Quotes
Diction
1.”The deadliest of all deadly things: It kills you both when you have it and when you don’t.”(Page 4)
2. “I sigh. A head of me the gates that bar the government labs swing open slowly with a mechanized whine.” (Page 16)
3.”Usually the evaluators generate a list of four or five approved matches, and you are allowed to pick among them.” (Page 21)
4.”Is it possible that all this time I’ve been living my life, studying for tests, taking long runs with Hana- and this other world has just existed, running alongside and underneath mine, alive, ready to sneak out of the shadows and the alleyways as soon as the sun goes down?” (Page 129)
5.”Anger and disgust are shredding through me, making me want to scream.” (Page 208)
Detail
1. “It has been sixty-four years since the president and the Consortium identified love as a disease, and forty-three since the scientists perfected a cure.” (Page 1)
2. “That’s one of the downsides of the procedure; in the absence of deliria nervosa, some people find parenting distasteful.” (Page 7)
3.“In all the years that the procedure has been administered and the marriages arranged, there have been fewer than a dozen divorces in Maine, less than a thousand in the entire United States- and in Analysis Diction
1. In the beginning Lena makes it clear that love is considered the most deadly thing in the world, but also foreshadows that she will fall in love when she says “It kills you both when you have it and when you don’t.
2. The author uses the word bar to let the reader know that the world they are in is almost like a jail cell.
3. The evaluators decide how you spend the rest of your life and believe it is a privilege that the citizens are “allowed” to pick from their approved spouse matches. The word allowed ads on to the initial theme of prisoners.
4. The author uses the word existed in a negative way. She starts to realize that what she has been doing is not living it is only existing and ends with a question mark because Lena truly is curious.
5. The author makes it clear that she is not only a little frustrated but that anger is shredding through her. At this point she sees what part of her government did to a neighbor’s pet and starts to realize how horrifying the world she’s living in is.

Detail 1.This quote is the base of the entire story. It explains how long love has been considered a disease and implies that it takes place in the future. almost all those cases, either the husband or wife was suspected of being a sympathizer and divorce was a necessary and approved by the state.” (Page 21)
4. “They wanted to make my mother submit to a fourth procedure. They were coming for her on the night she died, coming to bring her to the labs.” (Page 33)
5.”I was named after Mary Magdalene, who was nearly killed from love…” (Page 87)
Imagery
1.”I’ll be wearing a flimsy plastic gown, semi translucent, like the kind you get in hospitals, so that they can see my body.” (Page 9)
2.”This room is very large, and totally empty except for the evaluators and, in the corner, a steel surgical table that’s been shoved up against one wall.” (Page 29)
3.”She’s fighting a smile, and her eyes are a pinwheel of color-blue, green, gold-flashing like they always do when she’s excited about something.” (Page 47)
4.”This isn’t rural Portland yet, but there are signs of the countryside creeping in: plants poking up through half-rotted porches, an owl hooting mournfully in the dark, a black scythe of bats cutting suddenly across the sky.” (Page 120)
5.”Someone is singing: a beautiful voice as thick and heavy as warm honey, spilling up and down a scale so quickly I feel dizzy just listening.” (Page 123)

2. Love is referred to as “deliria nervosa”. This quote explains one of the many side effects of the cure, that you are forced to get. It makes it very clear that this is in no way a natural procedure.
3. This explains the pros of eliminating love from the country.