I was woefully ignorant in the social graces. I was being raised, after all, by Pellinore Warthrop.

Sci-Fi is the genre that explored both possibilities: the end of our existential crisis and the end of our existence. My novel, The 5th Wave, explores the latter scenario, because, frankly, I believe it represents the likeliest outcome of an extraterrestrial encounter. In short, if they're out there, we better hope they never find us.

Still, you tend to believe what you always believed, think what you always thought, expect what you always expected

We’re here, and then we’re gone, and it’s not about the time we’re here, but what we do with the time.

I'm not encouraged by the silence. I can think of no benign reason for it. I'm afraid we may expect something closer to Christopher Columbus's arrival in the Americas than a scene from Close Encounters, and we all know how that turned out for the Native Americans.

Cruelty isn't a personality trait. Cruelty is a habit.

There was, like, this black hole where the world used to be, and we were both falling toward it. What could we hold on to?