"Stories don't always have happy endings." This stopped him. Because they didn't, did they? That's one thing the monster had definitely taught him. Stories were wild, wild animals and went off in directions you couldn't expect.

The first thing you find out when yer dog learns to talk is that dogs don't got nothing much to say. About anything. "Need a poo, Todd." "Shutup, Manchee." "Poo. Poo, Todd." "I said shut it."

The ability to make fire at will. It allowed us light to see in the darkness, warmth against the cold, a tool to cook our food.’ He gestured vaguely in the direction of the Delta’s engines. ‘Fire is what eventually led to travel across the black beyond, the ability to start a new life on a New World.

We run down the right fork, Manchee at our heels, the night and a dusty road stretching out in front of us, an army and a disaster behind us, me and Viola, running side by side.

If you ever see a war," she says, not looking up from her clipboard, "you'll learn that war only destroys. No one escapes from a war. No one. Not even the survivors.

If a crowd can flinch, they flinch. More than a thousand men flinch under the fist of just one. I don't see what the women do.

Life equals running and when we stop running maybe that's how we'll know life is finally finished.