Shift (Silo, #2)

by Hugh Howey

‘Denial is the secret sauce in this town,’ he said. ‘It’s the flavor that holds all the other ingredients together. Here’s what I tell the newly elected: the truth is going to get out – it always does – but it’s going to blend in with all the lies.’

‘You have to deny each lie and every truth with the same vinegar. Let those websites and blowhards who bitch about cover-ups confuse the public for you.’

All it took was for a lot of seemingly decent people to put the wrong person in power, and then pay for their innocent choice.

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

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

‘And how much simpler things would be, how much better for us all, if we had people brave enough to do what was right, instead.’

Liars and dead men – two parties unskilled at dispensing the truth.

He saw how only those who made the laws were allowed to break them.

I pictured him waking up chewing nails and farting tacks.’

Sometimes a thing needed opening before closure was found.

His discovery was that evil men arose from evil systems, and that any man had the potential to be perverted. Which was why some systems needed to come to an end.