The Host (The Host, #1)

by Stephenie Meyer

There is a way. No way to survive, but perhaps a way to win.

My name was now Wanderer, yet her memories fit it just as well as my own. Except that my wandering was by choice. These flashes of memory were always tinged with the fear of the hunted. Not wandering, but running.

We lived every day with the knowledge that we could meet a final end at any moment. There was constant excitement and frequent fear.

“You can never be too careful when it comes to doling out power. Some aren’t as careful as they should be.”

“No one’s young anymore. Anyone who’s survived this long is ancient.”

“Nut jobs are exactly the kind of people who will have survived. People who saw Big Brother when he wasn’t there. People who suspected the rest of humanity before the rest of humanity turned dangerous. People with hiding places ready.”

This, death, was easier to accept than that our efforts had been guided by insanity.

After all the planets and all the hosts you’ve left behind, you’ve finally found the place and the body you’d die for. I think you’ve found your home, Wanderer.

This place was truly the highest and the lowest of all worlds — the most beautiful senses, the most exquisite emotions . . . the most malevolent desires, the darkest deeds. Perhaps it was meant to be so. Perhaps without the lows, the highs could not be reached.

Desperate times, Melanie whispered. We can’t afford to be kind in the world you’ve created. We’re fugitives, an endangered species. Every choice is life-or-death.

“Just because she isn’t human, do you think that means she doesn’t feel pain?”

“No point in ignoring the truth. Doesn’t make it worse to have it said out loud.”

I am who I am, Mel. I can’t change that, though everything else may change. You hold on to yourself; allow me to do the same.

“It’s not the face, but the expressions on it. It’s not the voice, but what you say. It’s not how you look in that body, but the things you do with it. You are beautiful.”

“It’s strange how life and love go on. I didn’t expect that.”

“Did you expect us to just give up, Wanderer?” Jeb’s voice was stern and more serious than I had ever heard it before. “We have a stronger survival instinct than that. Of course we want to find a way to get our minds back. It could be any one of us someday. So many people we love are already lost. “It isn’t easy. It nearly kills Doc each time he fails — you’ve seen that. But this is our reality, Wanda. This is our world. We’ve lost a war. We are about to be extinct. We’re trying to find ways to save ourselves.”

these humans could hate with so much fury, was the other end of the spectrum that they could love with more heart and zeal and fire?

“Sometimes the best hiding place is the one that’s in plain sight.”

The shortest, the most important, the most heartbreaking of lives. The life that would forever define me. The life that had finally tied me to one star, to one planet, to one small family of strangers.

“I, the soul called Wanderer, love you, human Ian. And that will never change, no matter what I might become.” I worded it carefully, so that there would be no lie in my voice. “If I were a Dolphin or a Bear or a Flower, it wouldn’t matter. I would always love you, always remember you. You will be my only partner.”

Life and love would go on. Even though it would happen without me, the idea brought me joy.

there could be no joy on this planet without an equal weight of pain to balance it out on some unknown scale.

“Well, maybe there’s some hope for this planet, after all.” “It’s a strange world,” I murmured, more to myself than to the other native soul. “The strangest,” he agreed.

“Paranoia comes in handy sometimes.”