Hugh Howey > Quotes

“Killing a man should be harder than waving a length of pipe in their direction. It should take long enough for one's conscience to get in the way.”
― Hugh Howey, The Unraveling

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

“He’d only ever seen a gun once, a smaller one on the hip of that old deputy, a gun he’d always figured was more for show. He stuffed a fistful of deadly rounds in his pocket, thinking how each one could end an individual life, and understanding why such things were forbidden. Killing a man should be harder than waving a length of pipe in their direction. It should take long enough for one’s conscience to get in the way.”
― Hugh Howey, Wool Omnibus

“My life is too tight, he wanted to say. My skin is too tight. The walls are too tight.”
― Hugh Howey, Wool

“It turned out that some crooked things looked even worse when straightened. Some tangled knots only made sense once unraveled.”
― Hugh Howey, Wool Omnibus

“When there’s only God to blame, we forgive him. When it’s our fellow man, we destroy him.”
― Hugh Howey, Shift

“Elise asked what nostalgic meant, and Jewel said, “It’s where you think the past was better than it really was, only because the present sucks so bad.”
― Hugh Howey, Dust

“We are born, we are shadows, we cast shadows of own, and then we are gone. All anyone can hope for is to be remembered two shadows deep.”
― Hugh Howey, Wool Omnibus

“There were certain things, learned so young and remembered so deep that they felt like little stones in the center of her mind.”
― Hugh Howey, The Unraveling

“Even in the darkness, his smile threw shadows.”
― Hugh Howey, Wool Omnibus

“Sleep was a vehicle for passing the time, for avoiding the present. It was a trolley for the depressed, the impatient, and the dying.”
― Hugh Howey, Dust

“Better to join a ghost than to be haunted by them. Better no life than an empty one-”
― Hugh Howey, Wool Omnibus

“My only wish is that we leave room for hope. There is good and bad in all things. We find what we expect to find. We see what we expect to see. I have learned that if I tilt my head just right and squint, the world outside is beautiful. The future is bright. There are good things to come.”
― Hugh Howey, Dust

“If the lies don't kill you, the truth will.”
― Hugh Howey, Wool Omnibus

“I guess what I'm sayin' is, if you want to give Jules a job, be very careful.”

“Why be careful?” Marnes asked.

Marck gazed up at the confusion of pipes and wires overhead.

“'Cause she'll damn well do it. Even if you don't really expect her to.”
― Hugh Howey, Wool Omnibus

“Her life was not yet over, she decided. It just felt this way.”
― Hugh Howey, Wool Omnibus

“It was a sad loss, this illusion of importance, a humbling blow.”
― Hugh Howey, Wool Omnibus

“It doesn’t bother me that I won’t be around one day,” Lukas said after a while. “I don’t stress about the fact that I wasn’t here a hundred years ago. I think death will be a lot like that. A hundred years from now my life will be just like it was a hundred years ago.”
― Hugh Howey, Dust

“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.”
― Hugh Howey, Shift

“What we control," Juliette said, "is our actions once fate puts us there.”
― Hugh Howey, The Stranded

“We get no credit for being sane, do we? I get no credit. Even from me. From myself. I hold it together and hold it together and I make it another day, another year, and there’s no reward. Nothing great about me being normal. About not being crazy.” He frowned. “Then you have one bad day, and you worry for yourself, you know? It only takes one.”
― Hugh Howey, Wool

“People were like machines. They broke down. They rattled. They could burn you or maim you if you weren't careful. Her job was not only to figure out why this happened and who was to blame, but also to listen for the signs of it coming. Being sheriff, like being a mechanic, was as much the fine art of preventive maintenance as it was the cleaning up after a breakdown.”
― Hugh Howey, Wool Omnibus

“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, Wool Omnibus

“Heroes didn't win. The heroes were whoever happened to win. History told their story -- the dead didn't say a word. All of it was bullshit.”
― Hugh Howey, Dust

“You laughed either to keep yourself sane or because you’d given up on staying that way. Either way, you laughed.”
― Hugh Howey, Wool

“Predict the inevitable”, she said, “and you're bound to be right one day.”
― Hugh Howey, Shift

“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, Wool Omnibus

“I hated Sundays as a kid. From the moment I woke up, I could feel Monday looming, could feel another school week all piled up and ready to smother me. How was I supposed to enjoy a day of freedom while drowning in dread like that? It was impossible. A pit would form in my chest and gut - this indescribably emptiness that I knew should be filled with fun, but instead left me casting about for something to do.
Knowing I should be having fun was a huge part of the problem. knowing that this was a rare day off, a welcome reprieve, and here I was miserable and fighting against it. Maybe this was why Fridays at school were better than Sundays not in school. I was happier doing what I hated, knowing a Saturday was coming, than I was on a perfectly free Sunday with a Monday right around the corner.”
― Hugh Howey, Visitor

“Killing a man should be harder than waving a length of pipe in their direction. It should take long enough for one’s conscience to get in the way.”
― Hugh Howey, Wool

“Better to go out to see the world one time with his own eyes, than to be burned alive with the plastic curtains.”
― Hugh Howey, Wool