In the After

This is how I think of time: the past is Before, and the present is the After. Before was reality; the After, a nightmare.

All of Them are monsters, but not all monsters are Them.

I’d always escaped into books, but now reading had become something more. It allowed me to be somewhere else, to feel something else, not just the numbness that overtook my body and made me wonder if I was still alive.

Gareth once told me that ignorance was bliss and I’d responded that ignorance was dangerous. We were both right. But which is better?

You don't mind giving up your freedom?" Vivian tilted her head. "You always have to give up some freedom to live in any society.

Doesn’t he know there will always be someone out there who wants to destroy good?

People don’t expect a small Japanese girl to be able to break a man’s arm. “They didn’t assume you were a ninja?

Everyone works because everyone is important.” To me this sounded like a great way to spin forced labor.

You were in the city," Rice explained, "High concentraition of Floraes, hardly any post-aps. In other areas, where there was less population density, children were the ones more likely to survive. Adults probably kept them concealed, took extra measures to protect them. And of course children are good at hiding. Once their instinctual survival skills kick in, they know how to be quiet." "They believed in monsters before the monsters showed up," I wispered.