How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
My cell phone. Cell towers don't work, and there's no one to call if they did. But, you know, it's my cell phone. (5.20)
Cassie holds on to relics of the past to help ease the transition into her new nightmare world.
Quote #2
I didn't want to go anywhere. I was still living in denial, pretending all this crazy alien stuff would work out, I don't know how, maybe with the signing of some intergalactic peace treaty. (5.41)
For a while, Cassie held on to an outlandish hope instead of accepting the real situation unfolding around her. Do you think that's human nature?
Quote #3
It's hard to believe now, but my family, like the vast majority of people, went about our daily lives as if the most monumentally mind-blowing thing in human history wasn't happening right over our heads. (5.50)
The mothership appeared ten days before the first alien attack. Looking back, Cassie can't believe that it didn't affect her more.
Quote #4
We're so used to electricity, when it's gone, we don't know what to do. So we jump up or squeal or start jabbering like idiots. (6.24)
Sometimes it seems like Cassie and her fellow humans are always playing catch-up. They're always a step behind.
Quote #5
In case you don't know, we live on a restless planet. The continents sit on slabs of rock, called tectonic plates, and those plates float on a sea of molten lava. (10.3)
We tend to think of the ground under our feet as solid stuff. Cassie points out that, fundamentally, it's not.
Quote #6
Except Daddy's and Cassie's, all the faces he'd known since he knew what faces were are fading. Every face is new now, every face a stranger's face. (37.12)
A lot of things have changed for Sammy, who's just five years old. He longs to see a familiar face.
Quote #7
He'd always thought they'd go home one day and everything would be like it was before they came. Mommy wouldn't come back—he wasn't a baby; he knew Mommy wasn't coming back—but he didn't understand that there was no going back, that what had happened was forever. (38.27)
Sammy is old enough to understand death, but he can't quite wrap his mind around the end of the world. To be fair, most of his elders are experiencing the same problem.
Quote #8
Seeing his family in front of the Christmas tree, gathered around birthday cakes…forces it down my throat: the end of Christmas trees and birthday cakes. (54.14)
Looking through Evan's family photos, Cassie experiences a sharp moment of grief for the old world, pre-attacks.
Quote #9
A thousand years later and a million miles from the halls of George Barnard High School. Here, in the belly of the beast at the bottom of the world, standing right in front of me. Benjamin Thomas Parish. (83.37-83.38)
When Cassie finds herself face-to-face with Ben Parish (her high school crush) at the end of the novel, she reflects on how much things have changed over the last few months.