Wiley Scahill

“Thus evolved some members of the Core—not altruists, but desperate survivalists who realized that the only way ultimately to win their never-ending zero-sum game was to stop the game. And to stop the game they needed to evolve into a species capable of empathy.”
― Dan Simmons, The Rise of Endymion

“But what about her funeral?”
“Funeral? There won’t be one! At least not anything we can arrange or attend. Jack, please, take care of yourself. Please, don’t get sick. I have to go now. I can’t talk anymore.”
― Behcet Kaya, Deception: A Jack Ludefance Novel

“Leo had just finished reading this when the FANY girl from the decoding department came in with a new message.
‘It’s bad news, I’m afraid.’
Leo read, ‘Stuart killed by a bomb on June 9th. Contact impossible. Air raids all day and walk all night.’
She put the paper down and bowed her head to her desk. It was not the news of Stuart’s death that struck cold terror into her heart. It was tragic, of course, but he had not come from SOE and she had not had time to get to know him well. It was the image that those words conjured up that was hard to bear. Alix was with these people. She was in danger from bombs all day. She was having to walk all night. Leo thought back to the girl she had said goodbye to in Paris back in the spring of 1939, excited by the prospect of starting her course at the Sorbonne. Rumours of war had seemed so distant that neither of them had doubted that they would meet again in a few months.”
― Holly Green, A Call to Home

“My dear Princess, if you could creep unseen about your City, peeping at will through the curtain-shielded windows, you would come to think that all the world was little else than a big nursery full of crying children with none to comfort them. The doll is broken: no longer it sweetly sqeaks in answer to our pressure, "I love you, kiss me." The drum lies silent with the drumstick inside, no longer do we make a brave noise in the nursery. The box of tea-things we have clumsily put out foot upon; there will be no more merry parties around the three-legged stool. The tin trumpet will not play the note we want to sound; the wooden bricks keep falling down; the toy has exploded and burnt our fingers. Never mind, little man, little woman, we will try and mend things to-morrow”
― Jerome K. Jerome