Top 200 Hugh Howey Quotes (2024 Update)
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201. “That’s the past, and the past is not the same thing as our Legacy. You’ll need to learn the difference.”

— Hugh Howey

202. “All our hope, the accomplishments of those before us, what the world can be like, that’s our Legacy.” Bernard’s lips broke into a smile. He waved his hand to continue. “And the bad things that can’t be stopped, the mistakes that got us here, that’s the past.”

— Hugh Howey

203. “It’s the intoxication of nirvana. That’s how you get us to endure this life. You promise us heaven, don’t you? But what do you know of our hell?”

— Hugh Howey

204. “People didn’t talk softer, they just sounded that way. They didn’t stand further from her, they just seemed more distant.”

— Hugh Howey

205. “Health and understanding seem to intersect in one’s forties, the one peaking as the other begins its slow ascent. Maybe you’ll know one day what you should’ve taken the time to appreciate.”

— Hugh Howey

206. “Michael had watched his father crawl inside a bottle and die there just so he didn’t have to get up and go to work. It wasn’t long before his mom retreated behind a vacant gaze, leaving him and his sister to pay the bills, to change her stinking bags, to roll her from one sunny patch by the window to another. His mother had become a potted plant they fretted over. No, that wasn’t right. Couldn’t plants at least turn their heads and follow the sun? Weren’t they better than her in that way?”

— Hugh Howey

207. “The futility, dread, and exhaustion from the day before were gone. All that remained was a small twinge of fear that these dour feelings could return, that this exuberant elation was a temporary high, that if she stopped, if she thought on it too long, it would spiral away and leave her dark and moody once more.”

— Hugh Howey

208. “She felt like a speck of sand in an alien land, confused as to how it had gotten there.”

— Hugh Howey

209. “She would’ve been torn between acting cool and nonchalant and wanting to geek out over the experience.”

— Hugh Howey

210. “This was how it worked. You lived. You did your best. You got out of the way. You let those who come after you choose. You let them decide for themselves, live their own lives. This was the way.”

— Hugh Howey

211. “I’m here because they haven’t made a computer yet that won’t do something stupid one time out of a hundred trillion. Seems like good odds, but when computers are doing trillions of things a day, that means a whole lot of stupid.”

— Hugh Howey

212. “He could feel a powerful depression looming if Anna decided their moment had been a mistake. It was easy to imagine only Edward coming over for dinner, telling the rest of them that “Anna didn’t feel well,” casting a glance toward Daniel as if he’d done something wrong. Misery and joy, Daniel decided. This is how you know you’re in love.”

— Hugh Howey

213. “This was how the shift was supposed to go. Waiting and then doing. Sleeping and then waiting. Make it to dinner and then make it to bed. The end was always in sight. There was nothing to rebel against, just a routine.”

— Hugh Howey

214. “Where’s the everlasting peace? Is there even such a thing? Or do we war like alien races war, eternally, against ourselves?”

— Hugh Howey

215. “The sudden infusion of so much threatens to cheapen the intense enjoyment of so little.”

— Hugh Howey

216. “The talk wasn’t necessary. They could just be.”

— Hugh Howey

217. “After a while, you’re staying mad just to justify an old mistake. Then it’s just a game. Two people staring away, refusing to look back over their shoulders, afraid to be the first one to take that chance.”

— Hugh Howey

218. “You could mix the known, but you couldn’t create the strange out of nothing.”

— Hugh Howey

219. “What god would make so much rock below and air above and just a measly silo between?”

— Hugh Howey

220. “What we do going forward defines who we are.” Juliette, Pg. 397.”

— Hugh Howey

221. “We live in a world not of science fiction, but of science fact.”

— Hugh Howey

222. “I also very purposefully employ the caps button, because they can, in this way, hear us scream in space:.”

— Hugh Howey

223. “What seemed a fine adventure at sunrise now seemed a mighty undertaking.”

— Hugh Howey

224. “Here, kids celebrated whoever got away with the worst behavior while shunning anyone attempting to do the right thing.”

— Hugh Howey

225. “People from IT sent to replace those they’d killed. Juliette’s.”

— Hugh Howey

226. “The idea of saving anything was folly, a life especially. No life had been truly saved, not in the history of mankind. They were merely prolonged. Everything comes to an end.”

— Hugh Howey

227. “There was no going around it, so we tried to race back to the inlet, but the storm was moving too fast. Winds over fifty miles an hour. It hit us all at once like a heavenly fist, a mighty slam of stinging rain and raucous seas.”

— Hugh Howey

228. “I’ve been deputy almost as long as you’ve been mayor, Ma’am. Don’t figure on being nothing else but dead one day.”

— Hugh Howey

229. “There aren’t any rules about how long you gotta know someone to know you love them.”

— Hugh Howey

230. “Moments spill through hands idling away at nothing To puddle in years.”

— Hugh Howey

231. “But it’s more than the deaths I saw; it’s the destruction. The noise with which we go seems to make it count for more. I think of my buddies who checked out via hand grenade versus those who died from MRSA back in the VA. We barely notice the latter. They’re statistics. Go quietly, and you’re a number. Go in spectacular fashion, and you’re a name.”

— Hugh Howey

232. “The things we recognize flash right by, where once they held our attention. Only the new bears careful contemplation, and the new gets harder and harder to come by.”

— Hugh Howey

233. “The point isn’t that we should expect moral perfection, or that we can know all objective moral truths, only that our smugness should be kept in check and our judgment of past generations should be tempered by recognition of their progress and our own failings. Too often we seem to think that barbarians are in the past and that we’ve reached some pinnacle. I think the climbing never ends.”

— Hugh Howey

234. “In deep space, no one can hear you sob.”

— Hugh Howey

235. “Were they dead forever, like Allison?”

— Hugh Howey

236. “And one day, my love, you will know it, too.”

— Hugh Howey

237. “Don’t leave a man behind – especially not me. It’s.”

— Hugh Howey

238. “Clinging to an idealized past was a poison of sorts, that bastard Nostalgia, making people think there was a better time and place if they could just get back to it.”

— Hugh Howey

239. “Denial is the secret sauce in this town,’ he said. ‘It’s the flavor that holds all the other ingredients together. Here’s what I tell the newly elected: the truth is going to get out – it always does – but it’s going to blend in with all the lies.”

— Hugh Howey

240. “The futurist and the vagabond are the same souls – one in body and the other in thought.”

— Hugh Howey

241. “There’s the metallic odor of blood as solders with hope cry for a medic, soldiers without hope cry for their mommas, and soldiers with guns bring tears to the other side.”

— Hugh Howey

242. “It was always over the doubt, the suspicion, that things weren’t as bad out there as they seemed. You’ve felt that, right? That we could be anywhere, living a lie?”

— Hugh Howey