01c. 1962 ADUnderstand their hatred is beyond human comprehension. They abhor the Creator and so also the creation. Whatever brings joy, whatever brings peace, whatever redeems the dark deed or relieves the terrors of the night and their enemies.Rick Yancey / quote ↗
02c. 1962 ADI do not mean to mock or ridicule your life's work, for in one way at least it mimics my own: We have dedicated our lives to the pursuit of phantoms. The difference is the nature of those phantoms. Mine exist between other men's ears; yours live solely between your own.Rick Yancey / quote ↗
03c. 1962 ADYou're safe here. Perfectly safe. That phrase still haunts me. Haunts me because it's always been a lie. It was a lie before they came and it's still a lie. You're never perfectly safe. No human being on Earth ever is or ever was. To live is to risk your life, your heart, everything. Otherwise, you're just a walking corpse. You're a zombie.Rick Yancey / quote ↗
04c. 1962 ADSelf-pity is egotism undiluted, after all—self-centeredness in its purest form.Rick Yancey / quote ↗
07c. 1962 ADYou’re the mayfly,' he murmurs. And then Evan Walker kisses me. Holding my hand across his chest, his other hand sliding across my neck, his touch feathery soft, sending a shiver that travels down my spine into my legs, which are having a hard time keeping me upright. I can feel his heart slamming against my palm and I can smell his breath and feel the stubble on his upper lip, a sandpapery contrast to the softness of his lips, and Evan is looking at me and I’m looking back at him.Rick Yancey / quote ↗
08c. 1962 ADI, um, I thought you might want this back.”I pull out the battered old teddy bear and hold it toward him. He frowns and shakes his head and doesn’t reach for it, and I feel like he’s punched me in the gut.Then my baby brother slaps that damned bear out of my hand and crushes his face against my chest, and beneath the odors of sweat and strong soap I can smell it, his smell, Sammy’s, my brother’s.Rick Yancey / quote ↗
09c. 1962 ADWhat is life without death, Beneficent? You of all people can answer that question. A never-ending orgy of emptiness that you stuff with meaningless activity. Everything is disposable, including your relationships--especially your your relationships.Rick Yancey / quote ↗
10c. 1962 ADFor a being more advanced than I am, he sure has a hard time answering a simple questionRick Yancey / quote ↗
11c. 1962 ADI walked until the water lapped against my chest, and then I kept walking until it kissed the underside of my jaw. I was surprised how cold it was. I closed my eyes and ducked beneath the surface. Thee was the wind and the clouds and the pure pool and the boy beneath its unsettled surface, and the blood, the boy's and monster's, defiling the pool.Rick Yancey / quote ↗
12c. 1962 ADHe barely knew I existed. I knew some of the same people he knew, but I was a girl in the background, several degrees of seperation removed.Rick Yancey / quote ↗
13c. 1962 ADThe spring rains woke the dormant tillers, and bright green shoots sprang from the moist earth and rose like sleepers stretching after a long nap. As spring gave way to summer, the bright green stalks darkened, became tan, turned golden brown. The days grew long and hot. Thick towers of swirling black clouds brought rain, and the brown stems glistened in the perpetual twilight that dwelled beneath the canopy. The wheat rose and the ripening heads bent in the prairie wind, a rippling curtain, an endless, undulating sea that stretched to the horizon.Rick Yancey / quote ↗
14c. 1962 ADThe world will burn for a hundred years. Fire will consume the things we made from wood and plastic and rubber and cloth, then water and wind and time will chew the stone and steel into dust. How baffling it is that we imagined cities incinerated by alien bombs and death rays when all they needed was Mother Nature and time.Rick Yancey / quote ↗
15c. 1962 ADYou're mortal, and only a mortal can afford to be romantic. When we conquered death, we murdered love.Rick Yancey / quote ↗
16c. 1962 ADZombie!” Sammy calls. “I knew it was you.”Zombie?“Where are you taking him?” Ben says to me in a deep voice. I don’t remember it being that deep. Is my memory bad or is he lowering it on purpose, to sound older?“Zombie, that’s Cassie,” Sam chides him. “You know—Cassie.”“Cassie?” Like he’s never heard the name before.“Zombie?” I say, because I really haven’t heard that name before.I pull off the cap, thinking it might help him recognize me, then immediately regret it. I know what my hair must look like.“We go to the same high school,” I say, drawing my fingers hastily through my chopped-off locks. “I sit in front of you in Honors Chemistry.”Ben shakes his head like he’s clearing out the cobwebs.Sammy goes, “I told you she was coming.”“Quiet, Sam,” I scold him.“Sam?” Ben asks.“My name is Nugget now, Cassie,” Sam informs me.“Well, sure it is.” I turn to Ben. “You know my brother.Rick Yancey / quote ↗
17c. 1962 ADI give her my best smile. Before the alien Armageddon happened, I was known for my smile. Not bragging too much, but I had to be careful never to smile while I drove. It had the capacity to blind oncoming traffic. But it has absolutely no effect on Ringer. She doesn't squint in its overwhelming luminescence. She doesn't even blink.Rick Yancey / quote ↗
18c. 1962 ADBut the most wonderful thing of all, our highest achievement and the one thing for which I pray we will always be remembered, is stuffing wads of polyester into an anatomically incorrect, cartoonish ideal of one of nature's most fearsome predators for no other reason than to soothe a child.Rick Yancey / quote ↗
19c. 1962 ADYou know you've reached a very sad place when the only person who can make you laugh is yourself.Rick Yancey / quote ↗
20c. 1962 ADYes, my dear child, monsters are real. I happen to have one hanging in my basement.Rick Yancey / quote ↗
21c. 1962 ADWhen I cry - when I let myself cry - that's who I cry for. I don't cry for myself. I cry for the Cassie that's gone.And I wonder what that Cassie would think of me.The Cassie who kills.Rick Yancey / quote ↗
22c. 1962 ADTen thousand years to build civilization, ten months to tear it down, and each day lasted ten times longer than the one before, and the nights lasted ten times as long as the days. The only thing more excruciating than the boredom of those hours was the terror of knowing that any minute they could end.Rick Yancey / quote ↗
23c. 1962 ADIn the early days, it was nearly omnipresent, a constant background noise, like the hum of traffic on a busy highway: the sound of a human being in pain.Rick Yancey / quote ↗
