Top 500 Veronica Roth Quotes (2026 Update)
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401. “I hear my heartbeat. I have been looking at him too long, but then, he has been looking back, and I feel like we are both trying to say something the other can’t hear, though I could be imagining it. Too long – and now even longer, my heart even louder, his tranquil eyes swallowing me whole.”

— Veronica Roth

402. “Maybe I was afraid to trust him with something so personal as my devotion.”

— Veronica Roth

403. “Before she got here everything had stalled inside me, and every morning I was just moving toward nighttime.”

— Veronica Roth

404. “What irritates me most about him is his natural goodness, his inborn selflessness.”

— Veronica Roth

405. “I am afraid of her, afraid of what she says-and thrilled by it too, because it means I don’t have to accept that I am smaller than I once believed.”

— Veronica Roth

406. “Sometimes I forget that I can hurt you. That you are capable of being hurt.”

— Veronica Roth

407. “I came here so that no one else would die. I came here to protect as many people as I could. And I care more about Tobias’s safety than anyone else’s. So why am I here, if he’s here? What’s the point?”

— Veronica Roth

408. “Instead I just let the silence stretch out between us. It’s the only adequate response to what he just told me, the only that does the tragedy any justice instead of patching it hastily and moving on.”

— Veronica Roth

409. “Death is not the only punishment you can give a person. You can also give them nightmares.”

— Veronica Roth

410. “It doesn’t prove anything except that you’re bullying us. Which, as I recall, is a sign of cowardice.”

— Veronica Roth

411. “I have never been carried around by a large boy, or laughed until my stomach hurt at the dinner table, or listened to the clamor of a hundred people all talking at once. Peace is restrained; this is free.”

— Veronica Roth

412. “That there was nothing you could have that you couldn’t one day lose. That autumn always gave way to winter, but it was her favorite time of year – those fleeting bursts of beauty before the branches went bare.”

— Veronica Roth

413. “She tips her chin up and looks at me with that Abnegation stubbornness I know so well. She may have left them, but they are what’s making her strong.”

— Veronica Roth

Featured in: Strong Quotes

414. “My skepticism is strong, but my curiosity is stronger.”

— Veronica Roth

Featured in: Strong Quotes

415. “Not like Tobias, who is almost shy when he smiles, like he is surprised you bothered to look at him in the first place.”

— Veronica Roth

Featured in: Firsts Quotes

416. “Everyone has to blame something for the way the world is.”

— Veronica Roth

417. “All I can do is stand still- I feel like if I just stand still, I can stop it from being true, I can pretend that everything is all right.”

— Veronica Roth

418. “I want people to come away from my book with questions. Questions about virtue and goodness. Not answers.”

— Veronica Roth

Featured in: Book Quotes

419. “Well, you can’t love everything equally,” she said. “You just can’t – and if you did, then it’s the same as loving nothing at all. So you have to hold just a few things dear, because that’s what love is. Particular. Specific.”

— Veronica Roth

420. “It doesn’t take skill to stand in a place were no bullets find you, or to fire into the dark and hit a man you didn’t see.”

— Veronica Roth

421. “Caleb and Tris exchange a look. The skin on his face and on her knuckles is nearly the same colour, purple-blue-green, as if drawn with ink. This is what happens when siblings collide – they injure each other in the same way.”

— Veronica Roth

422. “How strange that something so simple could have been instrumental in my decision to ruin one of my most relationships and friendships, and damage another.”

— Veronica Roth

423. “He pulls me over the railing and against his chest, gathering me into his arms, easing an arm under my knees. I press my face into his shoulder, and there is a sudden, hollow silence.”

— Veronica Roth

424. “They say that if the sacrifice is the ultimate way for that person to show you that they love you, you should let them do it.”

— Veronica Roth

425. “Don’t say I never take you anywhere nice.”

— Veronica Roth

426. “Resisting is worth doing.”

— Veronica Roth

427. “How is it I know this little about the boy who says he loves me-.”

— Veronica Roth

428. “Independent and uninvolved. Must be nice. -Tris.”

— Veronica Roth

429. “Don’t tell me you’re going to eat a mashed-potato sandwich.”

— Veronica Roth

430. “I brought you the truth about our city and the reason we are in it. If you aren’t thanking me for it, you should at least do something about it instead of sitting here on this mess you made, pretending it’s a throne!”

— Veronica Roth

431. “I READ SOMEWHERE, once, that crying defies scientific explanation. Tears are only meant to lubricate the eyes. There is no real reason for tear glands to overproduce tears at the behest of emotion. I think we cry to release the animal parts of us without losing our humanity. Because inside me is a beast that snarls, and growls, and strains toward freedom, toward Tobias, and, above all, toward life. And as hard as I try, I cannot kill it. So I sob into my hands instead.”

— Veronica Roth

432. “I wonder how I seem to them. They must see someone I don’t see. Someone capable and strong. Someone I can’t be; someone I can be.”

— Veronica Roth

Featured in: Strong Quotes

433. “I saw, for the first time, how thin the line was between fear and love, between reverence and adoration.”

— Veronica Roth

434. “I wonder if this is how is is with all evil men, that to someone, they look just like good men, talk like good men, are just as likable as good men.”

— Veronica Roth

435. “The floor is solid metal in some places and metal grating in others. Everything smells like rotting garbage and fire. “Don’t say I never took you anywhere nice,” Peter says. “Wouldn’t dream of it,” I say.”

— Veronica Roth

436. “I liked some things and hated some things. And there were some things I didn’t know I had until I lost them.”

— Veronica Roth

437. “What do I believe? I do not know; I do not know; I do not know.”

— Veronica Roth

438. “It seems like the rebellions never stop, in the city, in the compound, anywhere. There are just breaths between them, and foolishly, we call those breaths “peace”.”

— Veronica Roth

439. “You need to be passionate about the creative work that you’re doing, but you need to be kind of emotionally separated from how people react to it or how it does. Those things should be secondary, and primary should be your love of the creative act.”

— Veronica Roth

440. “Looking at her is like waking up.”

— Veronica Roth

441. “It is amazing how pretending to be in a different faction changes everything – even the way I walk. That must be why it’s so strange that I could easily belong in three of them.”

— Veronica Roth

442. “There is a difference between admitting and confessing. Admitting involves softening, making excuses for things that cannot be excused; confessing just names the crimes at its full severity.”

— Veronica Roth

443. “To find that place between what I want and what I think is wise.”

— Veronica Roth

444. “Someone shouts, “Enough!” and I think too much and nothing at all.”

— Veronica Roth

445. “We may both be bad, but there’s a huge difference between us – I’m not content with being this way.”

— Veronica Roth

446. “He looks like a man who has spent most of his life frowning.”

— Veronica Roth

447. “He must have stood there for a long time, making a list of all the terrible things he had done – almost killinng me was one of those thingss – and another list of all the good, heroic, brave things he had not done, and then decided that he was tired. Tired, not just of living, but of existing. Tired of being Al.”

— Veronica Roth

448. “He holds my face in both hands and kisses me back. I press into the distance between us until it is gone, crushing the secrets we have kept and the suspicions we have harbored-for good, I hope.”

— Veronica Roth

449. “If someone offer you an opportunity to get closer to your enemy, you always take it.”

— Veronica Roth

450. “I don’t want to stop you. I want you to stop yourself.”

— Veronica Roth