The Twelve

As long as we remember a person, they're not really gone. Their thoughts, their feelings, their memories, they become a part of us.

Because that's what heaven is...it's opening the door of a house in twilight and everyone you love is there.

There was something in the pages of these books that had the power to make him feel better about things, a life raft to cling to before the dark currents of memory washed him downstream again, and on brighter days, he could even see himself going on this way for some time. A small but passable life. And then, of course, the end of the world happened.

That was always the hardest part, missing you.

Sorry, we made vampires; it seemed like a good idea at the time.

Never a good sign, he thought, when the crows showed up.

He still had the young person’s predisposition to regard the world as a series of vaguely irritating problems created by people less cool and smart than he was.

Kittredge had obviously misjudged her, but he had learned that was the way with most people. The story was never the story, and it surprised you, how much another person could carry.

Even on the darkest night, my friend, life will have its way.

Does anybody out there care? Are we worth saving? What would God want from me, if there is a God? The greatest faith is the willingness to ask in the first place, all evidence to the contrary. Faith not just in God, but in all of us.

The military was all about hierarchies, who urinated highest on the hydrant

That's the worst part, really, when you think about it. Try as you might, nobody will ever truly know who you are. You're just somebody alone in a house with your thoughts and nothing else.

I could have held his hand.

The progress of her aging seemed to occur in fits and starts, not so much a matter of physical growth as a deepening self-possession, as if she were coming into ownership of her life.

Michael lifted a menu from a stack on the counter and opened it. 'What's meatloaf?' I get the meat part, but a loaf of it?

How stark everything became, at the end, all the wishes for one's children distilled by the world's swift cruelty into the desperate hope that death would take them fast.

How strange it was..., one minute you were all alone with your thoughts, the next somebody came along who seemed to know the deepest part of you, who could open you like a book.

Strange how one minute life was a certain way and then it was another, and you couldn't remember what you'd done to make it all happen.

The big man shrugged, "I don't know. You're pretty good with the cards. Tell me what the odds are." [She] shifted her gaze to Michael, then back at Hollis. "This isn't a question of odds. Of all the men in the world, that woman chose you. If she's still out there, she's waiting for you. Staying alive any way she can until you find her. That's all that matters." Everybody waited for what Hollis would next say. "You're a real ball-buster, you know that? ...Let me pack a few things.

For you, hunting the Twelve isn't an answer. It's a question. Does anybody out there care? Are we worth saving? What would God want from me, if there is a God? The greatest faith is the willingness to ask in the first place, all evidence to the contrary. Faith not just in God, but in all of us.

His father had always said, Son, the most important thing in life is to make a contribution. Who would have thought Kittridge’s contribution would be video-blogging from the front lines of the apocalypse?

But I did what I thought was right in the moment. In the end, that’s all a man has to measure his life, and it’s plenty.

She would be a girl; Lila had seen her on the ultrasound. A baby girl. Tiny hands and tiny feet and a tiny heart and lungs, floating in the warm broth of her body.

His gaze widened, then taking in the entirety of the camp. All these people: they were trapped. And not merely by the wires that surrounded them. Physical barricades were nothing compared to the wires of the mind. What had truly imprisoned them was one another. Husbands and wives, parents and children, friends and companions: what they believed had given them strength in their lives had actually done the opposite. Guilder recalled the couple who lived across the street from his townhouse, trading off their sleeping daughter on the way to the car. How heavy that burden must have felt in their arms. And when the end swept down upon them all, they would exit the world on a wave of suffering, their agonies magnified a million times over by the loss of her. Would they have to watch her die? Would they perish first, knowing what would become of her in their absence? Which was preferable? But the answer was neither. Love had sealed their doom. Which was what love did.

It was a debt that Peter could never fully repay: the debt of borrowed courage.

Events can seem random while you’re living them, but when you look back, what do you see? A chain of coincidences? Plain old luck? Or something more? I’ll tell you what I see, Peter. A clear path. More than that. A true path.

The story was never the story, and it surprised you, how much another person could carry.