283 Quotes by Hugh Howey

Being cooped up was not new. Living in the middle of a desert wasteland where it wasn’t safe to go out was not new. Being surrounded by men she ought to fear was not new. Stationed in Iraq during the Second Iranian War, Charlotte had grown accustomed to these things, to not leaving base, to not wanting to leave her bunk or a bathroom stall. She was used to this struggle to keep sane. It was mental as much as physical exercise that was required.

She stood still, feeling his presence on the other side of those bars, this boy who knew about stars but nothing about her.

Go quietly, and you’re a number. Go in spectacular fashion, and you’re a name.

Back then she’d been unfairly treated, but at least she’d been safe. There had been injustice, but she’d been in love. Did that make it okay? Which sacrifice made more sense?

We survive in order to struggle. Struggling means we’re winning.

We should use all the tools the gods gave us,” Juliette said. “Except for the one you wield, this power to make others fear.

I’ve been deputy almost as long as you’ve been mayor, Ma’am. Don’t figure on being nothing else but dead one day.

The cycle of life is here. It is inescapable. It is to be embraced, cherished, appreciated. One departs and leaves behind the gift of sustenance, of life.

Juliette had somehow crossed an uninhabitable void, had gone from one universe to another, was possibly the first ever to have done so, and here was a graveyard of foreign souls, of people just like her having lived and died in a world so similar and so near to her own.