Survivor: A Novel

What people forget is a journey to nowhere starts with a single step, too.

“The way this works is we copyright every conceivable combination of words, Greek words, Latin, English, what-have-you. We get the legal rights to every conceivable word a pharmaceutical company might use to name a new product. For diabetes alone, we have an inventory of one hundred forty names,”

“Actually, it’s awfully boring stuff. Anticipating the future based on the past. We might as well be an insurance company; nevertheless, it’s our job to make cult suicide look fresh and exciting every time around.”

Nobody lay awake at night wondering if the wheat they’d raised was truly happy and fulfilled being made into bread.

Not that I’m crazy or anything, I just want some proof that death isn’t the end. Even if crazed zombies grabbed me in some dark hall one night, even if they tore me apart, at least that wouldn’t be the absolute end. There would be some comfort in that.

People used what they called a telephone because they hated being close together and they were too scared of being alone.

“Even the garden of Eden was just a big fancy cage,” Adam says. “You’ll be a slave the rest of your life unless you bite the apple.”

Because the only difference between a suicide and a martyrdom

Call me a sexual predator, but when I think of predators I think of lions, tigers, big cats, sharks. This isn’t so much a predator versus prey relationship. This isn’t a scavenger, a vulture, or a laughing hyena versus a carcass. This isn’t a parasite versus a host. We’re all miserable together. It’s the opposite of a victimless crime.