Hugh Howey Quotes

Health and understanding seem to intersect in one’s forties, the one peaking as the other begins its slow ascent. Maybe you’ll know one day what you should’ve taken the time to appreciate.

To impatient youth, all things took for ever and any kind of waiting was torture. Pg. 221

Donald was verging on the sad realization that humanity had been thrown to the brink of extinction by insane men in positions of power following one another, each thinking the others knew where they were going.

The fact that the universe can come to this, that anyone finds it normal, is comically absurd.

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

Our tears are trying to serve a purpose, but we rarely let them. I don't know how we got started with subverting that purpose.

The races I study still employ their immune systems, and the parallels between those systems and us as a race are striking. For we have become what Earthlings would call white blood cells. We remove foreign bodies from the cosmos. And every one leaves an imprint, a bauble of tech or a new idea, all of which we neatly coil into our lives, into our molecular structure. We are an immune system, and we are immune to death. This last, alas, is our curse.

Killing a man should be harder than waving a length of pipe in their direction. It should take long enough for one’s conscience to get in the way.

It was easy to blame people for the misery of life rather than blaming the sand. Yelling at the sand got you nowhere. People yelled back, and at least that was a response. An acknowledgment. Being tormented and simultaneously ignored was the worst.

Donald remembered running for Congress, thinking he was going to do real good for the future. And then he found himself in an office surrounded by a bewildering tempest of rules, memos and messages, and he quickly learned just to pray for the end of each day. He went from thinking he was going to save the world to passing the time until … until time ran out.

Stories such as these were dismissed — unless legend took seed and sprouted religion.

There was no going back. Apologies weren’t welds; they were just an admission that something had been broken. Often between two people.

There were sparks in her vision from the heady rush. Juliette’s mind shuddered. “What is this?” she asked, gasping for air. “This is from the supplies we pulled?” Courtnee laughed and leaned against Juliette. “It’s good, right?” “It’s great. It’s … amazing.” “Maybe we should go back for another load,” Courtnee said. “If we do that, I might not carry anything else.” The two women laughed quietly. They sat together, gazing up at the clouds and the occasional star for a while. The fire nearest them crackled and spat sparks, and a handful of quiet conversations drifted deep into the trees where bugs sang a chorus and some unseen beast howled.

Strange the lengths I’ll go to in order to keep people away from me, considering how lonely I feel most of the time. I guess that’s the strange torment I suffer: dying for company, for someone to talk to, but it’s never the right someone who shows. And an unwelcome presence is far worse than miserable silence.

And an unwelcome presence is far worse than miserable silence.