Suzanne Collins Quotes

In theory, sure, Gregor could still go home. Pack up his three-year-old sister, Boots, get his mom out of the hospital, where she was recovering from the plague, and have his bat, Ares, fly them back up to the laudry room of their appartment building in New York City. Ares, his bond, who saved his life numerous times and who had had nothing but suffering since he had met Gregor. He tried to imagine the parting. Well, Ares, it's been great. I'm heading home now. I know by leaving I'm completely dooming to annihilation everbody who's helped me down here, but I'm really not up for this whole war thing anymore. So, fly you high, you know? Like that would ever happen.

~ Suzanne Collins

He was safe for the moment, here in the playground, but people all over the world were suffering, starving, fleeing, killing one another as they waged their wars. How much energy they put into harming one another. How little into saving. Would it ever change? What would it take to make it change? He thought of Luxa's hand pressed into Ripred's paw. That's what it would take. People rejecting war. Not one or two, but all of them. Saying it was an unacceptable way to solve their differences. By the look of things, the human race had a lot of evolving to do before that happened. Maybe it was impossible. But maybe it wasn't. Like Vikus said, nothing would happen unless you hoped it could. If you had hope, maybe you could find the way to make things change. Because if you thought about it, there were so many reasons to try.

~ Suzanne Collins

They can fatten me up. They can give me a full body polish, dress me up, and make me beautiful again. They can design dream weapons that come to life in my hands, but they will never again brainwash me into the necessity of using them. I no longer feel allegiance to these monsters called human beings, despite being one myself.

~ Suzanne Collins

You're really going to do it, aren't you? You're really going to go back to war? Gregor said. He could feel something boiling up inside of him. So, we'll just forget about what happened. The jungle, the Firelands, the Bane. His voice was rising and he could feel the rager side of him taking over. Forget about everybody who's dead! Tick and Twitchtip and Hamnet and Thalia and Ares! And your parents, Luxa! And your pups, Ripred! Let's just forget about everybody who gave their lives so that you could have this moment where you could — could make things right again! So you could stop the killing! We were fighting for the same thing, remember? You two owe each other your lives! You owe me your lives! And now you stand there and ask me to choose between you? To help you kill each other? Gregor yanked Sandwich's sword from his belt and swung it so violently that even Luxa and Ripred stepped back. Well, guess what? The warrior's not fighting for either of you!

~ Suzanne Collins

Even in war there should be lines you didn't cross.

~ Suzanne Collins

How much energy they put into harming each other. How little into saving.

~ Suzanne Collins

Here your dreams are sweet and tomorrow brings them true...

~ Suzanne Collins

Finnick? I say, Maybe some pants?He looks down at his legs as if noticing his outfit for the first time. Then he whips off his hospital gown leaving him in just his underwear. Why? Do you find this -- he strikes a ridiculously provocative pose -- distracting?I laugh. Boggs looks embarrassed and Finnick looks more like the guy I met at the Quarter Quell

~ Suzanne Collins

Finally, the intercom crackles and Hatmitch's acerbic laugh fills the studio. He contains himself just long enough to say, 'And that, my friends, is how a revolution dies.

~ Suzanne Collins

The only thing worse than fighting a giant scorpion was fighting a giant scorpion who was trying to protect her young.

~ Suzanne Collins

It’s a saying from thousands of years ago, written in a language called Latin about a place called Rome,” he explains. “Panem et Circenses translates into ‘Bread and Circuses.’ The writer was saying that in return for full bellies and entertainment, his people had given up their political responsibilities and therefore their power.

~ Suzanne Collins

Having an eye for beauty isn't the same thing as a weakness.

~ Suzanne Collins

As coal pressured into pearls by our weighty existence. Beauty that arose out of pain.

~ Suzanne Collins

But collective thinking is usually short-lived. We're fickle, stupid beings with poor memories and a great gift for self-destruction.

~ Suzanne Collins

I no longer feel any allegiance to these monsters called human beings, despise being one myself.

~ Suzanne Collins

Because when he sings...even the birds stop to listen.

~ Suzanne Collins

In our world, I rank music somewhere between hair ribbons and rainbows in terms of usefulness.

~ Suzanne Collins

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.

~ Suzanne Collins

When I break into the clearing, she's on the ground, hopelessly entangled in a net. She just has the time to reach her hand through the mesh and say my name before the spear enters her body.

~ Suzanne Collins

His dad said even the cavemen had geniuses among them. Somebody had thought up the wheel.

~ Suzanne Collins

Beware, Underlanders, time hangs by a thread.The hunters are hunted, white water runs red.The Gnawers will strike to extinguish the rest.The hope of the hopeless resides in a quest.An Overland warrior, a son of the sun,May bring us back light, he may bring us back none.But gather your neighbors and follow his callOr rats will most surely devour us all.Two over, two under, of royal descent,Two flyers, two crawlers, two spinners assent.One gnawer beside and one lost up ahead.And eight will be left when we count up the dead.The last who will die must decide where he stands.The fate of the eight is contained in his hands.So bid him take care, bid him look where he leaps,As life may be death and death life again reaps.

