Quotes from Dust

“That's the problem with the truth," Darcy said. "Liars and honest men both claim to have it.”
― Hugh Howey, quote from Dust

“Elise asked what nostalgic meant, and Jewel said, “It’s where you think the past was better than it really was, only because the present sucks so bad.”
― Hugh Howey, quote from Dust

“My only wish is that we leave room for hope. There is good and bad in all things. We find what we expect to find. We see what we expect to see. I have learned that if I tilt my head just right and squint, the world outside is beautiful. The future is bright. There are good things to come.”
― Hugh Howey, quote from Dust

“Sleep was a vehicle for passing the time, for avoiding the present. It was a trolley for the depressed, the impatient, and the dying.”
― Hugh Howey, quote from Dust

“It doesn’t bother me that I won’t be around one day,” Lukas said after a while. “I don’t stress about the fact that I wasn’t here a hundred years ago. I think death will be a lot like that. A hundred years from now my life will be just like it was a hundred years ago.”
― Hugh Howey, quote from Dust

“There was no going back. Apologies weren't welds; they were just an admission that something had been broken. Often between two people.”
― Hugh Howey, quote from Dust

“Heroes didn't win. The heroes were whoever happened to win. History told their story -- the dead didn't say a word. All of it was bullshit.”
― Hugh Howey, quote from Dust

“Maybe the kinds of people who try to shape the world feel like they’re smarter than chaos itself.”
― Hugh Howey, quote from Dust

“The idea of saving anything was folly, a life especially. No life had been truly saved, not in the history of mankind. They were merely prolonged. Everything comes to an end.”
― Hugh Howey, quote from Dust

“And every mistake. But every good thing we do as well. They are immortal, every single touch we leave behind. Even if nobody sees them or remembers them, that doesn’t matter. That trail will always be what happened, what we did, every choice. The past lives on forever. There’s no changing it.”
― Hugh Howey, quote from Dust

“Our actions, you know? They last forever. Whatever we do, it’ll always be what we did. There’s no taking them back.”
― Hugh Howey, quote from Dust

“There is good and bad in all things. We find what we expect to find. We see what we expect to see. I have learned that if I tilt my head just right and squint, the world outside is beautiful.”
― Hugh Howey, quote from Dust

“...Everything we do is left in...like a trail out there, a big ring of decisions. Every action we take-"
"And mistake."
"And every mistake. But every good thing we do as well. They are immortal, every single touch we leave behind. Even if nobody sees them or remembers them, that doesn't matter. That trail will always be what happened, what we did, every choice. The past lives on forever. There's no changing it.”
― Hugh Howey, quote from Dust

“Where a story ends is nothing more than a snapshot in time, a brief flash of emotion, a pause. How and if it continues is up to us.”
― Hugh Howey, quote from Dust

“The idea of saving anything was folly, a life especially. No life had ever been truly saved, not in the history of mankind. They were merely prolonged. Everything comes to an end.”
― Hugh Howey, quote from Dust

“There were those who wanted to live right there, who were reticent to venture any further.”
― Hugh Howey, quote from Dust

“It was what to replace injustice with that very few gave thought to.”
― Hugh Howey, quote from Dust

“The world out there was the way it was no matter how much doubt or hope or hate a person breathed into it.”
― Hugh Howey, quote from Dust

“Gravity is a bitch until she's on your side.”
― Hugh Howey, quote from Dust

“This was how it worked. You lived. You did your best. You got out of the way. You let those who come after you choose. You let them decide for themselves, live their own lives. This was the way.”
― Hugh Howey, quote from Dust

“There was something about being sent to one’s death and surviving a baptism of fire upon one’s return that pushed most squabblings into the deepest recesses of one’s mind.”
― Hugh Howey, quote from Dust

