“I simply felt alone, one leaf sitting miles away from a giant, communal pile.”

“You're a punk?''What?''What do they call people from the eighties?' I asked.'Oh,' she laughed. It was a beautiful laugh. 'I'm my mother, actually. I mean, these are her clothes from High School. I guess I should tell people I'm Cyndi Lauper though, or something, because dressing up as your mother is pretty lame.''I almost dressed up as my mother,' I said, 'but I was worried what my therapist would say.'She laughed again, and I realized that she thought I was joking. It was probably for the best, since telling her the second half of my mom costume - a giant fake butcher knife through the head - would probably freak her out.”

“You make your own choices, Kira, and you can’t let anyone ever take that away from you.”

“Dead bodies are calm and silent—perfectly still, perfectly harmless. A corpse will never move, it will never laugh, and it will never judge. A corpse will never shout at you, hit you, or leave you. Far away from the zombies and junk that you see on TV, a corpse is actually the perfect friend. The perfect pet. I feel more comfortable with them than I do with real people.”

“I love talking to people and hearing their stories. Everyone's got their own story to tell, and when you sit down with someone and really talk to them, you can learn so much.”

“It's just one thing after another. Cars that won't run. Planes that will never fly again. Computer systems we can barely use, let alone re-create. It's like...time is flowing backward. We're caveman archeologists in the ruins of the future.”

“I stared at her closely, studying her face, her eyes, everything. This was the angel that tamed a demon; the soul that trapped him and held him with a power he'd never felt before. Love.”