“All the same, Thomas now had a plan. As bad as it was, he had a plan.They needed more clues about the code. They needed MEMORIES.So he was going to get stung by a Griever. Go through the Changing. On purpose.”

“ 'So this is it' he thought. After everything he had been through, after all the mysteries and fighting and fleeting moments of hope, they were just going to kill him with some sort of poison gas? Stupid, that was what this was. Stupid. He had battled Grievers and Cranks, survived a gunshot and infection. WICKED. They were the ones who'd saved him. And now they were just going to gas him to death?”

“He had already seized this particular day once, but he was prepared, if need be, to go ahead and seize the motherfucker all over again.”

“When he thought of her, it rather amazed him, that he had let that girl with her violin go. Now, of course, he saw that her self-effacing proposal was quite irrelevant. All she had needed was the certainty of his love, and his reassurance that there was no hurry when a lifetime lay ahead of them. Love and patience- if only he had had them both at once- would surely have seen them both through.”

“Dawn couldn't come soon enough. He had to get her out of his life as quickly aspossible. It was becoming the most important thing—more important than breathing, living. He needed to get away from her, fast. Because he didn't want to let her go.”

“[He] went on to say that during all those years he had done nothing at all, that all he had felt had been a need to live, to live actively, violently, noisily, a need to sing, to make music, to roam the woods, to drink a little too much and get involved in a brawl.”