Dust (Silo #3) — Alex Priest

Highlights

Juliette thought of Father Wendel and how people could believe amazing things crafted from mere words, how beliefs could form from books. But perhaps they had to want to believe those things. And maybe Lukas was right that not everyone would want to believe the truth.

This hits hard in the early days of Trump’s second administration.

The world out there was the way it was no matter how much doubt or hope a person breathed into it.

Dark, but maybe true.

Always have had. It was immortal tense. A new rule of grammar. Always have had gotten friends killed. Always have had a brother die and a mother take her own life. Always have had taken that damn job as sheriff. There was no going back. Apologies weren’t welds; they were just an admission that something had been broken. Often between two people.

“Until then, I’m going to wake up sore next to the woman I love, and if I’m lucky I’ll do the same thing the next morning, and every one of those is a gift. This ain’t hell. This is what comes before. And you gave us that.”

The idea of saving anything was folly, a life especially. No life had ever been truly saved, not in the history of mankind. They were merely prolonged. Everything comes to an end.