Hugh Howey quotes:

He thought of men like Hitler, Stalin, and Napoleon. All it took was a lot of seemingly decent people to put the wrong person in power and then fall under their spell.

There are two competing philosophies in 'Wool': one is that people have to live under an iron thumb in order to survive, and the other one is that everyone should live completely freely and happily and everything will sort itself out.

Ever since I was twelve, I dreamed of being an author. I just never had the fortitude to see any of my stories through to completion. I would start a book, get a few chapters in, and grow bored or get distracted by something else.

I'm such a huge fan of fan fiction, to me it's a great way for readers to become writers. It's like putting the training wheels on for writing.

I'd rather excite the imagination of a legion of readers and make pennies from each of them than hold off for a larger chunk of change from only a handful of fans.

My approach with social media is to interact with the readers I already have. I do it mostly to procrastinate from my writing. It's an escape. It's the only socializing I get outside of my wife, and she gets sick of me.

It's because fear sells. It's because war is sport. And it's also very good business.

Here was the love and violence in the hearts of men, all for their women

I am about to die. It is September 11, and every cell in my body is acutely aware of my looming demise. The certainty of it. The inevitability. Not years from now, not weeks nor days. Moments.

Statistics were magic like this: they could tell you with near-certainty that a thing would occur, without a hint of when or where.

Evan Price is not a man to be questioned. He is a man who will question you.

I'm coming for you. I'm coming home, I'm coming to clean

Heroes didn't win. The heroes were whoever happened to win. History told their story -- the dead didn't say a word. All of it was bullshit.

My only wish is that we leave room for hope. There is good and bad in all things. We find what we expect to find. We see what we expect to see. I have learned that if I tilt my head just right and squint, the world outside is beautiful. The future is bright. There are good things to come.

Imagination just wasn't up to the task of understanding unique and foreign sensations. It knew only how to dampen or augment what it already knew. - Juliette, Pg. 139

What we do going forward defines who we are." Juliette, Pg. 397

Where's the everlasting peace? Is there even such a thing? Or do we war like alien races war, eternally, against ourselves?

Imagination, she figured, just wasn't up to the task of understanding unique and foreign sensations. It knew only how to dampen or augment what it already knew. It would be like telling someone what sex felt like, or an orgasm. Impossible. But once you felt it yourself, you could then imagine varying degrees of this new sensation.

And the stains would never wash out. That's what Lukas was saying. She would always have hurt her father. Was that the way to phrase it? Always have had. It was immortal tense. A new rule of grammar.

Honestly, I don't think I'm a good promoter. I spend almost zero time or effort asking new readers to sample or purchase my work. That's not the job of the author. We should write our best material and leave it up to readers to spread the word.

A seed of hope caught a taste of moisture. Some wishful kernel buried deep, where he was loathe to acknowledge it lest it poison or choke him, began to sprout.

Even in the darkness, his smile threw shadows.

Fiction challenges us and works its miracles by placing us in the skin of another human being and teaching us empathy.

He'd only ever seen a gun once, a smaller one on the hip of that old deputy, a gun he'd always figured was more for show. He stuffed a fistful of deadly rounds in his pocket, thinking how each one could end an individual life, and understanding why such things were forbidden. Killing a man should be harder than waving a length of pipe in their direction. It should take long enough for one's conscience to get in the way.

I use social media not to ask new people to like my stuff. I use social media to connect with that one reader who likes my stuff.

It turned out that some crooked things looked even worse when straightened. Some tangled knots only made sense once unraveled.

It was a sad loss, this illusion of importance, a humbling blow.

It was the hubris of each generation to think this anew, to think that their time was special, that all things would come to an end with them.

It's easy to forgo distractions and to not accumulate things when you have a larger goal on the horizon.

Living frugally is one of the best things an author can do to prepare for their career.

My life is too tight, he wanted to say. My skin is too tight. The walls are too tight.

One of the many things that surprised me about 'Wool' is how many of its fans don't consider themselves science fiction readers.

Predict the inevitable", she said, "and you're bound to be right one day.

Run, we think, as buildings crumble. Run, as people perish.

some things are better off back in the past. Where they belong.

Sometimes a thing needed opening before closure was found.

That's the problem with the truth," Darcy said. "Liars and honest men both claim to have it.

The best kisses in the world take place at night, in the ocean, with two naked bodies coiled around one another, only the stars to keep them company.

There are two competing philosophies in Wool: one is that people have to live under an iron thumb in order to survive, and the other one is that everyone should live completely freely and happily and everything will sort itself out.

There were certain things, learned so young and remembered so deep that they felt like little stones in the center of her mind.

We are not the people who made this world, Lukas, but it's up to us to survive it. You need to understand that." "We can't control where we are right now," he mumbled, "just what we do going forward.

We devolve into animals when we creep near to death.

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When there's only God to blame, we forgive him. When it's our fellow man, we destroy him.

Killing a man should be harder than waving a length of pipe in their direction. It should take long enough for one's conscience to get in the way.

What we control," Juliette said, "is our actions once fate puts us there.