"It's been a long time since humans were prey animals. A hundred thousand years or so. But buried deep in our genes the memory remains: the awareness of the gazelle, the instinct of the antelope. The wind whispers through the grass. A shadow flits between the trees. And up speaks the little voice that goes. Shhhh, it's close now. Close."
"I should have bailed. That little voice had my back. That little voice is older than I am. It's older than the oldest person who ever lived. I should have listened to that voice."
"But if I'm it, the last of my kind, the last page of human history, like hell I'm going to let the story end this way. 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 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."
"Are you okay?" I (Cassie) call up to him."Um. Define okay." (Ben)"Okay means you're not bleeding to death.""I'm okay."
"This is the first rule of the last war:Trust No One"
"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"
"We are humanity, the banner read. Wrong. We’re pale reflections of it, weak shadows, distant echoes."
"You know how sometimes you tell yourself that you have a choice, but really you don't have a choice? Just because there are alternatives doesn't mean they apply to you."
"Is this how humanity waves good-bye?Hell no."
"I brought Sammy inside and put him to bed. Said his prayer with him. “‘Now I lay me down to sleep…’” To me, just random noise. Gibberish. I wasn’t sure exactly what it was, but I felt that, when it came to God, there was a broken promise in there somewhere."
"If you don't kill all of us all at once, those who remain will not be the weak.It's the strong who remain, the bent but unbroken, like the iron rods that used to give this concrete its strength."
"To hold on, you have to find something you're willing to die for."
"And it occurs to me that there’s no real difference between us, the living and the dead; it’s just a matter of tense: past-dead and future-dead"
"In the 4th Wave, you can't trust that people are still people. But you can trust that your gun is still your gun."
"This is what the Others have done to us. You can’t band together to fight without trust. And without trust, there was no hope. How do you rid the Earth of humans? Rid the humans of their humanity."
"We're all dead...Some of us are just a little further along than others."
"It kills me. The way he trusted. LIke the way we trusted before they came and blue the whole goddamned world apart. Trusted that when it got dark there would be light. Trusted that when you wanted a fucking strawberry Frappuccino you could plop your ass in the car, drive down the streed, and get yourself a fucking strawberry Frappuccino!"
"The girl sleeping and the finisher, willing himself to finish her.Why didn't he finish her?Why couldn't he finish her?"
"It's hopeless. And it's stupid. It's suicidal. But love is a weapon they have no answer for. They know how you think, but they can't know what you feel."
"I want him to touch me again. I want to feel his hands, as soft as clouds. But I’m afraid if he touches me, all seven billion billion billion atoms that make up my body will blow apart and scatter across the universe."
"Crazy people. They never think they're crazy. Their craziness makes perfect sense to them."
"Too many people say something when they really have nothing to say."
"I should have asked, I guess,” he says. “I shouldn’t have assumed.”“What?”He rotates around on his butt to face me. Me on the sofa, him on the floor, looking up. “That I was going with you.”“What? We weren’t even talking about that! And why would you want to go with me, Evan? Since you think he’s dead?”“I just don’t want you to be dead, Cassie."
"I, um, I thought you might want this back.”I pull out the battered old teddy bear and hold it toward him. He frowns and shakes his head and doesn’t reach for it, and I feel like he’s punched me in the gut.Then my baby brother slaps that damned bear out of my hand and crushes his face against my chest, and beneath the odors of sweat and strong soap I can smell it, his smell, Sammy’s, my brother’s."
"How would you rather die?" she snapped. "Hiding under your bed or riding Thunder Mountain?"