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I am a child. I am two feet tall, and asking if she loves me.
Sep 17, 2025
This is what I wanted most to avoid: for my rises and falls to become Tobias's rises and falls. That's why I can't let him step in to defend me now.
The person you became with her is worth being.
I don't need to relive my fears anymore. All I need to do now is try to overcome them.
I do know who you are. I just needed to be reminded.
I was Jake's insurance policy. He thought maybe he wouldn't have to use me. He hoped, anyway. But down deep he knew, and I knew, and we both hid the truth from the others because Cassie couldn't let Jake make that decision, and Tobias couldn't let me, and those two, by loving us, would have screwed everything up. It was a war, after all. A war we had to win.
That's why you like me!' I exclaim. 'Because you're not nice either! It makes so much more sense now.' 'Come on,' he says. 'We're going to see Johanna.' 'I like you, too.' 'That's encouraging,' he replies flatly. 'Come on. Oh for God's sake. I'll just carry you.
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?
How have I never realized before that for all the strong, kind parts of him, there are also hurting, broken parts?
I guess I always knew there was something wrong with me, but I thought it was because of my father, or my mother, and the pain they bequeathed to me like a family heirloom, handed down from generation to generation. - Tobias Eaton
Maybe time would not feel as heavy if I didn't have this guilt -- the guilt of knowing the truth and stuffing it down where no one can see it, not even Tobias. Maybe I should not be so afraid of saying anything, because honesty will make me feel lighter.
As far as which writers embody this form of gentle power - Tobias Wolff, for sure. His persona and his writing both share an easy, capacious confidence that says he has faith in his readers.
If we stay together, I'll have to forgive you over and over again, and if you're still in this, you'll have to forgive me over and over again too. So forgiveness isn't the point. What I really should have been trying to figure out is whether we were still good for each other or not
I have never had parents who set good examples, parents whose expectations were worth living up to, but she did. I can see them within her, the courage and the beauty they pressed into her like a handprint.
It is more important for you to be safe than right, for the time being. Understand? (...) But please, when you see an opportunity...ruin them
I don't know if you know this," Tobias says, "but Edward is a little unstable." "I'm getting that," I say. "That Drew guy who helped Peter perform that butterknife maneuver," Tobias says. "Apparently when he got kicked out of Dauntless, he tried to join the same group of factionless Edward was a part of. Notice that you haven't seen Drew anywhere.
I hold the gun out from my body, my arms straight, just as Four taught me, when that was his only name. I used a gun like this to defend my father and brother from simulation-bound Dauntless. I used it to stop Eric from shooting Tobias in the head. It is not inherently evil. It is just a tool.
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.
I keep finding myself stifled by the company of others and then crippled by loneliness when I leave them. I am terrified and I don't even know of what, because I have lost everything already.
Todd and Tim [Tobias] write the music, and I come up with the melodies and lyrics. I call it the Ohio Rock Factory. Tim and Todd run the northern plant in Cleveland, and I've got the southern plant down here in Dayton. No tours permitted.
They all laugh. We all laugh. And it occurs to me that I might be meeting Tobias's true faction. They are not characterized by a particular virtue. They claim all colors, all activities, all virtues, and all flaws as their own.
I feel his heartbeat against my cheek,as fast as my own. "Are you afraid of me, too, Tobias?" "Terrified," he replies with a smile.
His eyes search the crowd until they find my face. My heartbeat lives in my throat; lives in my cheeks. "I still don't understand," he says softly, "how she knew that it would work.
I just wanted to thank you' he says, his voice low. 'A group of scientists told you that my genes were damaged, that there was something wrong with me - they showed you the test results that proved it. And even I started to believe it.' He touches my face, his thumb skimming my cheekbone, and his eyes are on mine, intense and insistent. 'You never believed it,' he says 'Not for a second. You always insisted I was... I don't know, whole.
Tobias Buckell combines old world with new in his novel CRYSTAL RAIN. While the rich cultures, drawn in part from Caribbean history and lore, echo a familiar landscape, he brings it out of the Earth milieu and into a bold new universe where technology and tradition collide. I enjoyed his colorful characters and musical use of language; his voice is fresh and entirely readable.
My name is Tobias Eaton," Tobias says. "I don't think you want to push me off this train." The effect of the name on the people in the car is immediate and bewildering: they lower their weapons. They exchange meaningful looks. "Eaton? Really?" Edward says, eyebrows raised. "I have to admit, I did not see that coming." He clears his throat. "Fine, you can come. But when we get to the city, you've got to come with us." Then he smiles a little. "We know someone who's been looking for you, Tobias Eaton.
My mother Elizabeth Ivey Brubeck was a pianist who studied with Dame Myra Hess and Tobias Matthey. As a child in California I used to listen to her play Chopin.
Can I ask why you’re throwing knives at cheese?’ ‘Caleb came by to discuss something,’ Tobias says, leaning his head against the wall as he looks at me. ‘And knife-throwing just came up somehow.’ ‘As it so often does,’ I say, a small smile inching across my face.
