Love Quotes in Catching Fire

As Katniss says here, the Hunger Games have ruined everything. Sure she survived, but at what cost? She can hardly trust anyone any more, and that includes herself. She's become a murderer. In a way, her old life died in the arena. She's come back out, but she can't return to the way things used to be.

The Games changed everything for Katniss, Gale, and Peeta. It altered the trajectory of their lives utterly. Even though Katniss and Peeta made it through – and they were the only tributes to do so – they almost had to become different people to do so. The old Katniss probably would have married Gale; the new Katniss might not be able to.

We get at least as much, if not more, of a description of Gale and Katniss' physical intimacy in Catching Fire than we do of Peeta and Katniss'. With Peeta and Katniss we see emotional intimacy: comfort and alliance. Gale is the hot one back home who can't possibly understand what it's like to be in the arena, because he hasn't experienced it. Here he's the hunter from District 12, setting "snares" to "entrap" Katniss instead of his more usual prey.

Defining love and making decisions about personal relationships is too much for Katniss when survival itself is at stake. She knows she loves Gale, but she doesn't know what that means. It could be familial love, or it could be romantic love. What do you think? If Katniss chooses Peeta, is it possible for her and Gale to still be friends?

Love hurts, and Peeta loves Katniss so much that he's willing to die for her. Here that's not a choice that Katniss has to make in return. Peeta has a certainty about his love for Katniss that she's never reciprocated, and it's a lingering regret she deals with constantly.

Katniss may not be able to articulate her feelings for Peeta, but they both need human comfort. After all, as far as they know, one of them is facing certain death. The question is, which one? Each is ready to die to save the other. Compared to that, plain old sexual tension just doesn't seem that interesting.

Katniss' homesickness saves all of their lives here, triggering her knowledge of this special tool and how to use it. If she hadn't been thinking about the peaceful woods and refreshing weather of District 12, she never would have remembered how to use the little piece of metal that enabled her allies to find water when all hope seemed lost.

There's all kinds of love in this book, like the love Finnick has for Mags. Later we find out that Mags was Finnick's mentor, basically his version of Haymitch. Mags once saved Finnick's life, and he couldn't return the favor.

The whole reason Katniss went into the Games back in book one was to protect her sister. It was Prim's name called at the reaping, not Katniss'. Katniss sacrificed herself for Prim, and here she is doing the same thing all over again, with no thought for herself. At another point in the story, Katniss is ashamed for feeling a gut impulse to save herself. Here she can't even stop for shame or self-protection, she's so focused on getting to Prim.

Katniss has a steamy kiss with Gale early on in the book, before the Quarter Quell begins, but once it has started, it's Peeta she turns to for physical comfort. In this passage, as they sense they're time together is coming to an end. When Katniss kisses Peeta now, she becomes full of passion for him. It's confusing because she's supposed to just be pretending she's passionate rather than actually feeling it. And in the back of our minds we're thinking, uh, Gale is watching this. Awkward.