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"Sometimes you can't speak, not because others won't let you, but because you are afraid of what you'll say."
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"Answer only when asked, otherwise do not say anything. Don't say a thing in this world. To tell [give advice] is the biggest disease. Your beard grows without you saying anything, doesn't it?"

"In this world, there is no such sternness like that of maintaining silence. Verbal sternness will be wasted."

"I was thinking lots of things, but most of them needed to stay thoughts, not words."

"I couldn't think of anything that didn't sound trivial, so I just nodded."
Explore more quotes by Ally Condie

"It's been so long since I've let myself feel anger that I don't just feel it. It covers my mouth and I swallow it down, the taste sharp and metal as though I'm gnawing through foilware."

"Did you know Grandfather would give the poems to me? I ask.'We thought he might, my mother says.'Why didn't you stop him?'We didn't want to take away your choices, my mother says.'But Grandfather never did tell me about the Rising, I say.'I think he wanted you to find your own way, my mother says. She smiles. 'In that way, he was a true rebel. I think that's why he chose that argument with your father as his favorite memory. Though he was upset when the fight happened, later he came to see that your father was strong in choosing his own path, and he admired him for it."

"So much of life is in the smallness of moments...but they are harder to mark. So we need the grander celebrations and occasions. People like to feel significant."

"This is a difficult balance, telling the truth: how much to share, how much to keep, which truths will wound but not ruin, which will cut too deep to heal."

"Everyone has something of beauty about them. But loving lets you look, and look, and look again. You notice the back of a hand, the turn of a head, the way of a walk. When you first love, you look blind and you see it all as the glorious, beloved whole, or a beautiful sum of beautiful parts. But when you see the one you love as pieces, as why's, you can love those parts too, and it's a love at once more complicated and more complete."

"One of the things I've always liked about my husband is he's very good at lots of stuff. He was an English teacher when I met him. He wrote poetry and played the guitar. As time went on, he decided to go into economics, so he's very analytical and mathematical in addition to his artsy side."

"But then I realize that even if I did have a soul, it's not as though someone else would be there. It would only be more of me."

"And I'll tell her that I don't want my life to be samples and scraps. A taste of everything but a meal of nothing."

"At first when the rain fell from the sky so wide and deepit smelled like sage, my favorite smellI went up on the plateau to watch it cometo see the gifts it always broughtbut this rain changed from blue to black and leftnothing."
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