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.

He thought of men like Hitler, Stalin, and Napoleon. All it took was a lot of seemingly decent people to put the wrong person in power and then fall under their spell.

There were certain things, learned so young and remembered so deep that they felt like little stones in the center of her mind.

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.

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.

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

It turned out that some crooked things looked even worse when straightened. Some tangled knots only made sense once unraveled.