The Boy on the Bridge (The Girl With All the Gifts, #2)

by M.R. Carey

He had already learned to read, but now he learned the pleasure of stories which is like no other pleasure—the experience of slipping sideways into another world and living there for as long as you want to.

You shouldn’t kill a man without being aware of the possibilities, the futures, you’re snuffing out. The younger the target, the more of those possible futures there are. Killing a child is like killing a vast multitude.

Most of the satellites fell out of the sky long ago so this is academic in any case, but he doesn’t see what’s so great about leaving your mark on things. You have a life and then it ends and you’re dead. Living it is the point, not proving to other people that you were there.

Quae nocent saepe docent. Pain is the great teacher.

Pain has no agenda at all. It teaches us nothing, except what hurts. And if you can’t avoid the things that hurt then what use is the lesson?

It’s sort of a reassurance, she thinks, and sort of a promise. Things don’t end, after all. They only change, and you keep changing with them.

She thinks: all journeys are the same journey, whether you know it or not, whether you’re moving or not. And the things that look like endings are all just stations on the way.