Hugh Howey Quotes

We can’t tweak the genes of the food we eat without suspicion,” Erskine added. “We can pick and choose the naturally mutated ones until a blade of grass is a great ear of corn, but we can’t do it with purpose. Vic had dozens of examples like these. He rattled them off in the cafeteria that day.” Erskine ticked his fingers as he counted. “Vaccines versus natural immunities, cloning versus twins, modified foods. Or course he was perfectly right. The bastard always was. It was the manmade part that would have caused the chaos. It would be knowing that people were out to get us, that there was danger in the air we breathed.

No life had ever been truly saved, not in the history of mankind. They were merely prolonged. Everything comes to an end.

Locomotive, Jimmy read. He knew these words. The first part meant ‘crazy’. The second part was a person’s reason for doing something.

He was a good man, but he had a broken heart. That’ll take even the best of them down.

Cave bears hibernated for a season. Humans hibernated each night. Daytime was a shift, each one endured like a quantum of life, all the short-term planning leading up to another bout of darkness, little thought given to stringing those days into something useful, some chain of valuable pearls. Just another day to survive.

What we do going forward defines who we are.

man took another shot of the pod’s interior.

people were like machines. They broke down. They rattled. They could burn you or maim you if you weren’t careful.

tearing a world down was a simple affair; the gravity of human nature tugged willingly. It was the building up afterward that proved complex. It was what to replace injustice with that very few gave thought to.

He continued to see inevitable events from the past as avoidable, long after they'd taken their course.

And an unwelcome presence is far worse than miserable silence.

One silly woman with fire in her blood stirring the hearts of a legion of fools?

In deep space, no one can hear you sob.

say bad things come in threes, but I don’t think that’s true. I think bad things keep right on coming.

The dust is in the air,” Donald said. He leaned against the counter, his knees weak. The nanos eating away at mankind, they were loosed on the world with every cleaning, little puffs like clockwork, tick-tock with each exile. The headphones sat there quietly. “I am an ancient,” Donald said, using her words. He grabbed the headphones from the desk and repeated into the microphone, loudly, “I am an ancient! I did this!” He sagged once more against the desk, catching himself before he fell. “I’m sorry,” he muttered. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” Louder, yelling it: “I’m sorry!” But nobody was listening.