# Quote — Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games

> It's like being home again, when they bring in the hopelessly mangled person from the mine explosion, or the woman in her third day of labor, or the famished child struggling against pneumonia and my mother and Prim, they wear that same look on their faces. Now is the times to run away tho the woods, to hide in the trees until the patient is long gone and in another part of the Seam the hammers make the coffin. But I'm held here both by the hovercraft walls and the same force that holds the loved ones of the dying. How often I've seen them, ringed around our kitchen table and I thought, Why don't they leave? Why do they stay to watch?
>
> And now I know. It's because you have no choice.

- Author: [Suzanne Collins](https://www.leafyquotes.com/suzanne-collins.md)
- Book: [The Hunger Games](https://www.leafyquotes.com/suzanne-collins/the-hunger-games.md)
- Page: 347
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Suzanne_Collins#The_Hunger_Games_(2008)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/suzanne-collins/the-hunger-games/its-like-being

## More from this book

> "Then for the next eleven years, I tried to work up the nerve to talk to you.".
>
> "Without success," I add.
>
> "Without success."

p. 301 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/suzanne-collins/the-hunger-games/then-for-the.md)

> "And may the odds—" He tosses a berry in a high arc toward me.
>
> I catch it in my mouth and break the delicate skin with my teeth. The sweet tartness explodes across my tongue. "—be ever in your favor!"

p. 8 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/suzanne-collins/the-hunger-games/and-may-the.md)

> "Come on," says Cato. He thrusts a spear into the hands of the boy from District 3, and they head off in the direction of the fire. The last thing I hear as they enter the woods is Cato saying, "When we find her, I kill her in my own way, and no one interferes."
>
> Somehow I don't think he's talking about Rue. She didn't drop a nest of tracker jackers on him.

p. 217 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/suzanne-collins/the-hunger-games/come-on-says.md)