I only came for Cake" -Tobias Eaton, Divergent
I figured I would shoot the bullets out of my nostrils, so I left [the gun] upstairs.
When her body first hit the net, all I registered was a gray blur. I pulled her across it and her hand was small, but warm, and then she stood before me, short and thin and plain and in all ways unremarkable- except that she had jumped first. The stiff had jumped first. Even I didn't jump first. Her eyes were so stern, so insistent. Beautiful.
I open the door to the fear landscape room and flip open the small black box that was in my back pocket to see the syringes inside. This is the box I have always used, padded around the needles; it is a sign of something sick inside me, or something brave.
Since I was a kid. I had this series by Ballantine Books about the history of World Wars I and II. In my 20s, it was the Vietnam War literature of novelists like Tim O'Brien, Philip Caputo, and Tobias Wolff, and then nonfiction such as "A Bright Shining Lie" by Neil Sheehan and "The Best and Brightest" by David Halberstam . Those are the two best histories of Vietnam.
I suppose a fire that burns that bright is not meant to last.
THE SERUM WEARS off five hours later, when the sun is just beginning to set. Tobias shut me in my room for the rest of the day, checking on me every hour. This time when he comes in, I am sitting on the bed, glaring at the wall. “Thank God,” he says, pressing his forehead to the door. “I was beginning to think it would never wear off and I would have to leave you here to … smell flowers, or whatever you wanted to do while you were on that stuff.
"I'll be your family now," he says. "I love you," I say. He stares at me. I wait with my hands clutching his arms for stability as he considers his response. He frowns at me. "Say it again." "Tobias," I say, "I love you."
I love you." He frowns. "Say it again." "Tobias," I say. "I love you.
I read somewhere, one, 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 of me is a beast that snarls, and growls, and strains toward freedom, toward Tobias, and, above all, towards life. And as hard as I try, I cannot kill it.
feel Tobias brushing my hair back before the first simulation. I hear him telling me to be brave. I hear my mother telling me to be brave(...) I am brave.
We've all started to put down the virtues of the other factions in the process of bolstering our own. I don't want to do that. I want to be brave, and selfless, and smart, and kind, and honest." He clears his throat. "I continually struggle with kindness.
I want to be brave, and selfless, and smart, and kind, and honest.
Too bad you didn't just take Max up on his offer, Four. Well, too bad for you, anyway," says Eric quietly as he clicks the bullet into its chamber. My lungs burn; I haven't breathed in almost a minute. I see Tobias's hand twitch in the corner of my eye, but my hand is already on my gun. I press the barrel to Eric's forehead. His eyes widen, and his face goes slack, and for a second he looks like another sleeping Dauntless soldier. My index finger hovers over the trigger. "Get your gun away from his head," I say. "You won't shoot me," Eric replies. "Interesting theory. " I say.
Uriah looked better than he did an hour ago--he washed the blood from his mouth, and some of the color returned to his face. I'm struck, suddenly, by how handsome he is-- all his features are proportionate, his eyes dark and lively, his skin bronze-brown. And he has probably always been handsome. Only boys who have been handsome from a young age have that arrogance in their smile. Not like Tobias, who is almost shy when he smiles like he is surprised you bothered to look at him from the first place.
Color fills her cheeks, and I think it again: that Johanna Reyes might still be beautiful. Except now I think that she isn't just beautiful in spite of the scar, she's somehow beautiful with it, like Lynn with her buzzed hair, like Tobias with the memories of his father's cruelty that he wears like armor, like my mother in her plain gray clothing.
I mean, first, almost all writers these days teach because they don't make enough money publishing to live on, to support themselves - people like Tobias Wolff, Anne Beattie, Amy Hempel, Stuart Dybek; a lot of short story writers, for one thing.
Tobias asked. "Weird? Weird?" Marco crowed. "The talking bird wants to know if getting information on the location of an alien from a whale, that you've just saved from sharks, by turning into dolphins . . . You're suggesting that's weird?
Can you tell me where to find Tobias'? I ask. When I imagine his face, affection for him bubbles up inside of me and all I want to do is kiss him. 'Four, I mean. He's so handsome, isn't he? I don't really understand why he likes me so much. I'm not very nice, am I?' -Tris
That became my aesthetic - a very Chekhovian, American realist aesthetic in the tradition of Raymond Carver, Richard Ford, and Tobias Wolff. The perfectible, realist story that had these somewhat articulate characters, a lot of silence, a lot of obscured suffering, a lot of manliness, a lot of drinking, a lot of divorces. As my writing went on, I shed a lot of those elements.
I haven't the stature to critique one of our literature's great novels, Tobias; and I'm not one of those who believe The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn needs critiquing for literary or social reasons.
Whoa there, Tobias," says the man to my left. "Weren't you raised a Stiff? I thought the most you people did was... graze hands or something." "Then how do you explain all the Abnegation children?" Tobias raises his eyebrows. "They are brought into being by sheer force of will," the woman on the arm of the chair interjects. "Didn't you know that, Tobias?" "No, I wasn't aware." He grins. "My apologies.