Hugh Howey Quotes & Sayings

her down. She was limited by biology and her flightsuit. Dwelling on her own constraints gave Molly another crazy idea. She recognized the old Tchung ship designs they were up against. If the missiles — Hugh Howey

I bang my head on a pipe. We both laugh. "This thing was not built for this," I say. — Hugh Howey

We can't tweak the genes of the food we eat without suspicion," Erskine added. "We can pick and choose the naturally mutated ones until a blade of grass is a great ear of corn, but we can't do it with purpose. Vic had dozens of examples like these. He rattled them off in the cafeteria that day." Erskine ticked his fingers as he counted. "Vaccines versus natural immunities, cloning versus twins, modified foods. Or course he was perfectly right. The bastard always was. It was the manmade part that would have caused the chaos. It would be knowing that people were out to get us, that there was danger in the air we breathed. — Hugh Howey

Sometimes a thing needed opening before closure was found. — Hugh Howey

It means we can't change what's already happened, but we can have an impact on what happens next. — Hugh Howey

By the time you're reading this warning, you've already acted responsibly. — Hugh Howey

Dust rained in the halls of Mechanical; it shivered free from the violence of the digging. — Hugh Howey

The best kisses in the world take place at night, in the ocean, with two naked bodies coiled around one another, only the stars to keep them company. — Hugh Howey

After a pause, Andrew says that these buildings will always be here, that they will outlive us all. And I believe him. "But just imagine," my mammal brain says, "if you took this one we're standing in down in such a way that it toppled into that guy. — Hugh Howey

In many ways, the cycle of violence in Silo Eighteen was no different than what took place elsewhere. Beyond being more severe, it was the same waxing and waning of the mobs, of each generation revolting against the last, a fifteen-to-twenty-year cycle of bloody upheaval. Victor — Hugh Howey

What god would make so much rock below and air above and just a measly silo between? — Hugh Howey

You're the worst human I've ever met, — Hugh Howey

And the earth sat upon his broken chest. — Hugh Howey

This is not the end, of course. Every story we read, every film we watch, continues in our imagination if we allow it. — Hugh Howey

others swapped lewd jokes and fictitious tales of several kinds of booty scored. — Hugh Howey

It was a sad loss, this illusion of importance, a humbling blow. — Hugh Howey

Shelling is like relationships," Ness says. He turns away from me and scans the beach, makes an adjustment with the wheel. "I can see that." He nods to himself. "Yeah, I can totally see that. — Hugh Howey

Imagine the first discovery that one of these epidemics was man-made - the panic, the violence that would ensue. That's where the end would come. A typhoon kills a few hundred people, does a few billion in damage, and what do we do?" Erskine interlocked his fingers. "We come together. We put the pieces back. But a terrorist's bomb." He frowned. "A terrorist's bomb does the same damage, and it throws the world into turmoil."
He spread his hands apart like an explosion going off.
"When there's only God to blame, we forgive him. When it's our fellow man, we must destroy him. — Hugh Howey

Love comes as fast as shrapnel in the trenches. It's indiscriminate. It gets whoever's closest. — Hugh Howey

There had been a slice of time, somewhere sliding away from him now and fading into the slippery past, where Walker had been a happy man. Where his life should've ended to keep him from enduring any of the suffering beyond. But he had made it through that brief bliss and now could hardly recall it. He couldn't imagine what it felt like to rise with anticipation every morning, to fall asleep with contentment at the end of every day. — Hugh Howey

We are not rational animals; we are rationalizing animals. — Hugh Howey

There was so much to do and not enough buckets. — Hugh Howey

The lives lost are of less consequence than the spoils gained. — Hugh Howey

And Lukas would tell them to be good to each other, that there were only so many of them left, and that all the books and all the stars in the universe were pointless with no one to read them, no one to peer through the parting clouds for them. He — Hugh Howey

