It’s easier to be a character in a story than the star of your own tragedy.

I've managed to stay alive out here in the Ruin because I'm a realist. I allow the truth to be the truth, no matter how much I might want it to be something else.

When Chong made to sit down next to her, Lilah drew her knife and stabbed the point into the earth between them. "I can see that you need some quiet time," he said and scuttled quickly away.

Courage is tricky, oily. Easy to drop, easy to misplace." "I thought that if you had courage you always had it.". . . "Lilah, nothing is always there. Not courage, not joy, not hate or hope or anything else. We find courage, lose it, sometimes misplace it for years, and sometimes live in its grace for a while.

Generosity could be as contagious as the zombie plague as long as enough people were willing to be carriers.

A HUMAN ELEMENT is an elegant and haunting first novel. Unrelenting, devious but full of heart. Highly recommended.

I’m not sure I could trust a man who would bypass an Oreo in favor of vanilla wafers. It’s a fundamental character flaw, possibly a sign of true evil.