The heart, once broken, stayed broken.

— Justin Cronin

The memory was unpleasant; he'd taken an instant disliking to the man. Compounding Peter's distrust, Chase was wearing a necktie, the most incomprehensible article of clothing in the history of the world.

— Justin Cronin

The military was all about hierarchies, who urinated the highest on the hydrant

— Justin Cronin

The restraints were nothing, like paper. The rivets popped from the table and shot across the room. First his arms and then his legs. The room was dark but hid nothing from his eyes, because the darkness was part of him now. And inside him, far down, a great devouring hunger uncoiled itself. To eat the very world. To take it all inside him and be filled by it, made whole. To make the world eternal, as he was.

— Justin Cronin

The things of your life arrived in their own time, like a train you had to catch. Sometimes this was easy, all you had to do was step onto it, the train was plush and comfortable and full of people smiling at you in a hush, and a conductor who punched your ticket and tousled your head with his big hand, saying, Ain’t you pretty, ain’t you the prettiest girl now, lucky lady taking a big train trip with your daddy, while you sank into the dreamy softness of your seat and sipped ginger ale from a can and watched the world float in magical silence past your window, the tall buildings of the city in the crisp autumn light and then the backs of the houses with laundry flapping and a crossing with gates where a boy was waving from his bicycle, and then the woods and fields and a single cow eating grass............ Because sometimes it was one way, easy, and sometimes it was the other, not easy; the things of your life roared down to you, and it was all you could do to grab hold and hang on. Your old life ended, and the train took you away to another...

— Justin Cronin

This ravishing world. This achingly bittersweet, ravishing world.

— Justin Cronin

What is home but a place where you are truly known?

— Justin Cronin

What is left when there is no love? A rope and rock.

— Justin Cronin

What strange places our lives can carry us to, what dark passages.

— Justin Cronin

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

— Justin Cronin