Are you an idiot, or an idiot?' Gargarin hissed.

'The first one. I really resent being called the second.

What's with what you're wearing?" Griggs asks while we stand outside waiting for the others.
"It's pretty hideous, isn't it?" I say.
"Don't force me to look at it," he says. "It's see-through."

That kills conversation for a couple of seconds.

This is the best night of my life," Raffy says, crying.
"Raffy, half our House has burnt down," I say wearily. "We don't have a kitchen."
"Why do you always have to be so pessimistic?" she asks. "We can double up in our rooms and have a barbecue every night like the Cadets."
Silently I vow to keep Raffy around for the rest of my life.

City people. They may know how to street fight but they don't know how to wade through manure.

Play me something that makes me feel;
This soul inside me is made of steel.
Brain is breathing, but heart’s not beating
And, babe, I need you to make things real.
Walk inside me without silence,
Kill the past and change the tense.
Empty gnawing and the ache is soaring;
Take me places that make more sense.

Finnikin had learned over the years not to think of anything beyond the practicalities of getting from one point to another. To focus on the achievable.