There was always so much going on. Never any time to stop and smell the roses. Never any roses to stop and smell anyway.

Erik wondered if they saw the irony of such a tiny complex expecting to find the cure from the very lives they minimized in comparison to the whole. If such small, little lives mattered not, how could they believe anything they did would matter?

I turn and run, watching my feet trample a massacre of weeds. I mourn them. The only thing that grows is dandelions in the cracks of the sidewalk and we always end up killing them.

They were like her rocks. Imperfect and surprising and maybe better in the long run than certainties. Chances, she thought, were life

I have a curse.
I HAVE A GIFT.
I'm a monster.
I'M MORE THAN HUMAN.
My touch Is lethal.
MY TOUCH IS POWER.
I am their weapon.
I WILL FIGHT BACK.

[...]How can a great civilization have destroyed itself so completely?"
"Perhaps,"said Apollo, "by being materially great and materially wise and nothing else.