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 pl… - Hugh Howey

Imagination, she figured, just wasn't up to the task of understanding unique and foreign sensations. It only knew how to dampen or augment what it already knew. It would be like telling someone what sex felt like, or an orgasm. Impossible. But once you felt it yourself, you could then imagine varying degrees of this new sensation.

It was the same as color. You could only describe a new color in terms of hues previously seen. You could mix the known, but you couldn't create the strange out of nothing.

This was how it worked. You lived. You did your best. You got out of the way. You let those who come after you choose. You let them decide for themselves, live their own lives. This was the way.

We are all of us — everywhere and at all times — mere visitors.