“By then the streets are empty and quiet, night about to fall, curfew about to come down like a giant warm embrace, keeping us all in our places, keeping us all safe.”

“They've lied about everything.-about the fence, and the existence of Invalids, about a million other things besides. They told us the raids were carried out for our own protection. They told us the regulators were only interested in keeping the peace.They told us love was a disease. They told us it would kill us in the end.For the very first time I realize, that this, too, maight also be a lie.”

“We all need mantras, I guess - stories we tell ourselves to keep us going.”

“But for now, the future, like the past, means nothing. For now, there is only a homestead built of trash and scraps, at the edge of a broken city, just beyond a towering city dump; and our arrival-hungry, and half-frozen, to a place of food and water and walls that keep out the brutal winds. This, for us, is heaven.”

“We stand there for a moment, looking at each other, and in that instant I feel our connection so strongly it's as though it achieves physical existence, becomes a hand all around us, cupping us together, protecting us. This is what people are always talking about when they talk about god: this feeling, of being held and understood and protected. feeling this way seems about as close to saying a prayer as you could get...”

“They must learn that freedom will not keep them warm.”

“Droplets, droplets: We are all identical drips and drops of people, hovering, waiting to be tipped, waiting for someone to show us the way, to pour us down a path....He has tipped us over, all of us in our teetering expectancy, and now we are pouring toward him, coursing on a wave of sound, of roaring shouts and applause....They are the moon; we are a tide, their tide, and under their direction we will wipe clean all the sickness and blight from the world.”