He’d only ever seen a gun once, a smaller one on the hip of that old deputy, a gun he’d always figured was more for show. He stuffed a fistful of deadly rounds in his pocket, thinking how each one could end an individual life, and understanding why such things were forbidden. 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.

We are not the people who made this world, Lukas, but it's up to us to survive it. You need to understand that." "We can't control where we are right now," he mumbled, "just what we do going forward.

"What we control," Juliette said, "is our actions once fate puts us there."

When there’s only God to blame, we forgive him. When it’s our fellow man, we destroy him.

It was the hubris of each generation to think this anew, to think that their time was special, that all things would come to an end with them.

Run, we think, as buildings crumble. Run, as people perish.

Ever since I was twelve, I dreamed of being an author. I just never had the fortitude to see any of my stories through to completion. I would start a book, get a few chapters in, and grow bored or get distracted by something else.