The Hunger Quotes

“I don’t believe in monsters,” Stanton said. “Only men who behave like them.”
― Alma Katsu, The Hunger

“She was continually shocked by the fact that the others seemed to forget the obvious: that the mountains, like most beautiful things in this world, were deadly.”
― Alma Katsu, The Hunger

“Reed once thought that love was akin to passion, but he saw now that it was something different entirely; that it was, perhaps, a kind of faith.”
― Alma Katsu, The Hunger

“Hope, Tamsen realized, could be a very dangerous thing, especially when dealt to desperate hands.”
― Alma Katsu, The Hunger

“But like many truths, no one wanted to hear it.”
― Alma Katsu, The Hunger

“Women were always forced to smile. Tamsen had mastered it so well it sometimes frightened her.”
― Alma Katsu, The Hunger

“Maybe it takes one demon to keep the others away.” He paused. His eyes glistened with tears now. “Lucifer had been an angel first. I always remembered that.”
― Alma Katsu, The Hunger

“Evil was invisible, and it was everywhere.”
― Alma Katsu, The Hunger

“The world was fragile. One day, growth; the next day, kindling.”
― Alma Katsu, The Hunger

“He hoped Christian decency would keep these men from lying to them outright, but he’d been disappointed by Christian goodness in the past.”
― Alma Katsu, The Hunger

“Then the Lord must be mightily displeased with you, because he has led you into the valley of death. Make peace with your Lord before it is too late, because the hungry ones are coming for you.”
― Alma Katsu, The Hunger

“She knew that one extraordinary thing was bound to make the ordinariness of her life all the more painful.”
― Alma Katsu, The Hunger

“She had means, limited though they were: charms, talismans, ways to persuade evil to pass by your door. Unfortunately, however, these were not capable of easing the evil within.”
― Alma Katsu, The Hunger

“The group let themselves be divided by pettiness and class differences. They let themselves be fooled by businessmen who valued personal profit over human lives. They selected the wrong man to be their leader and refused to listen to the people among them who knew better. They paid for their hubris, yes, but you only need to look around to realize that things haven’t changed that much today, 170 years later. And this is the true lesson of the Donner Party.”
― Alma Katsu, The Hunger

“He made her think of a storm in summer, and though others might say it was a fool-headed thing to do, she wanted to run out into that storm, to feel its raindrops that, she somehow sensed, would fall gently against her skin.”
― Alma Katsu, The Hunger

“Había pensado en otros tiempos que el amor se parecía a la pasión, pero ya sabía que era completamente distinto. Se trataba, quizá, de una especie de fe.”
― Alma Katsu, The Hunger

“his laugh was like water running over stones in the creek—fast and free and clear. She wanted to enter that laugh and to swim and bathe and splash in it, to drink it down and be cleansed by it.”
― Alma Katsu, The Hunger

“But looking back, he knew, was a trap. They’d come this far. There would be no going back, not now, not ever.”
― Alma Katsu, The Hunger

“For many people did not like the truth, it seemed—thought it was a dirty and distasteful thing, impolite and complicated. They didn’t have the patience for it—for numbers, liters, rations, portions, reasons. Many simply preferred the sweet, momentary pleasure of hearing whatever they wanted to hear.”
― Alma Katsu, The Hunger

“Funny how dearly we hold on to some truths about ourselves, the power these truths have over us.”
― Alma Katsu, The Hunger

“The beauty and frustration of nature, Edwin, is that it is infinite in its variations.”
― Alma Katsu, The Hunger

“Mary believed in certain fundamental truths, and one of them was in life’s persistence—in the incredible will within each of us to go on, to thrive, to improve, and, when tested, to do good.”
― Alma Katsu, The Hunger

“She had always been taught that the punishments for one’s sins worked in mysterious ways. That sometimes even small misdeeds could have great, unforeseen consequences.”
― Alma Katsu, The Hunger

“It was untrustworthy, that snow: It hid crevices, steep drop-offs. Snow kept secrets.”
― Alma Katsu, The Hunger

“Snow had told him that in fact humanity’s entire understanding of disease, our connection of the disease to its symptoms, might be erroneous. Namely, that a disease and its symptoms were not necessarily the same thing. That the disease is something alive but invisible—almost like a spirit, in fact—that then takes hold in the body and causes symptoms, sometimes different symptoms in different people. Sometimes, even, causing no symptoms at all.”
― Alma Katsu, The Hunger

“Snow kept secrets. You’d think you were on solid ground, but it was just a matter of time before the ledge beneath you crumbled.”
― Alma Katsu, The Hunger

“A young boy might be swallowed up in all this vastness, in the unrelenting space that stretched in all directions, in the horizons that yoked even the sun down to heel.”
― Alma Katsu, The Hunger

“And love was like forgiveness—deep and patient. It would be waiting for her on the other side.”
― Alma Katsu, The Hunger

“Elitha couldn’t pretend. She burned with shame. And still the voices crowded her head, whispering terrible things and leaving a deep tunnel of loneliness, as if their words were sharp and physical things hollowing out her center. She was desperate for quiet, for peace, for silence.”
― Alma Katsu, The Hunger

“The aloneness ate a hole through him. Sometimes he worried that the loneliness had taken everything, that there was nothing left of him at all on the inside.”
― Alma Katsu, The Hunger