~ Suzanne Collins

If there's a more helpless feeling than trying to reach someone you love who's trapped underground, I don't know it.

~ Suzanne Collins

And he would put his arms around her and hold her, but he had no idea what to tell her. In his mind, Gregor knew how to kill things, not bring them back ti life.

~ Suzanne Collins

I know I'll never marry, never risk bringing a child into the world. Because if there's one thing being a victor doesn't guarantee, it's our children's safety. My kids' names would go right into the reaping balls with everyone else's. And I swear I'll never let that happen.

~ Suzanne Collins

What will break me into a million pieces so that I am beyond repair, beyond usefulness?

~ Suzanne Collins

I search his eyes for the slightest sign of anything, fear, remorse, anger. But there's only the same look of amusement that ended our last conversation. It's as if he's speaking the words again. Oh, my dear Miss Everdeen. I thought we had agreed not to lie to each other.He's right. We did.The point of my arrow shifts upward. I release the string. And President Coin collapses over the side of the balcony and plunges to the ground. Dead.

~ Suzanne Collins

I am Cinna's bird, ignited, flying frantically to escape something inescapable. The feathers of flame that grow from my body. Beating my wings only fans the blaze. I consume myself, but to no end.Finally, my wings begin to falter, I lose height, and gravity pulls me into a foamy sea the color of Finnick's eyes. I float on my back, which continues to burn beneath the water, but the agony quiets to pain. When I am adrift and unable to navigate, that's when they come. The dead.The ones I loved fly as birds in the open sky above me. Soaring, weaving, calling to me to join them. I want so badly to follow them, but the seawater saturates my wings, making it impossible to lift them. The ones I hated have taken to the water, horrible scaled things that tear my salty flesh with needle teeth. Biting again and again. Dragging me beneath the surface.The small white bird tinged in pink dives down, buries her claws in my chest, and tries to keep me afloat.No, Katniss! No! You can't go!But the ones I hated are winning, and if she clings to me, she'll be lost as well. Prim, let go! And finally she does.

~ Suzanne Collins

I think about going to the lake, but I'm so weak that I barely make it to mymeeting place with Gale. I sit on the rock where Cressida filmed us, but it's too wide without his body beside me.Several times I close my eyes and count to ten, thinking that when I open them, he will have materialized without a sound as he so often did. I have to remind myself that Gale's in 2 with a fancy job, probably kissing another pairof lips.

~ Suzanne Collins

Courage only counts when you can count.

~ Suzanne Collins

Because sometimes things happen to people and they're not equipped to deal with them.

~ Suzanne Collins

They play in the Meadow. The dancing girl with the dark hair and blue eyes. The boy with blond curls and gray eyes, struggling to keep up with her on his chubby toddler legs. It took five, ten, fifteen years for me to agree. But Peeta wanted them so badly. When I first felt her stirring inside of me, I was consumed with a terror that felt as old as life itself. Only the joy of holding her in my arms could tame it.

~ Suzanne Collins

Glimmer, I hear someone call her - ugh, the names the people in District 1 give their children are so ridiculous ...

~ Suzanne Collins

My children, who don't know they play on a graveyard.

~ Suzanne Collins

I just don't want them to change me, if I'm going to die I still want to be me.

~ Suzanne Collins

We're victors, remember? We're the ones who can survive anything they throw at us

~ Suzanne Collins

Either you came in here a swimmer or you'd better be a really fast learner

~ Suzanne Collins

The beauty of this idea is that my decision to keep Peeta alive at the expense of my own life is itself an act of defiance. A refusal to play the Hunger Games by the Capitol's rules. My private agenda dovetails completely with my public one. And if I really could save Peeta... in terms of a revolution, this would be ideal. Because I will be more valuable dead. They can turn me into some kind of martyr for the cause and paint my face on banners, and it will do more to rally people than anything I could do if I was living. But Peeta would be more valuable alive, and tragic, because he will be able to turn his pain into words that will transform people.

~ Suzanne Collins

Dead, but not allowed to die. Alive, but as good as dead.

~ Suzanne Collins

I'm left staring up at the night sky the only roof left because to many memories are drowning me.

~ Suzanne Collins

I'm ordered to a week of bed rest and I don't object because I feel so lousy. Not just my heel and my tailbone. My whole body aches with exhaustion. So I let my mother doctor me and feed me breakfast in bed and tuck another quilt around me. Then I just lie there, staring out my window at the winter sky, pondering how on earth this will all turn out.

~ Suzanne Collins