The problem with surviving was that you ended up with the ghosts of everyone you’d ever left behind riding on your shoulders.

Suicide is not something I owe you or yours.

Nature has become something new. It is ours now, truly. And if our creation devours us, how poetic will that be?

The main reason I want someone to read a story of mine is so they can enjoy it and feel like they got something interesting out of it.

Mahlia... understood Doctor Mahfouz and his blind rush into the village. He wasn't trying to change them. He wasn't trying to save anyone. He was just trying to not be part of the sickness. Mahlia had thought he was stupid for walking straight into death, but now, as she lay against the pillar, she saw it differently. She thought she'd been surviving. She thought that she'd been fighting for herself. But all she'd done was create more killing, and in the end it had all led to this moment, where they bargained with a demon ... not for their lives, but for their souls

She smiles at him, too young to know him for a stranger, and too innocent yet to care.

Life is exponential. Two becomes four, becomes ten thousand, becomes a plague.