It’s almost dawn. You can feel it coming. The world holds its breath, because there’s really no guarantee that the sun will rise. That there was a yesterday doesn’t mean there will be a tomorrow.

I always assumed it owed more to the fact that he didn’t like me.

Is this how humanity waves good-bye?Hell no.

Because if I am the last one, then I am humanity.And if this is humanity’s last war, then I am the battlefield.

‘The 5th Wave’ is sci-fi, but I tried very hard to ground the story in very human terms and in those universal themes that transcend genre. How do we define ourselves? What, exactly, does it...

I prefer not to call them demons. It demeans their nature. “But isn’t that what they are?””We should pity them more than fear them Alfred. They were angels once.””Yea, but didn’t you say they rebelled...

Poets never die, I thought. They just fail in the end.

With an enemy like that, who needs friends?

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

I really kill myself on titles, although ‘The 5th Wave’ seems like an obvious title, doesn’t it? You don’t know how long that took me.

For true beauty—beauty, as it were, with a capital B—is terrifying; it puts us in our place; it reflects back to us our own ugliness. It is the prize beyond price.

I confessed I did not have an opinion; I was only thirteen, and this was my very first dismemberment.

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...

Madness is a wholly human malady borne in a brain too evolved—or not quite evolved enough—to bear the awful burden of its own existence.

I am a shark. A shark who dreamed he was a man.

I’m a little panicky when I realize he’s not here. It’s a lot easier to push down my doubt when he’s with me. When I can see those eyes the color of melted chocolate and...

When civilizations collide, it usually isn’t the more primitive one that prevails.

Understand their hatred is beyond human comprehension. They abhor the Creator and so also the creation. Whatever brings joy, whatever brings peace, whatever redeems the dark deed or relieves the terrors of the night and...

So cold your tears freeze against your cheeks.’It’s not my fault,’ I told Bear. ‘I don’t make the weather. You got a beef, take it up with God.’ That’s what I’ve been doing a lot...

The shadow raised its arm high in the air and I knew – I knew before I heard my name – that he’d found me again, keeper of the promise he couldn’t make, the one...

We’d stared into Death’s eyes and Death blinked first.

I’ve loved sci-fi and speculative fiction since I was a kid. It was inevitable I’d try my hand at it at some point.

There is beauty that soothes like the warm kiss of the spring sun upon the cheek, and then there is beauty that terrifies, like the cry of Ozymandias, inviting despair.

As long as you draw breath anywhere -here or ten thousands miles from here- I will love you. I can’t help loving you, so I choose to hate you…to make my love bearable.

It’s an alien apocalypse! Quick, grab the beer!

If the enemy looks just like you, how do you fight him?

We’d stared into the face of Death, and Death blinked first. You’d think that would make us feel brave and invincible. It didn’t.

Promises are priceless, and a kiss is a kind of promise, too.

I got a very late start at fatherhood. I’m a late bloomer in general. It took me seven years to get through four years of college. I was five years away from 40 before I...

I walked until the water lapped against my chest, and then I kept walking until it kissed the underside of my jaw. I was surprised how cold it was. I closed my eyes and ducked...

But hope is no less realistic than despair. It is still our choice whether to live in light or lie down in darkness.

My nose is broken,” I said. Damn that Dumbo. Made me self-conscious.”My ankle’s broken,” he said.”Then I’ll come to you.

He barely knew I existed. I knew some of the same people he knew, but I was a girl in the background, several degrees of seperation removed.

It’s been a while since I’ve written a novel aimed at the adult market, but I never sit down and say to myself, ‘Okay, now I’m going to write something for us old folks.’ I...

Hepimiz, ama hepimiz köleyiz Will Henry…Bazılarımız korkunun kölesiyiz.Bazılarımızda mantığın ya da en ilkel arzularımızın kölesiyiz. Köle olmak kaderimiz. Will Henry, asıl mesele neye inanacağımız.Gerçeğe ya da yalana mı bağlı kalmalıyız, umuda ya da çaresizliğe mi,...

She hated him and loved him, longed for him and loathed him, and cursed herself for feeling anything at all

How would you rather die?” she snapped. “Hiding under your bed or riding Thunder Mountain?

Sullivan had her Crucifix Soldier and now I have mine. No. I am the soldier. Teacup is the cross.

‘Now I lay me down to sleep…’” To me, just random noise. Gibberish. I wasn’t sure exactly what it was, but I felt that, when it came to God, there was a broken promise in...

Ah. And then you kill him.””No,” Arkwright replied patiently. “We are British. We avoid murder if we can help it.{…}

One lesson I learned from ‘The Monstrumologist’ was never to get too attached to your own characters. That’s harder in practice than in theory. At the end of the third book – which coincided with...

We have survived the death of our childhood. We are soldiers now, maybe the last soldiers who will ever fight, the Earth’s final and only hope, united as one in the spirit of vengeance.

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...

You’re the mayfly,’ he murmurs.And then Evan Walker kisses me.Holding my hand across his chest, his other hand sliding across my neck, his touch feathery soft, sending a shiver that travels down my spine into...

My foray into young adult lit was by no means planned. I wrote the first ‘Alfred Kropp’ book as an adult novel, which everyone loved but no one would publish – until I changed my...

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

There are some we cannot help but take an instant dislike to.

It wasn’t aliens that first made us gear up for war; it was our fellow humans.

The beautiful wooden board on a stand in my father’s study. The gleaming ivory pieces. The stern king. The haughty queen. The noble knight. The pious bishop. And the game itself, the way each piece...

We have just discovered our dear colleague butchered in a hotel room, and you wish to discuss literature?