The Lifecycle of Suns Quotes

“Rumors served the same role they did for the living: a focus for imagination, a means of making the inexplicable less frightening, small morality plays.”
― Thomm Quackenbush, The Lifecycle of Suns

“The living would defy physics to settle on a new planet, but they would make no preparations for death, inevitable as it was for all who had been born.”
― Thomm Quackenbush, The Lifecycle of Suns

“He did not even have the time to understand the depth of this loss. It was almost pleasurable. He hurt so much for her lack that it was like feeling something.”
― Thomm Quackenbush, The Lifecycle of Suns

“This might be the answer and justify this seeming eternity of waiting.
Or it could be nothing, but it would for once be a nothing they had sought and earned. It was a nothing that could suffice.”
― Thomm Quackenbush, The Lifecycle of Suns

“The angels would still be here come the end of this world, and its destruction would not bother them. Like the ghosts, they no longer belonged to this world. Unlike the dead, they were not tethered here. They did not need the Earth intact because they were citizens of a more fantastic realm.”
― Thomm Quackenbush, The Lifecycle of Suns

“The human body is infinitely intricate, systems within systems that must work in consort if death isn't going to claim it at once. One needed an ecosystem of bacteria to maintain homeostasis. Evolution was lazy when something else could shoulder that burden.”
― Thomm Quackenbush, The Lifecycle of Suns

“The angel could not belong to the faith in the way lightning could not belong to the myth of its making”
― Thomm Quackenbush, The Lifecycle of Suns

“Religions talked of angels, of interstitial beings between the mortal and divine. They cast them in a comely light, creatures that exuded compassion.
That was not what angels were. These were horrors: millions of eyes, shining wings, a light that dimmed the sun.”
― Thomm Quackenbush, The Lifecycle of Suns

“Once one committed to finding an angel, claiming agnosticism was ludicrous.”
― Thomm Quackenbush, The Lifecycle of Suns

“You may not believe it now, but the human race only went on because we loved one another. We were better than the animals because love came before sex to build families and defend them against the world.”
― Thomm Quackenbush, The Lifecycle of Suns

“Love is not fungible; I would not take a substitution if I were in love."
"Then you don't remember being in love... The best way to get over one person is to get under another.”
― Thomm Quackenbush, The Lifecycle of Suns

“Little was beautiful in this world, but seeing her reminded him of what it was to take a breath.”
― Thomm Quackenbush, The Lifecycle of Suns

“She let herself be seen clearly in the pretense and came through as more human for it.”
― Thomm Quackenbush, The Lifecycle of Suns

“New worlds would be peopled with fresh ghosts because death is the only gift promised to every newborn.”
― Thomm Quackenbush, The Lifecycle of Suns

“The living who escaped the Earth might all die on the journey. A hostile planet could undo terraforming in innumerable ways. Even a common cold could mutate into a plague. But a tiny chance in the stars conquered a sure eradication on their home world.”
― Thomm Quackenbush, The Lifecycle of Suns

“Others expected to leave this karmic cycle with the purification of the celestial fire. Or being from another world would absorb them into their compassionate light. Or their souls were in a holding pattern until there were enough creatures on a new world for their reincarnation. Those who vanished were not to be mourned but envied. They were now cows and frogs under twin moons or beneath glowing rings.”
― Thomm Quackenbush, The Lifecycle of Suns

“God was surely not cruel, not after untold myriads since the Old Testament, and would consider their tenure on a forgotten world as penance enough for any mortal sins. When His finest Creation ceased, they would all be translated to Heaven, believers and doubters alike.”
― Thomm Quackenbush, The Lifecycle of Suns

“She would ascend to whatever afterlife came after this one if she were right. If she were wrong, she would never have to know about it.”
― Thomm Quackenbush, The Lifecycle of Suns

“We just are. No reason. No gods or devils. We are here because we occasionally happen in the universe and have not finished happening.”
― Thomm Quackenbush, The Lifecycle of Suns

“They couldn't tell when one of them left if they would be gone for an hour, a hundred years, or forever. It made every parting somber, but they became honest for it. They meant every goodbye in a way they couldn't in life.”
― Thomm Quackenbush, The Lifecycle of Suns

“Murder was one moment. Grieving was forever.”
― Thomm Quackenbush, The Lifecycle of Suns