Hugh Howey Quotes

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.

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

We all have a plan, those of us who love George Romero and Resident Evil. We all keep a sword under our bed, or a chainsaw in our garage. We know the quickest way to the mall, and we practise our stealthy moves when no-one else around is watching. We know where we'll get food, water and gasoline, and where we'll stay until society gets back on its feet. We know the zombies are coming.

Don’t leave a man behind — especially not me.

The pressure in the airlock grew, and the folds of her suit found every raised scar across her body, wrinkles pressing where wrinkles had once burned. It was a million pricks from a million gentle needles, every sensitive part of her touched all at once, as if this airlock remembered, as if it knew her. A lover's apology.

In a horror movie, when everyone is hugging their shins and shouting for the main character to turn and run, or crawl under the bed, or call the cops, or grab a gun, NASA would be the dude in the back shouting, “Go see what made that noise! And take a flashlight!

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

When the headlights hit us, the rays acted like a steel blade slicing through our indecision. Our thoughts and plans fell away — as did our logic and ability to reason. All that remained was the urge to flee.

Bernard said this last word like it was full of nails and might gut him to spit it out.

The stench of his own waste greeted him as he moved between the tall towers. That wasn't how you were supposed to greet someone, he thought.

NASA garb inside out and scattered like a tux on a wedding night,

Where a story ends is nothing more than a snapshot in time, a brief flash of emotion, a pause. How and if it continues is up to us.

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.

She gifted him with a rare grin, and Knox felt himself beaming in return. And right then he knew, instantly, why her people were devoted to her. It was similar to the pull he had on others, but for different reasons. People feared him and wanted to feel safe. But they respected McLain and wanted to feel loved.

But this is where we’re different. You see the future and refuse to change it. Where I come from, we can see the past, but we keep repeating it.