The Giver: Chapters 8, 9

The community, relieved from its discomfort very slightly be yer benign statement, seemed to breathe more easily.

I caused you anguish.

What we observe as playfulness and patience--the requirements to become Nurturer--could, with maturity, be revealed as simply foolishness and indolence.

"Integrity," she said next. "Jonas has, like all of us, committed minor transgressions."

He calls it the Capacity to See Beyond.

He imagined Benjamin, the scientific male in his group, beginning to read pages of rules and instructions with relish.

From this moment you are exempted from rules governing rudeness.

From this moment you are prohibited from dream-telling.

Almost instantly the excruciating pain in his hand had diminished to the throb which was, now, all he could recall of the experience.

Now, empowered to ask questions of utmost rudeness--and promised answers--he could, conceivably (though it was almost unimaginable), ask someone, some adult, his father perhaps: "Do you lie?"