Wool (Silo, #1)

by Hugh Howey

or the numbness past the terror. 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.

was an easy man to figure, one of those who had grown old everywhere but in his heart, that one organ he had never worn out because he’d never dared to use it.

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.

Juliette realised why he seemed so much younger. It wasn’t just the fear, the shyness, that made him seem that way – it was in his eyes. He was locked in the perpetual terror of his teenage ordeal. His body was simply growing old around the frozen husk of a frightened little boy.

‘We can’t control where we are right now,’ he mumbled, ‘just what we do going forward.’