The collection / 52 fragments

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Passages, proverbs, and questions carried across the ages.

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01c. 1995 AD

Real courage is doing the right thing when nobody's looking. Doing the unpopular thing because it's what you believe, and the heck with everybody.

Justin Cronin / quote

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02c. 1995 AD

In her mind's eye she saw it, saw it all at last: the rolling armies and the flames of battle; the graves and pits and dying cries of a hundred million souls; the spreading darkness, like a black wing stretching over the earth; the last, bitter hours of cruelty and sorrow, and the terrible, final flights; death's great dominion over all, and, at the last, empty cities, becalmed by the silence of a hundred years. Already these things were coming to pass.

Justin Cronin / quote

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03c. 1995 AD

For the first time in my life, I felt the pain of missing people I had not yet left.

Justin Cronin / quote

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04c. 1995 AD

I would not say I was a nonbeliever; rather, that I gave little if any thought to celestial concerns. It did not seem to me that God, whoever he was, would be the sort of god to take an interest in the minutiae of human affairs, or that this fact released us from the duty to go about our lives in a spirit of decency to others.

Justin Cronin / quote

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05c. 1995 AD

Consider the species known as man. We lie, we cheat, we want what others have and take it; we make war upon each other and the earth; we harvest lives in multitude. We have mortgaged the planet and spent the cash on trifles.

Justin Cronin / quote

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06c. 1995 AD

How wonderful to be read to. To be carried from this world and into another, born away on words.

Justin Cronin / quote

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07c. 1995 AD

The memory was unpleasant; he'd taken an instant disliking to the man. Compounding Peter's distrust, Chase was wearing a necktie, the most incomprehensible article of clothing in the history of the world.

Justin Cronin / quote

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08c. 1995 AD

I wanted to kill them. No, not kill. "Kill" is too dull a word for that which I desired. I wanted to annihilate them. I wanted to tear them limb from limb. I wanted to crack their bones and bury my face in the wet remains. I wanted to reach inside their chests and yank out their hearts and devour the bloody meat as the last stray current twitched the muscle and watch their faces as they died.

Justin Cronin / quote

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09c. 1995 AD

The heart, once broken, stayed broken.

Justin Cronin / quote

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10c. 1995 AD

It's children, he thought, that give us our lives; without them we are nothing, we are here and then gone, like the dust.

Justin Cronin / quote

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11c. 1995 AD

She thought she should take a moment to pray. But, as she was holding a loaded rifle, conventional prayer did not seem entirely suitable. Sister Peg hoped that God would help her, but it was her belief that He much preferred for people to attend to themselves. Life was a test; it was up to you to pass it or not. She raised the gun to her clavicle and angled one eye down the length of the barrel.

Justin Cronin / quote

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12c. 1995 AD

Don't we all deserve forgiveness? I hope we do; I believe we do. Forgiveness says as much about the character of the person bestowing it as the person receiving it. Learning to forgive may be the most difficult of human acts,and the closest thing to divinity, whatever you decide that is.

Justin Cronin / quote

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13c. 1995 AD

What is left when there is no love? A rope and rock.

Justin Cronin / quote

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14c. 1995 AD

It was as if I'd lost some cosmic game of musical chairs; the song had stopped, I was left standing, and there was simply nothing to be dine about it.

Justin Cronin / quote

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15c. 1995 AD

It was more than physical attraction; it was the broken thing inside him she loved most of all, the unreachable place where he kept his sadness. Because that was the thing about Peter Jaxon that nobody knew but her, because she loved him like she did: how terribly sad he was. And not just in the day-to-day, the ordinary sadness everyone carried for the things and people they had lost; his was something more. If she could find this sadness, Sara believed, and take it from him, then he would love her in return.

Justin Cronin / quote

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16c. 1995 AD

All things fell into the past but one; and what that was, was love.

Justin Cronin / quote

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17c. 1995 AD

What strange places our lives can carry us to, what dark passages.

Justin Cronin / quote

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18c. 1995 AD

The restraints were nothing, like paper. The rivets popped from the table and shot across the room. First his arms and then his legs. The room was dark but hid nothing from his eyes, because the darkness was part of him now. And inside him, far down, a great devouring hunger uncoiled itself. To eat the very world. To take it all inside him and be filled by it, made whole. To make the world eternal, as he was.

Justin Cronin / quote

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19c. 1995 AD

Behind every great hatred is a love story. For I am a man who has known and tasted love. I say “a man” because that is how I know myself. Look at me, and what do you see? Do I not take the form of a man? Do I not feel as you do, suffer as you do, love as you do, mourn as you do? What is the essence of a man, if not these things?

Justin Cronin / quote

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20c. 1995 AD

Last night they came again. The soldiers had set up a defense perimeter, but there were simply too many—they must have come by the hundreds of thousands, a huge swarm that blotted out the stars. Three soldiers killed, as well as Cole. He was standing right in front of me; they actually lifted him off his feet before they bored through him like hot knives through butter. There was barely enough of him left to bury.

Justin Cronin / quote

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21c. 1995 AD

Absolution is not the same as understanding.

Justin Cronin / quote

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22c. 1995 AD

For the lips of an immoral woman drip honey, and her mouth is smoother than oil; but in the end she is as bitter as wormword, sharp as a two-edged sword. Her feet go down to death, her steps lay hold of hell

Justin Cronin / quote

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23c. 1995 AD

City of memories, city of mirrors.

Justin Cronin / quote

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24c. 1995 AD

His son's transformation cannot be stopped, or hastened, or adjusted; the man he will become is already present, like a form emerging from a slab of stone. All that remains is to watch it happen.

Justin Cronin / quote

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