Suzanne Collins Quotes

But a shift has occurred since I stepped up to take Prim’s place, and now it seems I have become someone precious. At first one, then another, then almost every member of the crowd touches the three middle fingers of their left hand to their lips and holds it out to me. It is an old and rarely used gesture of our district, occasionally seen at funerals. It means thanks, it means admiration, it means good-bye to someone you love.

~ Suzanne Collins

My little sister, Prim, curled up on her side, cocooned in my mother’s body, their cheeks pressed together. In sleep, my mother looks younger, still worn but not so beaten-down. Prim’s face is as fresh as a raindrop, as lovely as the primrose for which she was named. My mother was very beautiful once, too. Or so they tell me.

~ Suzanne Collins

So what should we do with our last few days?”“I just want to spend every possible minute of the rest of my life with you,” Peete replies.“Come on, then,” I say, pulling him into my room.It feels like a luxury, sleeping with Peeta again. I didn’t realize until now how starved I’ve been for human closeness. For the feel of him beside me in the darkness.

~ Suzanne Collins

I begin to fully understand the lengths to which people have gone to protect me. What I mean to the rebels. My on going struggle against the Capitol, which has so often felt like a solitary journey, has not been undertaken alone. I have had thousands upon thousands of people from the districts at my side. I was their Mockingjay long before I accepted the role.

~ Suzanne Collins

I roll my eyes. So when did I become so special? When they carted me off to the Capitol?No, about six months before that. Right after New Year's. We were in the Hob, eating some slop of Greasy Sae's. And Darius was teasing you about trading a rabbit for one of his kisses. And I realized...I minded.

~ Suzanne Collins

Obviously this person's a hazard. Stupid people are dangerous.

~ Suzanne Collins

And once we reach the city, my stylist will dictate my look for the opening ceremonies tonight anyway. I just hope I get one who doesn't think nudity is the last word in fashion.

~ Suzanne Collins

Yeah, about that,” says Peeta, entwining his fingers in mine. “Don’t try something like that again.” “Or what?” I ask. “Or . . . or . . .” He can’t think of anything good. “Just give me a minute.

~ Suzanne Collins

Gale is mine. I am his. Anything else is unthinkable. Why did it take him being whipped within an inch of his life to see it?

~ Suzanne Collins

I call him my friend, but in the last year it's seemed too casual a word for what Gale is to me. A pang of longing shoots through my chest. If only he was with me now! But of course, I don't want that. I don't want him in the arena where he'd be dead in a few days. I just... I just miss him. And I hate being so alone. Does he miss me? He must.

~ Suzanne Collins

Never was I supposed to hear the words 'He says he wants to see you.' But now that I have, there's no way to refuse.

~ Suzanne Collins

Because I can count on my fingers the number of sunsets I have left, and I don't want to miss any of them.

~ Suzanne Collins

How are you managing? And don't say you're fine.It's true. Whatever the opposite of fine is, that's what I am.

~ Suzanne Collins

One of Coin's men lays a hand on my arm. Its not an aggressive move, really, but after the arena's I react defensively to any unfamiliar touch. I jerk my arm free and take off running down the halls. My mind does a quick inventory of my odd little hiding places and i wind up in the supply closet, curled up against a crate of chalk.

~ Suzanne Collins

Because it doesn't matter anymore, and because I'm so desperately lonely I can't stand it.

~ Suzanne Collins

Greed and corruption isn't in the world.It's in the people.

~ Suzanne Collins

Let me go!” I snarl at him, trying to wrest my arm from his grasp. “I can’t,” he says.

~ Suzanne Collins

She's really gone, then. The little girl with the back of her shirt sticking out like a duck tail, the one who needed help reaching the dishes, and who begged to see the frosted cakes in the bakery window. Time and tragedy have forced her to grow too quickly, at least for my taste, into a young woman who stitches beeding wounds and knows our mother can hear only so much.

~ Suzanne Collins

Looking at Prim's face, it's hard to imagine she's the same frail little girl I left behind on reapimg day nine months ago. The combination of that ordeal and all that has followed - the cruelty in the district, the parade of sick and wounded that she often treates herself now if my mother's hands are too full - these things have aged her years. She's grown quite a bit, too; we're practically the same height now, but that isn't what makes her seem so much older.

~ Suzanne Collins

And then it hits me. They already have. They have kiled her father in those wretched mines. They have sat by as she almost starved to death. They have chosen her as a tribute, then made her watch her sister fight to the death in the Games. She has been hurt far worse than I had at the age of twelve. And even that pales in comparison with Rue's life.

~ Suzanne Collins

if he goes and dies on me now, I know I'll go completely insane.

~ Suzanne Collins

Yes, they have to have a victor. Without a victor, the whole thing would blow up in the Gamemakers' faces. They'd have failed the Capitol. Might possibly even be executed, slowly and painfully, while the cameras broadcast it to every screen in the country.

~ Suzanne Collins

I don’t stand a chance if he doesn't get better. You’ll never be able to let him go. You’ll always feel wrong about being with me.”“The way I always felt wrong kissing him because of you,” I say.Gale holds my gaze. “If I thought that was true, I could almost live with the rest of it.

~ Suzanne Collins

Deep in the meadow, hidden far awayA cloak of leaves, a moonbeam rayForget your woes and let your troubles layAnd when it's morning again, they'll wash awayHere it's safe, here it's warmHere the daisies guard you from every harmHere your dreams are sweet and tomorrow brings them trueHere is the place where I love you.

~ Suzanne Collins

Are you, are you Coming to the tree They strung up a man They say who murdered three. Strange things did happen here No stranger would it be If we met at midnight In the hanging tree.Are you, are you Coming to the tree Where the dead man called out For his love to flee. Strange things did happen here No stranger would it be If we met at midnight In the hanging tree.Are you, are you Coming to the tree Where I told you to run, So we'd both be free. Strange things did happen here No stranger would it be If we met at midnight In the hanging tree.Are you, are you Coming to the tree Wear a necklace of rope, Side by side with me. Strange things did happen here No stranger would it be If we met at midnight In the hanging tree.

~ Suzanne Collins

They'll either want to kill you, kiss you, or be you.

~ Suzanne Collins

You call that a kiss?

~ Suzanne Collins

I said that i would try to win, but to win for her.

~ Suzanne Collins

there's plenty of blame to go around.

~ Suzanne Collins

Whenever I write a story, I hope it appeals to both boys and girls.

~ Suzanne Collins

One of the reasons it's important for me to write about war is I really think that the concept of war, the specifics of war, the nature of war, the ethical ambiguities of war, are introduced too late to children. I think they can hear them, understand them, know about them, at a much younger age without being scared to death by the stories.

~ Suzanne Collins

I think we put our children at an enormous disadvantage by not educating them in war, by not letting them understand about it at an early age.

~ Suzanne Collins

If your parent is deployed and you are that young, you spend the whole time wondering where they are and waiting for them to come home. As time passes and the absence is longer and longer, you become more and more concerned - but you don't really have the words to express your concern. There's only this continued absence.

~ Suzanne Collins

Telling a story in a futuristic world gives you this freedom to explore things that bother you in contemporary times.

~ Suzanne Collins

If I took the 40 years of my dad talking to me about war and battles and taking me to battlefields and distilled it down into one question, it would probably be the idea of the necessary or unnecessary war.

~ Suzanne Collins