The Year of the Flood (MaddAddam, #2)

by Margaret Atwood

we couldn’t mingle with them, but we could eavesdrop. We got their knowledge that way — we caught it like germs. We gazed at that forbidden worldly life as if through a chain-link fence.

“I’m fine,” said Pilar, “for the moment. And the moment is the only time we can be fine in.

Like stage magic, knowledge before you knew it took place before your very eyes, but you were looking elsewhere.

Also we must be a beacon of hope, because if you tell people there’s nothing they can do, they will do worse than nothing.

it was a consequence of grammar. And so was God, because as soon as there’s a past tense, there has to be a past before the past, and you keep going back in time until you get to I don’t know, and that’s what God is. It’s what you don’t know — the dark, the hidden, the underside of the visible,

Death always comes without knocking. Why now? is the cry. Why so soon? It’s the cry of a child being called home at dusk, it’s the universal protest against Time. Just remember, dear Friends: What am I living for and what am I dying for are the same question.