Quotes from Justin Cronin

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?

It is an interesting truth that the human body, liberated from its head, is in essence a bag of blood with a built-in straw. Holding

I like cats as much as the next person, in the right quantity.

She was Amy, and she was forever. She was one of Twelve and also the other, the one above and behind, the Zero. She was the Girl from Nowhere, the One Who Walked In, who lived a thousand years; Amy of Multitudes, the Girl with the Souls Inside Her. She was Amy. She was Amy. She was Amy.

This girl from nowhere. This Amy NLN. Who was alpha, who omega? Who the beginning and who the end?

Don't be afraid to ask if you're on the right train.

Amy - "True, he was sad. But that was what made him so brave, you see. Because he did the bravest thing of all. You know what that is?" Caleb - "To have hope." Amy - "To have hope when there seems to be none. You must always remember that.

His son's transformation cannot be stopped, or hastened, or adjusted; the man he will become is already present, like a form emerging from a slab of stone. All that remains is to watch it happen.

But he'd done far braver things in his life—all his life—not the least of which was warming another man's child against his skin while outside the snow poured down, and loving that child so fiercely she became his own. Your daddy.

A good death, everyone agreed, to die at home in bed as Prudence Jaxon had. But Peter had been at her side through the final hours and knew how terrible it had been for her, how much she'd suffered. No, there was no such thing as a good death.

Events grabbed hold of you and in the blink of an eye there you were, with sore knees and a sour stomach and a face in the mirror your barely recognized, wondering how all of it had happened. If that was really your life. The

There was, Alicia realized, a single hour that all the days since your birth pointed you toward. What you thought was a maze of choices, all the possibilities of what your life might become, was, in fact, a series of steps you took along a road, and when you reached your destination and looked back, only one path—the one chosen for you—was visible. She

Look at me, and what do you see? Do I not take the form of a man? Do I not feel as you do, suffer as you do, love as you do, mourn as you do? What is the essence of a man, if not these things?

The end of the world, he'd thought. That's where he was. The end of the world was Houston, Texas.

In the past, when she'd looked at her reflection, she had still seen the little girl she'd once been; the woman in the mirror had still been an extension of her girlhood self. Now it was the future she saw. The wrinkles would deepen; her skin would sag; the lights of her eyes would dim. Her youth was fading, easing into the past.

Sunset was an hour off but the clouds were hanging low, sponging up the last of the light.

All night his mind seemed to skip over the surface of sleep like a stone upon water, never quite breaking the skin. As

He was Babcock and he was forever. He was one of Twelve and also the Other, the one above and behind, the Zero. He was the night of nights and he had been Babcock before he became what he was. Before the great hunger that was like time itself inside him, a current in the blood, endless and needful, infinite and without border, a dark wing spreading over the world.

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.

Mary adored her mother with a hopeless affection, like an unrequited crush. She understood this feeling was common in middle children, as Mary was, but there was also a story.

And how am I to face the odds Of man's bedevilment and God's?

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.

Nothing lasts forever." "Some things do." "What kind of things?" "The things we like to remember. The love we've felt for people.

It was in the waiting that a person experienced too much of himself. Memories, doubts, regrets, anxieties, the whole range of possibilities the future contained--they all swirled together in the mind like a soup.