Wool (Silo #1)

by Hugh Howey

The only thing crazier would have been to not try everything, to leave some silly séance or tale untested.

Better to join a ghost than to be haunted by them. Better no life than an empty one—

“I can’t imagine needing someone’s permission, like the Pact or a girl’s father, to be in love in the first place,”

A glooming peace this morning with it brings; The sun, for sorrow, will not show his head. Go hence, to have more talk of these sad things; Some shall be pardon’d, and some punished.

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.

You laughed either to keep yourself sane or because you’d given up on staying that way. Either way, you laughed.

And Peter had a decision to make. Was he the final law, or did he owe something to those who put him in place? Did he do what was right or what was expected of him? It was so easy to do the latter, but Peter Billings was a good man.