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

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.

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

There are two competing philosophies in Wool: one is that people have to live under an iron thumb in order to survive, and the other one is that everyone should live completely freely and happily and everything will sort itself out.

I use social media not to ask new people to like my stuff. I use social media to connect with that one reader who likes my stuff.

Imagine the first discovery that one of these epidemics was man-made—the panic, the violence that would ensue. That’s where the end would come. A typhoon kills a few hundred people, does a few billion in damage, and what do we do?” Erskine interlocked his fingers. “We come together. We put the pieces back. But a terrorist’s bomb.” He frowned. “A terrorist’s bomb does the same damage, and it throws the world into turmoil.” He spread his hands apart like an explosion going off. “When there’s only God to blame, we forgive him. When it’s our fellow man, we must destroy him.

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.