“Death is like an old friend who pays a visit, sometimes when it‘s least expected and other times when you‘re waiting for her. It‘s neither the first nor the last time she‘ll pay a visit, but that doesn‘t make any death less harsh or unforgiving.”
“The women had a story to tell, even if the world wasn‘t quite yet ready to hear it, and their story began with three simple words. We were there.”
This is one of the most terrifying books I have ever read 😱
“The dead often made more compelling company than the living.”
“Liars fidget. The tone of their voice or speech patterns changes. Liars offer too much information, babbling on with excessive detail to convince themselves or others of what they are saying.”
“Henry looked up and down the empty avenue—no cars or trucks anywhere. No bicycles. No paperboys. No fruit sellers or fish buyers. No flower carts or noodle stands. The streets were vacant, empty—the way he felt inside. There was no one left.”
“Faith is a strange creature,” Schuster said. “Like a falcon that nests year after year in the same place, but then flies away, sometimes for years, only to return again, stronger than ever.”
“Remember, you may not be of my body, but you are of my heart.”
“When we are children we seldom think of the future. This innocence leaves us free to enjoy ourselves as few adults can. The day we fret about the future is the day we leave our childhood behind.”
“Secrets make for poor leverage. They die with the people who keep them.”
“She didn't know that some hurts were like a once-broken bone. In the right weather, they could ache for a lifetime.”
“Why can humans not use their millions of words to simply tell one another what they desire?”
“But lies have a way of diluting a person. The longer you live them, the more you become a bucket of mixed paint, steadily veering towards generic brown.”
“He didn‘t want me to jump because he didn‘t want me to find out I could catch myself.”
“Do you want to change this world, little serpent? Then climb your cage until you are so high no one can catch you. Break its bars and make them your weapons. Nothing is sharper. I know because I did it.”
“As I shut the door, I notice marks in the wood. Long thin lines running down the length of the door at about the level of my shoulder. I run my fingers over the indentations. They almost seem like… Scratches. Like somebody was scraping at the door. Trying to get out.”
“Living everyday in the presence of those who refuse to acknowledge your humanity takes great courage.”
“Trauma waits for stillness. Lydia feels like a cracked egg, and she doesn‘t know if she‘s the shell or the yolk or the white. She is scrambled.”
“I couldn‘t leave you there after what they did to you. We finally got to go home. You and me both.”
“Our painful experiences aren‘t a liability—they‘re a gift. They give us perspective and meaning, an opportunity to find our unique purpose and our strength.”
“Sometimes he wondered what else he‘d sold on that Monday. His principles? His integrity?”
“God never promised us an easy life. He never promised that we wouldn‘t suffer, that we wouldn‘t feel despair and loneliness and confusion and desperation. What he did promise was that in our suffering we would never be alone. And though we may sometimes make ourselves blind and deaf to his presence he is beside us and around us and within us always. We are never separated from his love.”
“To lose love is a terrible thing. But to turn away from it is unbearable. Will you spend the rest of your life replaying it in your head? Wondering if you walked away too soon or too easily? Or if you'll ever love anyone that deeply again?”
“When I read a book it feels like real life and when I put the book down it's like I go back into the dream.”
“The world changes, we do not, therein lies the irony that kills us.”
“You know, it‘s been said that you should never meet your heroes, but I say better to know whom you place on that pedestal, don‘t you agree?”
“Most people don't believe something can happen until it already has. That's not stupidity or weakness, that's just human nature.”
“Turns out an apocalypse actually comes on pretty slowly. Not fire and brimstone, but rust and dandelions. Not a bang but a whimper.”
“It‘s what you do when you‘ve experienced the worst of the worst. You seek out people like you…people worse off than you…and you use them to make yourself feel better about the terrible things that have happened to you.”
“Rhys lifted his head. "This is a bad idea."
Cassian winked. "That should be written on the Night Court crest.””
“And in the end, though, we'd saved each other. All of us had.”
“Leave this world... a better place than how you found it.”
“He thinks he‘ll be remembered as the villain in the story. But I forgot to tell him that the villain is usually the person who locks up the maiden and throws away the key. He was the one who let me out.”
“Pity those who don't feel anything at all.”
“There are languages without words and violence is one of them.”
“You believe that you keep yourself safe, she thought. You lock up your mind and guard your reactions so nobody, not an interrogator or a parent or a friend, will break in.”
“The rumors were fed well...and grew fat and solid. They sprouted legs and heads, and they never died.”
“Yes, Doctor, we remember her. She went to Kraków. No, she went to Jaroslaw. No, to Sambor. So to Stryj. She was from the mountains, Doctor, wasn't she? She was going home, she said.
Perhaps if you go there, they will know.
And on. And he would continue, a ghost searching for its flesh.”
“For a mile, the Old Man and I rode in blessed silence, the giraffes looking back like they‘d acquired a taste for gospel singing, with the windshield wipers slapping time.”
“Of all that we're asked to give others in this life, the most difficult to offer may be forgiveness.”
“You know what they say about finding a man in Alaska—the odds are good, but the goods are odd.”
“There‘s something almost miraculous about seeing a child‘s eyes light up when you hand him a book that intrigues him. I‘ve always thought that it‘s those children—the ones who realize that books are magic—who will have the brightest lives.”
“A or B, two options present themselves, and you choose the one that seems best at the time.”
“The wetlands dedication ceremony was a resounding success until the gunman showed up.”
“We took the time to shake each other‘s hands and wish each other good luck and “Hope I‘ll see you later,” which is especially poignant for me because we all had that acknowledgment that this might be our last day on earth and we went to work anyway.”
“As we know, there are lessons to be learned from history. Hope to be derived from hardships faced before. We've gone through bad times before and survived, even thrived. History has shown us the strength and durability of the human spirit, In the end, it is our idealism and our courage and our commitment to one another--what we have in common--that will save us.”
“I feel like I‘m in one of those twisted dreams that only happen when you go to sleep at the wrong time, the afternoon sun or midnight chill greeting you upon waking, disorienting you - and leaving you to turn to the person next to you, the person you trust most, looking for clarity.”
