“Those Walmarts weren't buildings, they were bunkers. Those weren't parking lots out front, they were kill zones.”

“So maybe it wasn't the fairy tale. But those stories weren't real anyway. Mine were.”

“I wasn't sleeping on the streets at night. Of course, there were a lot of good people sleeping in the streets. They weren't fools, they just didn't fit into the needed machinery of the moment. And those needs kept altering.”

“Okay, he hadn't exactly been happy. But welcome to the club, right? He had eyes. He could see auras, those swirls of color that surrounded all living things, as unique as fingerprints. And those auras told him there were a lot of people out there who weren't quite happy or exactly miserable. And they were all getting along okay.”

“Books—they weren't ladders out of the abyss, but they were companions.”

“Women were brought up to believe that men were the answer. They weren't. They weren't even one of the questions. ”