The ice on the next pane was already disturbed, had been wiped away by someone recently. Beads of condensation stood like tiny lenses warping the light. He rubbed the glass and knew what had happened. He saw the woman inside with the auburn hair that she sometimes kept in a bun. This was not his wife. This was someone who wanted that, wanted him like that. 'Hello?' Troy turned toward the voice. — Hugh Howey

It hit her like a loved one turning his back while she was falling, like some great bond that wasn't simply taken away but never truly existed. — Hugh Howey

That's the problem with the truth," Darcy said. "Liars and honest men both claim to have it. — Hugh Howey

It turned out that some crooked things looked even worse when straightened. Some tangled knots only made sense once unraveled. — Hugh Howey

One of the things she loved about having [him] around was that his thoughts could be so black as to make hers shine gray. — Hugh Howey

How truth and lies seemed black and white, but mixed together, they made everything gray and confusing. — Hugh Howey

She could tell he was exhausted, maybe half as much as she was, but he was still willing to do anything for her. It made her sad, someone being this loyal to her. — Hugh Howey

Imagination, she figured, just wasn't up to the task of understanding unique and foreign sensations. It knew only how to dampen or augment what it already knew. It would be like telling someone what sex felt like, or an orgasm. Impossible. But once you felt it yourself, you could then imagine varying degrees of this new sensation. — Hugh Howey

He became hyperalert at any gathering like this, saw all the tiny details of normal life humming right along. This was when the bombs came and ripped through crowds. At funerals and weddings and religious celebrations. — Hugh Howey

Juliette trusted the darkness to conceal her smile. — Hugh Howey

There, on that hill, his wife could be seen. She lay like a sleeping boulder, the air and toxins wearing away at her, her arms curled under her head. Maybe. — Hugh Howey

This is the problem with illusions: They form easy enough, but once they fall apart, they're impossible to put back together. They're like humans in that way. — Hugh Howey

Some things are better off back in the past. Where they belong. — Hugh Howey

He thought of men like Hitler, Stalin, and Napoleon. All it took was a lot of seemingly decent people to put the wrong person in power and then fall under their spell. — Hugh Howey

I clamp down on those memories. I embrace fresher torments. But my shrink warned me about this, how anger and depression get misassigned, and how if I don't work through shit it'll keep resurfacing in ways I don't expect. — Hugh Howey

He could imagine how nice it would be to not understand. To see one's microcosm as the macrocosm. To focus a meter beyond one's own nose. — Hugh Howey

Six rats are thumping away at levers, ignoring food, drink, sleep, and sex. What's going through their little brains? A chemical known as dopamine, that's what. A lot of it. Dopamine — Hugh Howey

A man asks if I'm leaving. People can hear the engines, can see the exhaust, are watching me scramble around the decks to make ready. "C'mon," I tell the man. Others are looking at me expectantly. "Anyone who wants to go, c'mon," I say. I have people to help. Somehow, this helps me. — Hugh Howey

We can imagine the two of them having this conversation: Consciousness: "Hey, watcha doing over there?" Subconsciousness: "Trust me, you're better off not knowing." Self-protection — Hugh Howey

Perhaps, with enough time in these walls, one could become resigned to things never getting better, or even changing all that much. Or maybe a person eventually lost hope that there was anything worth preserving at all. — Hugh Howey

To impatient youth, all things took for ever and any kind of waiting was torture. Pg. 221 — Hugh Howey

Evan Price is not a man to be questioned. He is a man who will question you. — Hugh Howey

Here, a man could think, surrounded by machines quietly doing the same. — Hugh Howey

He nearly tripped and fell down the last few steps, his legs not used to an end to the descent, a flat piece of ground rather than one more tread to sink to. — Hugh Howey

It's easy to forgo distractions and to not accumulate things when you have a larger goal on the horizon. — Hugh Howey

Life is capricious and cruel and totally fucking random and there is no hope of finding meaning in a nightmare. — Hugh Howey

