The Infinite Sea

That’s the cost. That’s the price. Get ready, because when you crush the humanity out of humans, you’re left with humans with no humanity. In other words, you get what you pay for, motherfucker

When you look death in the eye and death blinks first, nothing seems impossible.

It isn’t that the lies are too beautiful to resist. It’s that the truth is too hideous to face.

No hope without faith, no faith without hope, no love without trust, no trust without love. Remove one and the entire human house cards collapses.

I found you, but in finding you, I lost myself.

Ha-ha. The dumb jock who can’t talk the Queen’s English. I swear to God, the next person who corrects my grammar gets punched in the face.

Something weird," Ben said. "You would think, with ninety-nine percent of us gone, the two percent would get along better." Um, that would be one percent, Parish.

The world ended once. It will end again. The world ends, then the world comes back. The world always comes back.

They made a major mistake," he blurted out, "the dumb bastards, when they didn't start by killing you first." "Benjamin Thomas Parish, that was the sweetest and most bizarre compliment anyone's ever given me." I kissed him on the cheek. He kissed me on the mouth. "You know," I whispered, "a year ago, I would have sold my soul for that." He shook his head. "Not worth it." And, for one-ten thousandth of a second, all of it fell away, the despair and grief and anger and pain and hunger, and the old Ben Parish rose from the dead. The eyes that impaled. The smile that slayed. In another moment, he would fade, slide back into the new Ben, the one called Zombie, and I understood something I hadn't before: He was dead, the object of my schoolgirl desires, just as the schoolgirl who desired him was dead.

You never know when the truth will come home. You can’t choose the time. The time chooses you.

Somentimes you're in the wrong place at the wrong time and what happens is nobody's fault.You just want to feel bad so you'll feel better.

But I don’t panic. I don’t bolt like a frightened gazelle. I am more than the sum of my fear. It isn’t fear that will defeat them. Not fear or faith or hope or even love, but rage.

´Because love is irrational,´ I tell Vosh. ´It doesn´t follow rules. Not even its own rules. Love is the one thing in the universe that´s unpredictable.´

Some things, down to the smallest of things, are worth the sum of all things.

I didn't know until then that rage had a taste and it tasted like your own blood.

Maybe you reach a certain point in evolution where boredom is the greatest threat to your survival. Maybe this isn’t a planetary takeover at all, but a game. Like a kid pulling wings off flies.

Onto his stomach. Then knees. Then hands. His elbows quivered, his wrists threatened to buckle under his own weight. Self-centered, stubborn, sentimental, childish, vain. I am humanity. Cynical, naive, kind, cruel, soft as down, hard as tungsten steel. I am humanity He crawled. I am humanity. He fell. I am humanity. He got up.

He didn’t like to see animals in captivity. When he looked into their eyes, something in their eyes looked back at him.

My bounty is as boundless as the sea, My love as deep; the more I give to thee, The more I have; for both are infinite. —William Shakespeare

That's it," he said bitterly. "Cry, Cassie. Cry for her. Cry for all the children. They can't hear you and they can't see you and can't feel how really bad you feel, but cry for them. A tear for each of them, fill up the fucking ocean, cry.

If you are human, there is no hope.

The uncertainty of my own experience is crushing. I am drowning in an infinite sea. Sinking slowly, the weight of the lightless depths forcing me down, forcing the air from my lungs, squeezing the blood from my heart.

That’s the cost. That’s the price. Get ready, because when you crush the humanity out of humans, you’re left with humans with no humanity. In other words, you get what you pay for, motherfucker.

The answer is they didn't. They aren't here, Razor. They never were it's just us. It's always been just us.

I didn't just foster the delusions. I lived them. Even after the world crashed, I clung to them. But after he died, I told myself no more. No more brave fronts or false hopes or pretending everything's okay when nothing is. I thought I was being tough by pretending, calling it being optimistic, brave, keeping my head up or whatever bullshit seemed to fit the moment. That's not tough. That's the very definition of soft.

Life is full of little ironies, but it's also pockmarked with some the size of that big rock in Australia.