Slowly I raise my eyes and take in the water spreading out in every direction. I can only form one clear thought. This is no place for a girl on fire.

Home, home – a few small rooms, stiflingly over-inhabited by a man, by a periodically teeming woman, by rabble of boys and girls of all ages. No air, no space; an understerilized prison; darkness, disease...

Gern hätte er Europa jetzt aus der internationalen Weltraumstation ISS gesehen. Wo sonst die feinen Adern und leuchtenden Knoten des Lichtsystems bis ins All strahlten, musste über weiten Flächen Dunkelheit liegen.

Or to myself. Besides, your feelings for me aren’t real. The Society did this to you. And if they did it to you, they probably scrambled my brain too. I can’t trust that any of...

We don’t have five minutes.

I made so many promises when I arrived here.Now I’m not so sure. Now I’m worried. Now my mind is a traitor because my thoughts crawl out of bed every morning with darting eyes and...

Here I am, if you don’t like it, don’t clap.” -Boys of the Fatherless-

Her gaze travels back to the lie twisted in a tempest of mud and blood. She witnesses the culmination of her recklessness through a curved lens. Absorbed in life uncoiling, unaware of the world beyond...

As he plods behind Cameron and Summer, he can’t help but stare at Summer’s exposed, glistening skin. His thoughts aren’t depraved or even mildly in the splasher. In fact, he focuses on the marks of...

If you don’t know a name, you can’t be hurt when they go. I have no friends anymore, all are lost.

Someone who doesn’t know if tomorrow will come would rather live every day twice than live it once.

Never take offense. Even if someone is robbing you blind, it’s usually nothing personal. Survival is a funny thing, and we all react differently to it. Some react to fear and forget to be human...

Yeah, telling your girlfriend the Angel of Death might visit her if some switch is flipped is normal pillow talk.

Hello, dinner. It’s me, I’m starving. And I know where you live.

Greydor will eat us!

In the afternoon, they stopped to eat on a rocky outcrop. Perry brushed a kiss on her cheek while she was chewing, and she learned that it was the loveliest thing to be kissed for...

Sometimes it’s very difficult to keep momentum when it’s you that you are following. – Andrew Lloyd Webber

Always have a plan, but be prepared to change it at any given moment.

The Forsaken.

You matter.

Dear, sweet, beautiful girl,

You talk as if a god had made the Machine,” cried the other. “I believe that you pray to it when you are unhappy. Men made it, do not forget that. Great men, but men....

Dreams deny her the freedom she truly seeks. Darkness consumes. Leg muscles burn. She runs away, even while lost in the paradise of sleep. Gravity is a crushing force bearing down on her chest, shattering...

My dad had always said to not trust something unless it’s taken a tumble in the dirt. He’d meant it for people, and for things. Shiny and new didn’t exist for humankind any more.

…the end of the world hasn’t granted the clumsiest among us any measure of grace.

Instead of a criminal or a drug addict, I was looking at a boy—just a boy.

I’ve got my own toilet.” — Grace Harper

Maybe the Society was right all along. From the very beginning, that’s what they called her. A time bomb.Tick, tick, tick.

There is no good or evil here, it all depends on what side you’re standing. Nor is it about wrong or right, it’s about surviving.” Triven

[…]How can a great civilization have destroyed itself so completely?””Perhaps,”said Apollo, “by being materially great and materially wise and nothing else.

They were like her rocks. Imperfect and surprising and maybe better in the long run than certainties. Chances, she thought, were life

Trust no one,” said Sullivan, “especially Teachers.

The aftermath of bearing shackles is an exquisite devastation, fraught with the ravages of survival. Even though one is no longer held captive—be that from a person, a government, or one’s inner self—the scars are...

Shut up, ya wanker.”They start in on each other again. They yell as if they both have megaphones to their mouths, standing inches apart. Each vulgar insult is more illogical than the last.

It’s taken me all this time, all this loss, to realize what really matters is now.

Look, Blondie. I’m not asking you to bottom, just to fucking navigate.

I want to be done with tears, and the day is too beautiful for them anyway. Nevertheless, I consider my tears for a moment, the idea of them, a link to the earth’s ancient origins....

Struggling transforms her captor into a Chinese finger trap. She’s suffocating. Sucking in air without relief. Her lungs expand. Contract. Expand. They fill with lies and broken promises. With despair and lost hope. Each inhale...

I knew that feeling, the sense of panic that stretched time, turning seconds into years, and the deep pain that came from being hurt by not one person but many, a gang of bullies that...

I don’t want to think about it, but I have to. Someone has to. I see the signs of spring and I weep…

I wanted to punch him and understand him at the same time.

We are gathered here to send our gratitude to Pinnacle Officer Wilcoxand FERTS, for our daily provision and protection from those who would seek to strike against our Vassals, our Fighters and our Internees.

Because here’s a news flash: You might’ve wanted to shelter me, but there’s nowhere you can hide me that’ll keep me safe from what’s inside my head.

Someday all the wilds will be razed, and we will be left with a concrete landscape, a land of pretty houses and trim gardens and planned parks and forests, and a world that works as...

Yes, ma’am.

Resisting is worth doing.

You cannot thrive under the wrong stars, Kricket… the stars here are in opposition to you… can’t you feel it?… Let us take you home.

What is it? What’s wrong?

He smiles at her before ever opening his eyes. The innocence in his face ensnares. Wraps her heart in a cocoon.They did this to him. The Society. Constructed that smile with malicious expectations. Now she...

For the first time, with complete clarity and absolute conviction, I know I love him entirely with all that I have, everything I am, and who I’m going to be. Of course, I’ve told him...