After another half second, he's locked me in a bear hug, crushing me into his chest and lifting my feet a couple inches off the ground as I kick furiously with my heels, twisting my head back and forth, snapping at his forearm with my teeth. And the whole time his lips tickling the delicate skin of my ear. "Cassie. Don't. Cassie..." "Let...me...go." "That's been the whole problem. I can't.

When I wake up the next morning, there's a Hershey's Kiss sitting on the table beside me.

In every creepy movie ever made, the barn is the prime nesting ground for the things you don't know you're looking for and always regret finding.

To hell with monsters and to hell with men. There is no difference to me.

It isn't that the lies are too beautiful to resist. It's that the truth is too hideous to face.

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.

There's a hero in every heart waiting for the dragon to come out.