“It was more than physical attraction; it was the broken thing inside him she loved most of all, the unreachable place where he kept his sadness. Because that was the thing about Peter Jaxon that nobody knew but her, because she loved him like she did: how terribly sad he was. And not just in the day-to-day, the ordinary sadness everyone carried for the things and people they had lost; his was something more. If she could find this sadness, Sara believed, and take it from him, then he would love her in return.”

“How wonderful to be read to. To be carried from this world and into another, born away on words.”

“My theory of characterization is basically this: Put some dirt on a hero, and put some sunshine on the villain, one brush stroke of beauty on the villain.”

“And I grew up on a steady diet of science fiction, especially apocalyptic and postapocalyptic fiction.”

“Don't we all deserve forgiveness? I hope we do; I believe we do. Forgiveness says as much about the character of the person bestowing it as the person receiving it. Learning to forgive may be the most difficult of human acts,and the closest thing to divinity, whatever you decide that is.”

“He has to come to it on his own.”

“His father had always said, Son, the most important thing in life is to make a contribution. Who would have thought Kittridge’s contribution would be video-blogging from the front lines of the apocalypse?”

“Zander was always sneaking off to the library to get more books ... Guy would read anything. Said books were more interesting than people.”

“This ravishing world. This achingly bittersweet, ravishing world.”

“Perhaps the greatest worry of all was that one day you would realize that all the worries of your life amounted to one thing: the desire to just stop worrying.”

“Would somebody please tell him whose idea it had been to kill the entire state of Colorado?”