Pines: Wayward Pines: 1 (The Wayward Pines Trilogy)

by Blake Crouch

Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t after you.

it felt amazing to inhale this cool, pine-scented air after breathing the hospital’s antiseptic stench.

His experience, there was darkness everywhere human beings gathered. The way of the world. Perfection was a surface thing. The epidermis. Cut a few layers deep, you begin to see some darker shades. Cut to the bone—pitch black.

He doesn’t see your failings yet. He looks at you with pure love and it won’t last,

She loved at light-speed. No hesitation. No regrets. No conditions. No reservations. While he hoarded his chips and held a part of himself back, she went all in. Every time.

It was moments like this—the visual perfection underscored with a reality she could never know—that she feared would one day drive her to insanity.

Are you losing your mind? You tell me. I can’t. Why? Because I am you.

“Since the Industrial Revolution, we’ve treated our world like it was a hotel room and we were rock stars.

Nature doesn’t see things through the prism of good or bad. It rewards efficiency. That’s the beautiful simplicity of evolution. It matches design to environment.

“It’s sobering when you realize we aren’t at the top of the food chain anymore.

“The people in town, for the most part, can’t handle the truth of what’s out there. But you…you can’t handle the lie. The not knowing.

You think man can destroy the planet? What intoxicating vanity. Earth has survived everything in its time. It will certainly survive us. To the earth…a million years is nothing. This planet lives and breathes on a much vaster scale. We can’t imagine its slow and powerful rhythms, and we haven’t got the humility to try. We’ve been residents here for the blink of an eye. If we’re gone tomorrow, the earth will not miss us. —Michael Crichton