“The moment the light went out, everyone stopped pretending.”

“The sun goes down and my headlights bathe the trees and bushes. What's behind the Cascade Mountains? Winthrop. Bridgeport. The Grand Coulee Dam. But how do I know this? I've seen maps and globes and books and films, images inked on paper an shot in studios by people I've never met, but how do I know for sure anything I haven't seen? Anyplace I've never been?What if everyone's just pretending? What if the world is still unknown?”

“But it does make me sad that we've forgotten our names. Out of everything, this seems to me the most tragic. I miss my own and I mourn for everyone else's, because I'd like to love them, but I don't know who they are.”

“He is spent. His mind is mercury again, its brief surge of humanity melting into an oily residue on its surface, and he no longer understands the feelings he felt in that strange moment on the overpass.But he did feel them. They did happen. They rest on the murky seabed of his mind, buried under sand and silt and miles of grey waves. Patient seeds waiting for light.”

“Suddenly exhausted, she closes her eyes and slips into nightmares again. Graveyards rising out of the ocean. Her friends’ corpses in the light of their burning school. Skeletons ripping open men's chests and crawling inside. She endures it patiently, waiting for the horror film to end and the theater to go dark, those precious few hours of blackout that are her only respite.”

“Even in my bravest moment, I am a coward.”

“It’s more eerie to be alone in a city that’s lit up and functioning than one that’s a tomb. If everything were silent, one could almost pretend to be in nature. A forest. A meadow. Crickets and birdsong. But the corpse of civilization is as restless as the creatures that now roam the graveyards.”