The shadow spoke of a culture forming that overvalued individuality, of children that wanted to get away from their families, of — Hugh Howey

Here was one man who knew of her secret love. — Hugh Howey

If the lies don't kill you, the truth will. — Hugh Howey

Maybe this is the ideal remedy for depression: a gun that can read your mind and is forever pointed at your head. Gives you some good practice in bottling up those dark wishes. — Hugh Howey

Had told her had proved truer than she could imagine: people were like machines. They broke down. They rattled. They could burn you or maim you if you weren't careful. — Hugh Howey

Here was the love and violence in the hearts of men, all for their women — Hugh Howey

My favorite sort of read is the kind that opens my mind to new ideas. — Hugh Howey

Part of me knew I'd never see her again, and if I did, that we would both be different. — Hugh Howey

Don't get like these assholes and fall in love with the fighting. Then you're just setting off bombs because you like the noise they make. — Hugh Howey

That hotshot pilot who buzzed the Hudson is forgotten. Here is something new. The boom and the smoke - these two things are unrelated in my mind. — Hugh Howey

And how much simpler things would be, how much better for us all, if we had people brave enough to do what was right, instead. — Hugh Howey

A few lines to spell a man's doom. — Hugh Howey

She used to admire people who stood out, but now she could feel herself wary of them. — Hugh Howey

Once guns were made, who would unmake them? Barrels rested on shoulders and bristled like pincushions above the crowd. There were things, like spoken ideas, that were almost impossible to take back. And he reckoned his people were about to make many more of them. — Hugh Howey

He ran his hands along the faces of the machines, the flashing lights like happy eyes trying to soothe his anger, the electrical hum like whispers to their master, hoping to calm him. — Hugh Howey

That word means something else, you know,' his father had told him once, when Mission had spoken of revolution. 'It also means to go around and around. To revolve. One revolution, and you get right back to where you started. — Hugh Howey

He continued to see inevitable events from the past as avoidable, long after they'd taken their course. — Hugh Howey

All it took was a lot of seemingly decent people to put the wrong person in power and then fall under their spell. Troy — Hugh Howey

Here's what I tell the newly elected: the truth is gonna get out - it always does - but it's gonna blend in with all the lies." The Senator twirled a hand in the air. "You have to deny each lie and every truth with the same vinegar. Let those websites and blowhards who bitch about cover-ups confuse the public for you. — Hugh Howey

I've been married more to his ghost than to him. — Hugh Howey

Being in my mom's skin, feeling what she'd felt those years before. It was the sudden realization that my dying granny, who had been distant and alien to me, was my mom's mom. — Hugh Howey

I'm such a huge fan of fan fiction, to me it's a great way for readers to become writers. It's like putting the training wheels on for writing. — Hugh Howey

Cordyceps." "That's a fungus? Never heard of it." "Says here it does something to an ant's brain, reprograms it like it's a machine, makes it climb to the top of a plant before it dies - " "An invisible machine that reprograms brains? I'm fairly certain that's not a random entry." "Yeah? So what does it mean, then?" "It means ... It means we aren't free. None of us are. — Hugh Howey

Our actions, you know? They last forever. Whatever we do, it'll always be what we did. There's no taking them back. — Hugh Howey

telling him how people had thought the same thing long before he and his brother were born, that it was the hubris of each generation to think this anew, to think that their time was special, that all things would come to an end with them. His father said it was hope that made people feel this, not dread. People talked of the end coming with barely concealed smiles. Their prayer was that when they went, they wouldn't go alone. Their hope was that no one would have the good fortune to come after and live a happy life without them. Thoughts — Hugh Howey

At the top of the ramp, Holston saw the heaven into which he'd been condemned for his simple sin of hope. — Hugh Howey

The older she got, the quicker her mind went to death. Always, in the end, the thoughts of death. — Hugh Howey

