Even in the darkness, his smile threw shadows.

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

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

We devolve into animals when we creep near to death.

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

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.

My life is too tight, he wanted to say. My skin is too tight. The walls are too tight.