The Drowned Cities Quotes
"The reek of urine from the latrines and the miasma of sweat and fear twined with the sweet stench of rotting straw."
"Humidity and heat. The whiff of the sea, far off, a cruel, tormenting scent that told the prisoners they would never taste freedom again."
"The guards came as a group, using one another for their courage."
"No response came from the mountain of shadow."
"In death, it had curled in on itself, but still it was huge."
"A perfect creature, designed from the blood up to hunt and war and kill."
"Even dead, the creature harbored momentous terror."
"The guard had seen those massive fists crush a man’s skull into blood and bone fragments."
"Pain held no terror for him. Pain was, if not friend, then family, something he had grown up with in his crèche, learning to respect but never yield to."
"Blood covered everything: the doctor and Mahlia, Tani, the floor, old Mr. Salvatore. Ten pints, the doctor had taught Mahlia in her studies; that was what filled a human being."
"Knowing all and having the necessary tools are two different things."
"A hasty temper was one of the greatest faults a general could have."
"Me and the doctor work good together, but a stump ain’t no hand."
"You could do all this doctor work if you tried. You just got to pay attention and read what the doctor tells you to."
"Maybe if I could read up here, up high, you know? But I don’t like being down in the squat, with the lantern and all that. Don’t like being closed in, you know?"
"The chest-tight feeling of the Fates setting you up and getting ready to kill you off."
"Crabs in a pot, pulling each other down while we all boil alive."
"You ever think about just trying to go north? Sneak across the border?"
"My mom kept saying there were supposed to be boats for us, too. For dependents."
"A stupid little dream for a stupid little war maggot."
"If there was balance, the soldier boys would all be dead, and we’d be sitting pretty in the middle of the Drowned Cities."
"Didn’t know there were collaborators hiding out here."
"I ain’t hunting all day and then getting rib-stuck because the doctor’s feeling charitable."
"It’s hard to believe this country was ever strong."
"Boys like this had seen too much blood to care one way or the other if they spilled a little more."
"Between the two of them, they nearly made a whole doctor."
"Human children were always the same. Ribs and hollows sewn together by the barest coverings of flesh."
"Do not beg for mercy. Accept that you have failed. Begging is for dogs and humans."
"Running didn’t make her safe. It never had, and now she was realizing it never would."
"She didn’t need someone who talked peace; she needed something that made war."
"War feeds itself well, don’t you think, Doctor?"
"If you treated maggots like people, it just ripped you up. Gutted you and made you weak when you needed to be strong."
"Soldiers have been looting and burning for generations... Soldiers kill and rape and loot for a thousand reasons."
"Every action connected to every other action, and that was why the Drowned Cities was the way it was."
"The problem with surviving was that you ended up with the ghosts of everyone you’d ever left behind riding on your shoulders."
"I used to think I was alive just because I kept getting away... But now I’m thinking that once you got enough dead looking over your shoulder, you’re dead anyway."
"Humans were so precious about their dead... Human beings lingered. It made them vulnerable."
"If you were alone in the rising ocean, you grabbed whatever raft passed by."
"There’s a difference between being alive and just surviving."
"Sometimes courage is just a quiet fight against the darkness, a silent battle against all the odds."
"Don't look sneaky, he told himself. Pretend like you're a good soldier boy."
"It was his chance. He needed to do it while they were distracted setting up camp."
"With a chill, he realized that he wasn’t alone. Someone was watching him."
"Knowing that he was chickenshit. Knowing that he should run for it, but too afraid to risk it."
"The only way to survive amongst these coywolv was to hide all your fear and weakness. Never show anything."
"Dead maggots ain’t any good to us. They might not look like much, but all those maggots, they’re walking resupply."
"Don’t think you ain’t doing good, half-bar. Soon as we get a little blood on your prick, you’ll be golden."
"I don’t want this, Mouse thought. I don’t want to be golden with the boys."
"Once she started pursuing Mouse, it would all be lost."
"Memories of her escape from the Drowned Cities were flooding back."
"You can’t argue with fanatics. They’ll just cut us down."
"All of Mouse’s senses were alive. It felt like he was looking in twenty directions at once."
"None of it made any sense. He hadn’t done anything one way or the other to end up where he was."
"They’re just maggots. They ain’t your business."
"It frightened him to think about it. That the captives had been swallowed in that sea of labor, and that he walked free, for no good reason at all."
"The tide of war had rolled in and swallowed him up, and Banyan Town with him, and they’d all tumbled in the surf."
"The world might move in mysterious ways but God had a plan for them."
"They were immune to bullets. Blessed. Bullets were supposed to just bounce off them, because their general blessed them."
"He was deep inside the Drowned Cities—war lines on top of war lines, in every direction."
"If you wish to have a chance of saving your friend, it’s past time we were on our way."
"They don’t like castoffs here. You better get yourself clear or tag AOG, real quick, girl."
"Resist the urge to think that weapon makes you strong."
"Weaker than you think," Tool said. "Resist its swagger."
"Your kind loves to follow. My kind at least has an excuse, but yours?" Tool smiled again. "I have never seen a creature more willing to rip out its neighbor’s throat."
"Human beings hunger for killing, that is all."
"War requires a steady diet of bullets and rifles and explosives shoveled into its open maw."
"Any number of people would buy it. It seems your mother was very good at what she did."
"We are surrounded by the treasure of the ages, and just outside those walls, tens of thousands of soldiers all kill one another over pieces of scrap that aren’t worth a tenth of what’s in this room."
"For every buyer, you will find a thousand others who would cut your throat for the chance to sell it themselves."
"If all you are given is a rock, you still must strike with it."
"If you wanted to stay alive, you had to keep on killing."
"No one ever wins, here. Bunch of dogs fighting over scraps of something… you don’t even know what it is."
"We aren’t born like this. They make us this way."
"You got to get out and don’t ever come back."
"One step at a time, soldier boy. We’ll take it one step at a time, and we’ll figure it out."