The Twelve Quotes

“As long as we remember a person, they're not really gone. Their thoughts, their feelings, their memories, they become a part of us.”
― Justin Cronin, The Twelve

“Because that's what heaven is...it's opening the door of a house in twilight and everyone you love is there.”
― Justin Cronin, The Twelve

“Sorry, we made vampires; it seemed like a good idea at the time.”
― Justin Cronin, The Twelve

“This ravishing world. This achingly bittersweet, ravishing world.”
― Justin Cronin, The Twelve

“That was always the hardest part, missing you.”
― Justin Cronin, The Twelve

“There was something in the pages of these books that had the power to make him feel better about things, a life raft to cling to before the dark currents of memory washed him downstream again, and on brighter days, he could even see himself going on this way for some time. A small but passable life.

And then, of course, the end of the world happened.”
― Justin Cronin, The Twelve

“Never a good sign, he thought, when the crows showed up.”
― Justin Cronin, The Twelve

“Even on the darkest night, my friend, life will have its way.”
― Justin Cronin, The Twelve

“Kittredge had obviously misjudged her, but he had learned that was the way with most people. The story was never the story, and it surprised you, how much another person could carry.”
― Justin Cronin, The Twelve

“Does anybody out there care? Are we worth saving? What would God want from me, if there is a God? The greatest faith is the willingness to ask in the first place, all evidence to the contrary. Faith not just in God, but in all of us.”
― Justin Cronin, The Twelve

“That's the worst part, really, when you think about it. Try as you might, nobody will ever truly know who you are. You're just somebody alone in a house with your thoughts and nothing else.”
― Justin Cronin, The Twelve

“Kittridge closed his eyes. So, the end. It would happen instantaneously, a painless departure, quicker than thought. he felt the presence of his body one last time: the taste of air in his lungs, the blood surging in his veins, the drumlike beating of his heart. The bomb was dropping toward them.
"I've got you," he said, hugging Tim fiercely; and again, over and over, so that the boy would be hearing these words. "I've got you, I've got you, I've got you, I've got you.”
― Justin Cronin, The Twelve

“Strange how one minute life was a certain way and then it was another, and you couldn't remember what you'd done to make it all happen.”
― Justin Cronin, The Twelve

“I could have held his hand.”
― Justin Cronin, The Twelve

“He still had the young person’s predisposition to regard the world as a series of vaguely irritating problems created by people less cool and smart than he was.”
― Justin Cronin, The Twelve

“Just ten minutes, but everything was different now. He was different, the world was different. His father was nowhere in it. And with that, tears came to his eyes.”
― Justin Cronin, The Twelve

“This isn't a question of odds. Of all the men in the world, that woman chose you. If she's out there, she's waiting for you. Staying alive any way she can until you find her. That's all that matters.”
― Justin Cronin, The Twelve

“Michael lifted a menu from a stack on the counter and opened it. 'What's meatloaf?' I get the meat part, but a loaf of it?”
― Justin Cronin, The Twelve

“A hundred and twelve miles to the north, traveling east on Interstate 76, Kittridge had also begun to worry about fuel.”
― Justin Cronin, The Twelve

“His gaze widened, then taking in the entirety of the camp. All these people: they were trapped. And not merely by the wires that surrounded them. Physical barricades were nothing compared to the wires of the mind. What had truly imprisoned them was one another. Husbands and wives, parents and children, friends and companions: what they believed had given them strength in their lives had actually done the opposite. Guilder recalled the couple who lived across the street from his townhouse, trading off their sleeping daughter on the way to the car. How heavy that burden must have felt in their arms. And when the end swept down upon them all, they would exit the world on a wave of suffering, their agonies magnified a million times over by the loss of her. Would they have to watch her die? Would they perish first, knowing what would become of her in their absence? Which was preferable? But the answer was neither. Love had sealed their doom. Which was what love did.”
― Justin Cronin, The Twelve

“Nothing lasts forever.” “Some things do.” “What kind of things?” “The things we like to remember. The love we’ve felt for people.”
― Justin Cronin, The Twelve

“How strange it was..., one minute you were all alone with your thoughts, the next somebody came along who seemed to know the deepest part of you, who could open you like a book.”
― Justin Cronin, The Twelve

“The greatest faith is the willingness to ask in the first place, all evidence to the contrary. Faith not just in God, but in all of us.”
― Justin Cronin, The Twelve

“The military was all about hierarchies, who urinated highest on the hydrant”
― Justin Cronin, The Twelve

“The progress of her aging seemed to occur in fits and starts, not so much a matter of physical growth as a deepening self-possession, as if she were coming into ownership of her life.”
― Justin Cronin, The Twelve

“They were like a vision, they had slipped into eternity, a zone beyond time. There and not there, a presence unseen but felt, like stars in the daytime sky.”
― Justin Cronin, The Twelve

“Too many what-ifs are just a way to keep yourself up at night, and there's not enough decent sleep to go around.”
― Justin Cronin, The Twelve

“Peter gazed at the destruction. It was the cities that always turned his thoughts to what the world had once been. The buildings and houses, the cars and streets: all had once teemed with people who had gone about their lives knowing nothing of the future, that one day history would stop.”
― Justin Cronin, The Twelve

“It was in the waiting that a person experienced too much of himself. Memories, doubts, regrets, anxieties, the whole range of possibilities the future contained—they all swirled together in the mind like a soup.”
― Justin Cronin, The Twelve

“The big man shrugged, "I don't know. You're pretty good with the cards. Tell me what the odds are."

[She] shifted her gaze to Michael, then back at Hollis. "This isn't a question of odds. Of all the men in the world, that woman chose you. If she's still out there, she's waiting for you. Staying alive any way she can until you find her. That's all that matters."

Everybody waited for what Hollis would next say. "You're a real ball-buster, you know that? ...Let me pack a few things.”
― Justin Cronin, The Twelve