“Don't make the mistake of bringing your heart down here with you, there is no place for it in Furnace.”
“When you're locked up in here for life, you learn to welcome the little freedoms.”
“There always has to be someone to take the punches. That's how it works. It isn't fair, it isn't right, but that kid licking slop off the floor over there means that we get to eat in peace.”
“I'd been so set on an escape that was now impossible, and the only form of freedom left to me was death. It was a terrible kind of freedom—one from misery and pain, yes, but also one from lightness and laughter and life. It was an absence of everything.”
“Trust me-that toilet and me were best friends for the first few days I was here.”
“This place is full of unwritten rules.”
“Only another twenty thousand or so days of this to go.”
“Let me know if you're going to do something stupid, kid, 'cause I'll ditch you like that.”
“Don't need a degree in rocket science to do this job.”
“That mush plays havoc downstairs, you know?”
“Just take it from me," Donovan said. "Stay well clear of the warden. Some here think he's the devil. I don't, I don't believe in that religious talk, but I know evil when I see it. He's something rotten they dragged from the bowels of the earth, something they patched together from darkness and filth. He'll be the death of us all, every single one of us here in Furnace. Only question is when."
"I know one thing," I added. "The warden certainly brings out peoples dramatic sides."
Zee and Donovan both laughed through their noses.”
“It felt like I´d been lying on that bed for a thousand years, tormented by every demon possible.”
“My whole body was aching, my stomach felt like it was unpeeling itself, like I was coming apart. I offered silent prayers that I hadn´t eaten dinner.”
“Next I was plunged into a void so profound that I thought I´d gone blind.”
“All for one and let’s get the hell out of here.”
“What if that was the fate of all of us, turned into the very basest of creatures, the very essence of evil?”
“But they’re bluffing. I defy even the bravest adult to spend the night in a place like Furnace in the pitch black without thinking that every noise is something right behind you with dagger teeth and eyes of silver and blood on its breath; that every whisper of air that runs over your skin is the rush of a descending blade; that every flicker of movement is a tendril of darkness wrapping itself around your throat and coiling in the pit of your belly, where it feasts on your soul.”
“Then what do you want with me?'...
'The pursuit of happiness.”
“You'll be my wife," he said inexorably.
"You want to own me!" she accused, trying to crawl away from him.
"Yes." He flung her down on the bed and flattened his weight on her. As he spoke, his hot breath fanned
her mouth and chin. "Yes. I want other people to look at you and know you're mine. I want you to take
my name and my money. I want you to
live with me. I want to be inside you . . . part of your thoughts . . . your body . . . all of you. I want you to
trust me. I want to give you whatever elusive, impossible, goddamned mysterious thing it is you need in
order to be happy. Does that frighten
you? Well, it frightens the hell out of me. Don't you think I'd stop feeling this way if I could? It's not as if
you're the easiest woman in the world!!”
“the deaf man interrupted. “Let the boys”
“The facts are as follows. The total amount of DNA in different organisms is very variable, and the variation does not make obvious sense in terms of phylogeny. This is the so-called ‘C-value paradox’. ‘It seems totally implausible that the number of radically different genes needed in a salamander is 20 times that found in a man’ (Orgel & Crick 1980). It is equally implausible that salamanders on the West side of North America should need many times more DNA than congeneric salamanders on the East side.”
“But it could have been worse. He did have a pass to shop for food at the Army–Air Force Exchange Service—otherwise known as the PX at nearby Greenham Commons Air Base—so at least they’d have proper hot dogs, and brands that resembled the ones he bought at the Giant at home in Maryland.”
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