I would be the stupidest one there.”
― Aisling Rawle, The Compound

“People did die after the show though—there was a long list now of people who’d taken their lives after they returned home—but that was a separate issue.”
― Aisling Rawle, The Compound

“I had already known the answer: it was the same every year. I only asked out of my old habit of prompting people to explain things to me even when I knew the answer. When I was a child, I found that it would make people more likely to want to help me, and it served me just as well as an adult.”
― Aisling Rawle, The Compound