The suit came up, and Holston thought that maybe people went along with it because they couldn't believe it was happening. None of it was real enough… - Hugh Howey

The animal part of his mind wasn’t made for this, to be calmly ushered to a death it was perfectly aware of.

And it’s hard to say who moves first. There is a lightning bolt of awareness, an electrical shock as my mind rewires itself to cope with this looming fact: We are about to kiss. And then I’m pulling him into me, and I swear I feel him pulling me as well, and lips that I have damned crash into the lips that damned them. Holding his face, like one might cup a chalice, I realize how thirsty I was for this. How badly I want him right then, in that moment. I don’t care who he is, who I am, or about any story.

Statistics were magic like this: they could tell you with near-certainty that a thing would occur, without a hint of when or where.

What we do going forward defines who we are.