She hated him and loved him, longed for him and loathed him, and cursed herself for feeling anything at all

The cold stars spun to the ancient rhythm, the august march of an everlasting symphony. They are old, the stars, and their memory is long.

Maybe the last human being on Earth won't die of starvation or exposure or as a meal of wild animals. Maybe the last one to die will be killed by the last one alive.

Nothing makes us love something more than the loss of it.

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.

I didn't show up here to give your life purpose now that your life's over. That's up to you to figure out.

He spreads his fingers over my heart, like he’s holding it, like it belongs to him, the hard-fought-for territory he’s won fair and square.