Rick Yancey

Pain is necessary. Pain is life. Without pain there can be no joy.

We are humanity, the banner read. Wrong. We__e pale reflections of it, weak shadows, distant echoes.

He was a finisher who could not finish. He was the heart of a hunter who lacked the heart to kill.In her journal she had written I am humanity, and something in those three words split him in two.She was the may fly, here for a day, then gone. She was the last star, burning bright in a sea of limitless black.Erase the human.In a burst of blinding light, the star Cassiopeia exploded and the world went black.Evan Walker had been undone.

It's the ancient instinct: In times of great danger, be wary of strangers. Trust no one outside your circle. But there's another instinct, far older, as old as life itself, nearly impossible for the human mind to override: Protect the young at all costs. Preserve the future." - Vosch

I may be the last one, but I am the one still standing. I am the one turning to face the faceless hunter in the woods on an abandoned highway. I am the one not running, not staying, but facing. Because if I am the last one, then I am humanity. And if this is humanity's last war, then I am the battlefield

Libraries, museums, universities, everything we designed and built over six thousand years. Cities are more than the sum of their infrastructure. They transcend brick and mortar, concrete and steel. They're the vessels into which human knowledge is poured.

That__ the cost. That__ the price. Get ready, because when you crush the humanity out of humans, you__e left with humans with no humanity.In other words, you get what you pay for, motherfucker.

Everything's going to be okay', because that's what I wanted him to say and it's what he wanted to say and that's what you do when the curtain is falling _ you give the line that the audience wants to hear.

That's my name. Not Cassie for Cassandra. Or Cassie for Cassidy. And it's not Cassie for Cassiopeia. Not anymore. I am more than her now.I am all of them, Evan and Ben and Marika and Megan and Sam. I am Dumbo and Poundcake and Teacup. I am all the ones you emptied, the ones you corrupted, the ones you discarded, the thousands you thought you killed, but who live in me.But I am more than this. I am all those they remember, the ones they loved, everyone they knew, and everyone they only heard about. How many are contained in me? Count the stars. Go on, number the grains of sand. That's me.I am humanity.

Onto his stomach. Then knees. Then hands. His elbows quivered, his wrists threatened to buckle under his own weight. Self-centered, stubborn, sentimental, childish, vain. I am humanity. Cynical, naive, kind, cruel, soft as down, hard as tungsten steel.I am humanityHe crawled.I am humanity.He fell.I am humanity.He got up.

That__ the cost. That__ the price. Get ready, because when you crush the humanity out of humans, you__e left with humans with no humanity.In other words, you get what you pay for, motherfucker

Without trust there's no cooperation. And without cooperation there's no progress. History stops.

Who wants to read a book when you can blow something up?

I am like the water that runs over me, immune to permanence, recycling endlessly. I am water; I am life. The form may change, but the substance stays the same. Strike me down and I will rise again. Vincit qui patitur.

The experience was like running into someone you hadn't seen since middle school - you recognize them, but what you really notice is the ways they've changed. They don't match your memory of how they should look and for a second you're thrown off, because your memory of them IS them.

This is the first rule of the last war:Trust No One

Our hearts, the war.Her body, the battlefield.

And if humanity is the last war, then I am the battlefield.