We are not the people who made this world, Lukas, but it's up to us to survive it. You need to understand that."
"We can't control where we are right now," he mumbled, "just what we do going forward. — Hugh Howey

We should use all the tools the gods gave us," Juliette said. "Except for the one you wield, this power to make others fear. — Hugh Howey

The dreaded cry of "reboot," which is to say we have no clue and hopefully the issue will sort itself if we start over, if we clear the cache. — Hugh Howey

Here was where she had learned this skill all those years ago, where she had learned how good it felt to run away. — Hugh Howey

Walker was the one who had taught Scottie that it's always okay to admit when you don't know something. If you couldn't do this, you would never truly know anything. — Hugh Howey

Water," he said, licking his lips. She patted his shoulder. "I'll be right back. — Hugh Howey

No more than what we need, — Hugh Howey

It's never too late to stop regretting. It's never too late to see your present self as the young one and to listen to the person you hope to become. — Hugh Howey

Youthful vigor becomes more rot than wisdom. Hopeful optimism is battered by harsh reality. Health and understanding seem to intersect in one's forties, the one peaking as the other begins its slow ascent. Maybe you'll know one day what you should've taken the time to appreciate. Maybe it'll be when your knees start popping, when your hands no longer work like they should. It probably won't be any sooner. — Hugh Howey

His impatience for sleep often frightened that very sleep away. — Hugh Howey

the absurdity of a smoking skyscraper. — Hugh Howey

My approach with social media is to interact with the readers I already have. I do it mostly to procrastinate from my writing. It's an escape. It's the only socializing I get outside of my wife, and she gets sick of me. — Hugh Howey

She was desperate for contact, and this stranger was the only person she knew little enough to want it from. — Hugh Howey

Tex would introduce himself to every goo-green kid who joined the squad, every piece of farm-fresh. He'd put his arm around their shoulder, tell them his life story, his real name, ask them all about their hometowns, so that even those nearby had to learn shit we'd rather not. We'd get hit by these frag grenades of nicety. He took people in, Tex. Got close to them. Cried like a baby when the smoke cleared and the tags were tallied. And I thought he was fucking crazy, going about war like that. Not learning what the rest of us learned. — Hugh Howey

Emotions don't know how to stitch back the way flesh could. How do you go to a person, your wife of two decades, and tell her you want to start over again? How do you say, "Forget everything we've got together. Forget the kids and the fights and all the good times, too. I take it all back." How do you do that? It ain't a lizard's tail, those years. It ain't something you walk away from and start over. — Hugh Howey

I'm a chipper guy, once you get to know the raw, dark dread and petrified fear that lurks in my breast and that I battle with every waking moment and that sometimes has me sobbing into my palms when no one is around and makes it really hard to be in crowds or to stand any loud sounds and has me thinking I'll probably never be in a functional relationship again, platonic or otherwise. Once you get that, you have to say to yourself, Hey, why's this guy so damn happy all the time? — Hugh Howey

The short-term rage to be sated at the end of a barrel was too easy to act on. Staving off extinction required something else, something with more vision, something impossibly patient. — Hugh Howey

Here, kids celebrated whoever got away with the worst behavior while shunning anyone attempting to do the right thing. — Hugh Howey

I suppose half a klick won on some alien rock has a price about the same as a paragraph gained in the storehouse of human knowledge. — Hugh Howey

What was any group but a bunch of people? And what were people but animals as prone to fear as rats at the sound of boots? " - catch — Hugh Howey

No good coming from the truth? Knowing the truth is always good. And better that it's us discovering it than someone else, right? — Hugh Howey

Holston lifted an old boot to an old step, pressed down, and did it again. He lost himself in what the untold years had done, the ablation of molecules and lives, layers and layers ground to fine dust. And he thought, not for the first time, that neither life nor staircase had been meant for such an existence. The tight confines of that long spiral, threading — Hugh Howey

He had only needed to see it once - to kill a man - but even that was too much. — Hugh Howey