The truth is the truth. What changes is what we know about it and what we're willing to believe.

No matter what choice you make, it doesn't define you. Not forever. People can make bad choices and change their minds and hearts and do good things later; just as people can make good choices and then turn around and walk a bad path. No choice we make lasts our whole life. If there's ever a choice you've made that you no longer agree with, you can make another choice.

There was a sliver of moon and a splash of stars, and the light outlined her face and glistened on the tears that ran like mercury down her cheeks.

Walls, towns, rules, and day-to-day life doesn't make us civilized ... That's organization and ritual. Civilization lives in our hearts and heads or it doesn't exist at all.

Basher shook his head. "No, we climbed in through a ground-floor guest bedroom all ninja-like. Snuck up the back stairs." "Then you might be the cavalry," said Tom, "but I'm Santa Claus. Let's go downstairs and open some presents.

He knew that these creatures were dead, that they were reanimated echoes who wore the disguise of the people they had once been, but Tom's words rang in his mind. They used to be people. How could he strike them? How could he hurt them? Children, women, old people. Lost souls.

They held each other and wept as the night closed its fist around their tiny shelter, and the world below them seethed with killers both living and dead.