Beacon 23: The Complete Novel

To this day, I grow more faint at the scent of gun oil than I do at the sight of blood.

Crying isn’t simply about opening the floodgates to some private trauma and letting it out—crying is just as much about letting those around you know you’re hurting.

We live in the present, but our happiness relies heavily on the future. Our mood is as much expectation as experience.

Because fear is how you hedge your bets. If you’re wrong, you wiped out some friendlies. Oops. But if you’re right, you saved your ass and all of humanity’s.”

Iain Banks

I guess that’s the strange torment I suffer: dying for company, for someone to talk to, but it’s never the right someone who shows. And an unwelcome presence is far worse than miserable silence.

here.

We’re not here to be happy; we’re just here to be