Carrie Ryan, The Forest of Hands and Teeth

"I will always need you," I whisper. "All of this time I've waited for you. And you were never coming for me. Why did you let me wait for you?"

"It's as if there is infinity between our lips and we will never actually touch. Like math, where dividing by half can last for eternity."

"You think you want love, Mary. You think it is this beautiful gift that does nothing but fill you and make you whole. But you are wrong. Love can be cruel and ugly. It can become dark and cause the deepest pain."

"I realize that sometimes death comes before you expect it. That while we are rarely prepared for our friends, family and loved ones to die, we are never prepared for our own deaths. Never prepared to reconcile our own regrets."

"Who are we if not the stories we pass down? What happens when there's no one left to tell those stories? To hear them? Who will ever know that I existed? What if we are the only ones left -- who will know our stories then? Who will remember those?"

"I know in my life there have been breaches, but I also know that I am very good at blocking out the memories that serve me no purpose."

"I sit with my knees pulled in tight and my arms wrapped around my shins. I can no longer feel my feet, as if blood refuses to spread so far from my heart."

"The living used to wonder what happened after death. She said that whole religions were born and evolved around this one simple uncertainty."

"There is a child - a baby - who long since kicked off her blankets. Her skin is ashen and her mouth open in a perpetual yet silent scream. She isn't old enough to roll over, to sit up, to climb. So she lies there kicking her fat legs against the footboard of the crib, eternally calling for her mother. For food. For flesh."

"It wouldn't have mattered if they were scratches or not," he says, his voice like liquid. "I was bitten during the escape from the house." My limbs go weak, everything inside me folding in collapsing on itself."I was already dead," he says, opening his eyes."