Sand Quotes

“It was easy to blame people for the misery of life rather than blaming the sand. Yelling at the sand got you nowhere. People yelled back, and at least that was a response. An acknowledgment. Being tormented and simultaneously ignored was the worst.”
― Hugh Howey, Sand

“All great discoveries were like this. It was the rare souls full of hope who showed the world what could be done; and then came the thundering herds, those doubters and naysayers who had once put up barriers, now shoving everyone out of their way.”
― Hugh Howey, Sand

“Explain to them that these people are not evil, which we might understand and combat. Explain to them that these people do not care and cannot be made to, which is far worse.”
― Hugh Howey, Sand

“There was so much to do and not enough buckets.”
― Hugh Howey, Sand

“And the earth sat upon his broken chest.”
― Hugh Howey, Sand

“It was the rare souls full of hope who showed the world what could be done; and then came the thundering herds, those doubters and naysayers who had once put up barriers, now shoving everyone out of their way.”
― Hugh Howey, Sand

“Love was earned and hard-fought and cherished. It was Marco's face and his rough palm on her cheek. It wasn't something a family got for being a family.”
― Hugh Howey, Sand

“Here was where she had learned this skill all those years ago, where she had learned how good it felt to run away.”
― Hugh Howey, Sand

“She felt like a speck of sand in an alien land, confused as to how it had gotten there.”
― Hugh Howey, Sand

“Life is capricious and cruel and totally fucking random and there is no hope of finding meaning in a nightmare. In a nightmare at least her enraged screams would come out a hoarse whisper, but Vic could not manage even that. Could not manage even a whimper.”
― Hugh Howey, Sand

“Her mother, buried. A town, lost. A small group of men, somewhere out there, cheering.”
― Hugh Howey, Sand

“There were things that could not be contemplated, he realized. There were potential truths too costly to bear. It wasn’t until after the body was scarred by a brush with danger that it learned fear. Conner thought of all the untouched places on his soul yet to teach him something. All the unblemished parts of him waiting for that razor of truth.”
― Hugh Howey, Sand

“Clinging to an idealized past was a poison of sorts, that bastard Nostalgia, making people think there was a better time and place if they could just get back to it.”
― Hugh Howey, Sand

“When the desert wraps its great arms around your chest and decides you won’t breathe anymore, that’s when you feel how small you are, just a grain of sand crushed among infinite grains of sand.”
― Hugh Howey, Sand

“This was the sort of cruelty that only came from turned backs, from being ignored. Well-aimed lashes and direct blows were more easily understood. At least then the stricken knew their anguished cries were being heard.”
― Hugh Howey, Sand

“The man was naked. He was all bones and ribs and snarling mouth. The front of him was caked in blood, a smear of charcoal black in the dim red glow of Palmer’s dive light. There was just a flash of this grisly image before the man crashed into Palmer, knocking him to the ground, desperate hands clenching around his throat. Palmer saw pops of bright light as his head hit the floor. He couldn’t breathe. He heard his own gurgles mix with the raspy hisses from the man on top of him. A madman. A thin, half-starved, and full-crazed madman. Palmer fought for a breath. His visor was knocked from his head. Letting go of the man’s wrists, he reached for his dive knife, but his leg was pinned, his boot too far away. He pawed behind himself and felt his visor, had some insane plan of getting it to his temples, getting his suit powered on, overloading the air around him, trying to shake the man off. But as his fingers closed on the hard plastic—and as the darkness squeezed in around his vision—he instead swung the visor at the snarling man’s face, a final act before the door to that king’s crypt sealed shut on him. A piercing shriek returned Palmer to his senses. Or it was the hands coming off his neck? The naked man howled and lunged again, but Palmer got a boot up, caught the man in the chest, kicked him. He scrambled backward while the man reeled. The other diver. Brock’s diver. Palmer turned and crawled on his hands and knees to get distance, got around a desk, moving as fast as he could, heart pounding. Two divers. There had been two divers. He waited for the man’s partner to jump onto his back, for the two men to beat him to death for his belly full of jangling coin— —when he bumped into the other diver. And saw by his dive light that he was no threat. And the bib of gore on the man chasing him was given sudden meaning. Palmer crawled away, sickened. He wondered how long the men had been down here, how long one had been eating the other. Hands fell onto his boots and yanked him, dragging him backward. A reedy voice yelled for him to be still. And then he felt a tug as his dive knife was pulled from its sheath, stolen. Palmer spun onto his back to defend himself. His own knife flashed above him traitorously, was brought down by those bone-thin arms, was meant to skewer him. There was a crunch against his belly. A painful blow. The air came out of Palmer. The blade was raised to strike him again, but there was no blood. His poor life had been saved by a fistful of coin. Palmer brought up his knee as the man struck again—and shin met forearm with a crack. A howl, and the knife was dropped. Palmer fumbled for it, his dive light throwing the world into pale reds and deep shadows. Hand on the hilt, his knife reclaimed, he slashed at the air, and the man fell back, hands up, shouting, “Please, please!” Palmer scooted away, keeping the knife in front of him. He was weak from fitful sleep and lack of food, but this poor creature before him seemed even weaker. Enraged and with the element of surprise, the man had nearly killed him, but it had been like fighting off a homeless dune-sleeper who had jumped him for some morsel of bread. Palmer dared to turn his dive light up so he could see the man better. “Sorry. I’m sorry,” the man said. “Thought you were a ghost.” The”
― Hugh Howey, Sand

“And not just the wilds of sand and dune but the wilds of life, those years in a man’s twenties when he shrugs off the shelter of youth and before he has bothered to erect his own. The tent-less years. The bright and blinding years in which men wander as the planets do.”
― Hugh Howey, Sand

“others swapped lewd jokes and fictitious tales of several kinds of booty scored.”
― Hugh Howey, Sand

“Love was earned and hard-fought and cherished. It was Marco’s face and his rough palm on her cheek. It wasn’t something a family got just for being a family.”
― Hugh Howey, Sand

“Those constellations you see up there?” She jabbed her finger angrily at the ceiling. “Those are the backs of gods we see. They’ve turned from us.”
― Hugh Howey, Sand

“Conner thought of all the untouched places on his soul yet to teach him something. All the unblemished parts of him waiting for that razor of truth.”
― Hugh Howey, Sand

“that bastard Nostalgia, making people think there was a better time and place if they could just get back to it.”
― Hugh Howey, Sand

“It was strange how tense one could become while surrounded by the banal. It was the waiting, waiting.”
― Hugh Howey, Sand

“These were the rules that never changed. Knowing right from wrong. Surviving and letting others be. Maybe even lending a fucking hand.”
― Hugh Howey, Sand

“Those in the shadows didn’t speculate with their money but with their lives.”
― Hugh Howey, Sand

“And then she found herself fighting the urge to cry, to sob, to hold her mother and smear tears and snot into the crook of her neck, to tell her about Marco, how great a guy he was even if he was caught up with the wrong people, how he was dead along with so many thousands more. But she fought this and won.”
― Hugh Howey, Sand

“She wasn’t defined by what she had to do in order to survive. None of them were.”
― Hugh Howey, Sand

“It wasn’t until after the body was scarred by a brush with danger that it learned fear.”
― Hugh Howey, Sand

“The guys who give the orders never get what’s coming to them. They’re the Lords in their towers,”
― Hugh Howey, Sand

“She’d seen too many dead to think of that bitch, Fate.”
― Hugh Howey, Sand