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Survival Quotes
"I've been down by the stream collecting berries. Would you care for some?"I would, actually, but I don't want to relent too soon. I do walk over and look at them. I've never seen this type before. No, I have. But not in the arena. These aren't Rue's berries, although they resemble them. Nor do they match any I learned about in training. I lean down and scoop up a few, rolling them between my fingers.My father's voice comes back to me. "Not these, Katniss. Never these. They're nightlock. You'll be dead before they reach your stomach."Just then the cannon fires. I whip around, expecting Peeta to collapseto the ground, but he only raises his eyebrows. The hoovercraft appears a hundred metres or so away.What's left of Foxface's emaciated body is lifted into the air."
15
"My father looked on in disbelief, overwhelmed that his son had been taught to eat glass and relish it."
14
"Young Cyclopes grow up alone on the streets, learn to make things out of scraps. Learn to survive...makes us appreciate blessings, not be greedy and mean and fat..."
14
"We were masters of nature, masters of the world. We had forgotten everything--death, fatigue, our natural needs. Stronger than cold or hunger, stronger than the shots and the desire to die, condemned and wandering, mere numbers, we were the only men on earth."
14
"With the smell of beer I try to get the smell of death off me. And only the smell of death will get the smell of beer off you, like all the drinkers whose graves I have to dig."
14
"A law of survival, Ragle had said. Those who refused to respond to the new stimulus would perish. Adapt or perish . . . version of a timeless rule."
14
"There's a long road of suffering ahead of you. But don't lose courage. You've already escaped the gravest danger: selection. So now, muster your strength, and don't lose heart. We shall all see the day of liberation. Have faith in life. Above all else, have faith. Drive out despair, and you will keep death away from yourselves. Hell is not for eternity. And now, a prayer - or rather, a piece of advice: let there be comradeship among you. We are all brothers, and we are all suffering the same fate. The same smoke floats over all our heads. Help one another. It is the only way to survive."
14
"Sauve qui peut. To survivewe'd all turn thiefand rascal, or so says the fox,with her coat of an elegant scoundrel,her white knife of a smile,who knows just where she's going:to steal somethingthat doesn't belong to her -some chicken, or one more chance,or other life."
14
"Cowards make the best torturers. Cowards understand fear and they can use it."
14
"His eyes saved him. What they insisted on seeing and reporting to him took him out of the autism of terror."
14
"But now, for the first time, I see you are a man like me. I thought of your hand-grenades, of your bayonet, of your rifle; now I see your wife and your face and our fellowship. Forgive me, comrade. We always see it too late. Why do they never tell us that you are poor devils like us, that your mothers are just as anxious as ours, and that we have the same fear of death, and the same dying and the same agony - Forgive me, comrade; how could you be my enemy?"
14
"I am a child of the poisonous wind that copulated with the East River on an oil-slick, garbage infested midnight. I turn about on my own parentage. I inoculate against those very biles that brought me to light. I am a serum born of venoms. I am the antibody of all Time. I am the Cure. You do of the City, do you not? Manhattan is your punisher, let me be you shield."
14
"At least I had frost on my nose, boots on my feet, and protest in my mouth."
14
"Arya did not dare [take a bath], even though she smelled as bad as Yoren by now, all sour and stinky. Some of the creatures living in her clothes had come all the way from Flea Bottom with her; it didn't seem right to drown them."
14
"He looked at me. His firm, broad face showed weight-loss in deep shadows under the cheekbones, his eyes were sunken and his mouth sorely chapped and cracked. God knows what I looked like, when he looked like that. He smiled. 'With luck we shall make it, and without luck we shall not.'"
14
"All he really knew was that if he stayed here he would soon be the property of things that buzzed and snorted and hissed, that gave off fumes or stenches. In six months, he would be the owner of a large pink, trained ulcer, a blood pressure of algebraic dimensions, a myopia this side of blindness, and nightmares as deep as oceans and infested with improbable lengths of dream intestines through which he must violently force his way each night."
13
"Because survival and love are the immortal truths of humankind, no generation is a total stranger to the forerunner generations of humankind."
13
"It is fatal to look hungry. It makes people want to kick you."
13
"She placed a hand on his arm. "It's not our fault, not truly. It's theirs. The killers. They're the ones who-"Get down! Caleb collided with her back, sending her crashing to the floor hard enough to knock the air from her chest. The windows shattered and the sounds of a city overtaken by chaos rushed in."
13
"Hey, look who's alive! I knew you were too tough to leave this f@$#ed up place without a fight, and you do realize that if you had wanted to get into Wharick's bed, there certainly would have been easier ways to get there than getting yourself poisoned,' He smiled widely."
13
"We're told, often enough, that as a species we are poised on the edge of the abyss. It's possible that our puffed-up, prideful intelligence has outstripped our instinct for survival and the road back to safety has already been washed away. In which case there's nothing much to be done. If there is something to be done, then one thing is for sure: those who created the problem will not be the ones who come up with a solution."
13
"Yet, as only New Yorkers know, if you can get through the twilight, you'll live through the night."
13
"O to be self-balanced for contingencies, to confront night, storms, hunger, ridicule, accidents, rebuffs, as the trees and animals do."
13
"It's not over if you're still here, Chronicler said. "It's not a tragedy if you're still alive."
13
"A toothless wolf is less dangerous than a fanged insect."
13
"Life is cold, but I will put on my clothes and wear my shoes."
12
"Growing up in a cathedral precinct, what did I know of the absurdities of communism, of how brave man and women in bleak and remote penal colonies were reduced to thinking day by day of nothing else beyond their own survival?"
12
"Humanity does not ask us to be happy. It merely asks us to be brilliant on its behalf. Survival first, and then happiness as we can manage it.... Take what pleasure you can in the interstices of your work, but your work is first, learning first, winning is everything because without it there is nothing."
12
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