The Passage (The Passage, #1)

by Justin Cronin

When I have seen by Time’s fell hand defac’d The rich proud cost of outworn buried age; When sometime lofty towers I see down-raz’d, And brass eternal slave to mortal rage; When I have seen the hungry ocean gain Advantage on the kingdom of the shore, And the firm soil win of the watery main, Increasing store with loss, and loss with store; When I have seen such interchange of state, Or state itself confounded to decay; Ruin hath taught me thus to ruminate That Time will come and take my love away. —WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, Sonnet 64

The road to death is a long march beset with all evils, and the heart fails little by little at each new terror, the bones rebel at each step, the mind sets up its own bitter resistance and to what end? The barriers sink one by one, and no covering of the eyes shuts out the landscape of disaster, nor the sight of crimes committed there. —KATHERINE ANNE PORTER, Pale Horse, Pale Rider

you started to tell a story about who you were, and soon enough the lies were all you had and you became that person.