Hugh Howey Quotes

The things we recognize flash right by, where once they held our attention. Only the new bears careful contemplation, and the new gets harder and harder to come by.

another injustice that had once given her pause. She remembered being on deployment and feeling grateful that she was born in the States, not in Iraq. A roll of the dice. Invisible borders drawn on maps that were as real as the walls of silos. Trapped by circumstance. What life you lived was divined by some calculus of your people, your leaders, like computers tallying your fate.

The ice on the next pane was already disturbed, had been wiped away by someone recently. Beads of condensation stood like tiny lenses warping the light. He rubbed the glass and knew what had happened. He saw the woman inside with the auburn hair that she sometimes kept in a bun. This was not his wife. This was someone who wanted that, wanted him like that. ‘Hello?’ Troy turned toward the voice.

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

Youthful vigor becomes more rot than wisdom. Hopeful optimism is battered by harsh reality. 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. Maybe it’ll be when your knees start popping, when your hands no longer work like they should. It probably won’t be any sooner.

And she knew it was time to start getting the images of dead things out of her mind. Or at least, to bury them a while.

Even if nobody sees them or remembers them, that doesn’t matter. That trail will always be what happened, what we did, every choice. The past lives on forever. There’s no changing it.” “Makes

The best kisses in the world take place at night, in the ocean, with two naked bodies coiled around one another, only the stars to keep them company.

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 short-term rage to be sated at the end of a barrel was too easy to act on. Staving off extinction required something else, something with more vision, something impossibly patient.

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

Sheltering the women and the children played some part; Troy was sure of that. The women and children of Silo One had been gifted with a long sleep while the men stayed and took shifts. It removed the passion from the plans, forestalled the chance that the men might fight among themselves.

How long?” Juliette laughed and shook her head. She finished a final adjustment and turned to face them with her arms crossed. “It could happen right now. It could happen a hundred years from now. The point is: it’s going to happen, and it’s entirely preventable. The goal shouldn’t be to keep this place humming along for our lifetimes” — she looked pointedly at Jahns — “or our current term. If the goal ain’t forever, we should pack our bags right now.

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

Symmetry, by surrounding us, makes itself invisible.