“Being cooped up was not new. Living in the middle of a desert wasteland where it wasn’t safe to go out was not new. Being surrounded by men she ought to fear was not new. Stationed in Iraq during the Second Iranian War, Charlotte had grown accustomed to these things, to not leaving base, to not wanting to leave her bunk or a bathroom stall. She was used to this struggle to keep sane. It was mental as much as physical exercise that was required.”
― Hugh Howey, quote from Dust

“No life had ever been truly saved, not in the history of mankind. They were merely prolonged. Everything comes to an end.”
― Hugh Howey, quote from Dust

“Dust rained in the halls of Mechanical; it shivered free from the violence of the digging.”
― Hugh Howey, quote from Dust

“Daytime was a shift, each one endured like a quantum of life, all the short-term planning leading up to another bout of darkness, little thought given to stringing those days into something useful, some chain of valuable pearls. Just another day to survive.”
― Hugh Howey, quote from Dust

“He nodded and dabbed at his forehead with his sleeve. “And every mistake. But every good thing we do as well. They are immortal, every single touch we leave behind. Even if nobody sees them or remembers them, that doesn’t matter. That trail will always be what happened, what we did, every choice. The past lives on forever. There’s no changing it.”
― Hugh Howey, quote from Dust

“The tweezers weren’t where they were supposed to be. He dug in the bottom of the kit until he found them, cursed the men on other shifts with no respect for their colleagues. It was like living in a dorm, Darcy thought. No, not the right word, the right memory. Like living in a barracks. It was the semblance of order over an underlying mess. Crisp sheets with folded corners over stained mattresses. That’s what this was, people not putting things back where they belonged.”
― Hugh Howey, quote from Dust

“There were thousands of women asleep. Many thousands. Charlotte thought of the army she could raise. But she wondered if Donny was right – if they would refuse to fight their fathers and husbands and brothers. It took a strange kind of courage to do that.”
― Hugh Howey, quote from Dust

“The pressure in the airlock grew, and the folds of her suit found every raised scar across her body, wrinkles pressing where wrinkles had once burned. It was a million pricks from a million gentle needles, every sensitive part of her touched all at once, as if this airlock remembered, as if it knew her. A lover's apology.”
― Hugh Howey, quote from Dust

About the author

Popular quotes

“Daughter, we didn't need your note - or a prince's visit - to tell us you'd done nothing wrong. We know the daughter we raised. We fear for your future, but never for your character. You take our love and our trust wherever you wander.
Father.”
― Gail Carson Levine, quote from Fairest

“When the examination was over, the doctor looked at his watch, and then Praskovya Fyodorovna informed Ivan Ilyich that it must of course be as he liked, but she had sent today for a celebrated doctor, and that he would examine him, and have a consultation with Mihail Danilovich (that was the name of his regular doctor). 'Don't oppose it now, please. This I'm doing entirely for my own sake,' she said ironically, meaning it to be understood that she was doing it all for his sake, and was only saying this to give him no right to refuse her request. He lay silent, knitting his brows. He felt that he was hemmed in by such a tangle of falsity that it was hard to disentangle anything from it. Everything she did for him was entirely for her own sake, and she told him she was doing for her own sake what she actually was doing for her own sake as something so incredible that he would take it as meaning the opposite.”
― Leo Tolstoy, quote from The Death of Ivan Ilych

“Por lo menos estaba siendo honesto. Como ya he dicho, siempre prefiero la verdad –por desagradable que ésta pueda ser— a una mentira. Con la verdad, uno sabe el terreno que pisa.”
― Darren Shan, quote from A Living Nightmare

“South Holding, was the acknowledged leader of the Twenty-ninth Cave, but Summer Camp and”
― Jean M. Auel, quote from The Shelters of Stone

“Did I ever tell you my pet peeve?'

No,' I said.

People who dress up their pets to look like Little Lord Fauntleroys or cowboys, clowns, ballerinas. As if it's not enough just to be a dog or cat or turtle.”
― Jerry Spinelli, quote from Love, Stargirl

Interesting books

About BookQuoters

BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.