Home > Work > Pet Rocks (Beacon 23, #2)
1 " Fucking NASA. In a horror movie, when everyone is hugging their shins and shouting for the main character to turn and run, or crawl under the bed, or call the cops, or grab a gun, NASA would be the dude in the back shouting, “Go see what made that noise! And take a flashlight! "
― Hugh Howey , Pet Rocks (Beacon 23, #2)
2 " This is the problem with illusions: They form easy enough, but once they fall apart, they’re impossible to put back together. They’re like humans in that way. "
3 " I clamp down on those memories. I embrace fresher torments. But my shrink warned me about this, how anger and depression get misassigned, and how if I don’t work through shit it’ll keep resurfacing in ways I don’t expect. "
4 " Go quietly, and you’re a number. Go in spectacular fashion, and you’re a name. "
5 " I’m a chipper guy, once you get to know the raw, dark dread and petrified fear that lurks in my breast and that I battle with every waking moment and that sometimes has me sobbing into my palms when no one is around and makes it really hard to be in crowds or to stand any loud sounds and has me thinking I’ll probably never be in a functional relationship again, platonic or otherwise. Once you get that, you have to say to yourself, “Hey, why’s this guy so damn happy all the time? "
6 " But it’s more than the deaths I saw; it’s the destruction. The noise with which we go seems to make it count for more. I think of my buddies who checked out via hand grenade versus those who died from MRSA back in the VA. We barely notice the latter. They’re statistics. Go quietly, and you’re a number. Go in spectacular fashion, and you’re a name. "
7 " Maybe prisoners in isolation feel what I feel: they hate their guards, but a beating now and then is at least some human contact. "
8 " I debate whether or not to hold my breath. Is the massive, wheezing inhalation that follows worse than all the small little puffing breaths I might take instead? (I often debated this when a squad mate would lay a fart with a howl of laughter. Breathe normal? Or put it off and then risk sucking that fart so deep into your lungs that it stays there forever, little fart cells melding way inside the core of you?) "
9 " I suppose half a klick won on some alien rock has a price about the same as a paragraph gained in the storehouse of human knowledge. "
10 " You’re the worst human I’ve ever met, "
11 " It’s a selfish craving, desiring a partner in misery. "
12 " grounded "
13 " outer "