“It crouches like a spider, waiting for us ti get close enough, pretending to be inanimate.”

“K2 is not some malevolent being, lurking there above the Baltoro, waiting to get us. It's just there. It's indifferent. It's an inanimate mountain made of rock, ice, and snow. The "savageness" is what we project onto it, as if we blame the peak for our own misadventures on it.”

“Nothing like a spider in the mouth to get you thinking.”

“Don’t mind us,” Mack called. “They probably don’t get a lot of foreplay in hospital waiting rooms. You’re breakin’ the monotony of tears and tantrums. “Mack!” Carrie hissed. “Tate just kissed her, that’s hardly foreplay.”“You weren’t watchin’ close enough, honey. That was definitely foreplay.”

“The bugs are not like us. The Pseudo-Arachnids aren’t even like spiders. They are arthropods who happen to look like a madman’s conception of a giant intelligent spider, but their organization, psychological and economic, is more like that of ants or termites; they are communal entities, the ultimate dictatorship of the hive.”

“But I know I'll never sleep again. I can't close my eyes when I'm next to her. It's like sleeping with a spider.”