Proper Gauge Quotes

“One of the things she loved about having [him] around was that his thoughts could be so black as to make hers shine gray.”
― Hugh Howey, Proper Gauge

“What she had forever seen as her calling -- this living apart and serving the greater good -- now felt more a curse. Her life had been taken from her. Squeezed into pulp. The juice of her efforts and sacrificed years had dripped down through a silo that, just forty levels below her, hardly knew and barely cared.”
― Hugh Howey, Proper Gauge

“I’ve been deputy almost as long as you’ve been mayor, Ma’am. Don’t figure on being nothing else but dead one day.”
― Hugh Howey, Proper Gauge

“And she knew it was time to start getting the images of dead things out of her mind. Or at least, to bury them a while.”
― Hugh Howey, Proper Gauge

“Bernard said this last word like it was full of nails and might gut him to spit it out.”
― Hugh Howey, Proper Gauge

“Do you think it's natural? Not wandering too far from where we live?”
― Hugh Howey, Proper Gauge

“[They] were like the air she breathed, always there, always serving, so necessary as to be ubiquitous and taken for granted.”
― Hugh Howey, Proper Gauge

“I want to see my people, not be seen by them.”
― Hugh Howey, Proper Gauge

“The days pile up and weigh small decisions down, don't they? That decision not to visit. The first few days slide by easy enough; anger and youth power them along. But then they pile up like unrecycled trash.”
― Hugh Howey, Proper Gauge

“She slept with a man in her arms for the first time in decades, and woke to a bed familiarly empty, but a heart strangely full.”
― Hugh Howey, Proper Gauge

“Better to join a ghost than be haunted by them, Jahns now knew. Better no life than an empty one—”
― Hugh Howey, Proper Gauge

“This last line was dangerously close to treason.”
― Hugh Howey, Proper Gauge

“I reckon he only ever wanted you to be happy. That’s why he was the man for you.”
― Hugh Howey, Proper Gauge

“I’ve been married more to his ghost than to him.”
― Hugh Howey, Proper Gauge

“The talk wasn’t necessary. They could just be.”
― Hugh Howey, Proper Gauge

“Now, each step of their descent could be taken with dread.”
― Hugh Howey, Proper Gauge

“Maybe God would hear her thoughts and rat her out.”
― Hugh Howey, Proper Gauge

“Each step was performed reluctantly, knowing how grueling it would be to win that elevation back.”
― Hugh Howey, Proper Gauge

“It made her sad to admit it, but those certificates had just become more paper for her to sign.”
― Hugh Howey, Proper Gauge

“Each touch of dust on the clouding lenses was a violation, a dirty man touching something pure.”
― Hugh Howey, Proper Gauge

“The older she got, the quicker her mind went to death. Always, in the end, the thoughts of death.”
― Hugh Howey, Proper Gauge