And then Evan Walker kisses me.

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.

Self-pity is egotism undiluted, after all—self-centeredness in its purest form.

Then I strip the pants away from each leg, like peeling a banana. That's it, the perfect metaphor: peeling a banana.

Miss Marks, you see, makes her living by...entertaining young, and not so young, sailors...or any other members of the armed forced, or civilians, who enjoy...being entertained by ladies who...entertain.

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.

But hope is no less realistic than despair. It is still our choice whether to live in light or lie down in darkness.