There was a species of middle pretty who smiled at everything: happy smile, disappointed smile, you're-in-trouble smile.

Your personality - the real you inside - was the price of beauty.

She thought of the orchids spreading across the plains below, choking the life out of other plants, out of the soil itself, selfish and unstoppable. Tally Youngblood was a weed. And, unlike the orchids, she wasn't even a pretty one.

I'm not the one going for a biology degree. I'm just a philosophy major who eats people.

Tally-When you looked around at everyone else how come you didn’t notice they were brain damaged? Az - We didn’t have much to compare our fellow citizens with. Only a few colleagues who seemed different from most people, more engaged, but that was hardly a surprise. History would indicate that the majority of people have always been sheep. Before the operation there were wars and mass hatred and clear cutting. Whatever these lesions make us, it isn’t a far cry from how humanity was in the rusty era. These days we’re just a bit easier to manage.

When she awoke, the world was on fire.

We don't always get to choose what we love.