The 5th Wave Quotes

Some things you can never leave behind. They don't belong to the past. They belong to you.

We’re here, and then we’re gone, and it’s not about the time we’re here, but what we do with the time.

How do you rid the Earth of humans? Rid the humans of their humanity.

Cruelty isn't a personality trait. Cruelty is a habit.

You know how sometimes you tell yourself that you have a choice, but really you don't have a choice? Just because there are alternatives doesn't mean they apply to you.

I had it all wrong," he says. "Before I found you, I thought the only way to hold on was to find something to live for. It isn't. To hold on, you have to find something you're willing to die for.

We'd stared into the face of Death, and Death blinked first. You'd think that would make us feel brave and invincible. It didn't.

Sarcasm doesn't appear to work on him. If that's true, I'm in trouble: It's my normal mode of communication.

But if I'm it, the last of my kind, the last page of human history, like hell I'm going to let the story end this way. I may be the last one, but I am the one still standing. I am the one turning to face the faceless hunter in the woods on an abandoned highway. I am the one not running but facing. Because if I am the last one, then I am humanity. And if this is humanity's last war, then I am the battlefield.

That's what you do when the curtain is falling--you give the line that the audience wants to hear.

You can only call someone crazy if there’s someone else who’s normal. Like good and evil. If everything was good, then nothing would be good.

What doesn't kill us sharpens us. Hardens us. Schools us. You're beating plowshares into swords, Vosch. You are remaking us. We are the clay, and you are Michelangelo. And we will be your masterpiece.

I am a shark, Cassie," he says slowly, drawing the words out, as if he might be speaking to me for the last time. Looking into my eyes with tears in his, as if he's seeing me for the last time. "A shark who dreamed he was a man.

His heart, the war. Her face, the battlefield.

There's an old saying about the truth setting you free. Don't buy it. Sometimes the truth slams the cell door shut and throws a thousand bolts.

I thought I knew what loneliness was before he found me, but I had no clue. You don't know what real loneliness is until you've known the opposite.

Because we will die, but at least we will die unbroken.

What were they thinking? 'It's an alien apocalypse! Quick, grab the beer!

I didn't save you," he whispers, lips tickling my eyelashes. "You saved me.

I don't care what the stars say about how small we are. One, even the smallest, weakest, most insignificant one, matters.

That’s the cost. That’s the price. Get ready, because when you crush the humanity out of humans, you’re left with humans with no humanity. In other words, you get what you pay for, motherfucker

It isn’t that the lies are too beautiful to resist. It’s that the truth is too hideous to face.

When you look death in the eye and death blinks first, nothing seems impossible.

When the moment comes to stop running from your past, to turn around and face the thing you thought you could not face--the moment when your life teeters between giving up and getting up--when that moment comes, and it always comes, if you can't get up and you can't give up either, here's what you do: Crawl.

I don't move. I wait behind my log, terrified. Over the past ten minutes, it's become such a dear friend, I consider naming it: Howard, my pet log.

God doesn't call the equipped, son. God equips the called. And you have been called.

No hope without faith, no faith without hope, no love without trust, no trust without love. Remove one and the entire human house cards collapses.

When I cry - when I let myself cry - that's who I cry for. I don't cry for myself. I cry for the Cassie that's gone. And I wonder what that Cassie would think of me. The Cassie who kills.

I would kill for a cheeseburger. Honestly. If I stumbled across someone eating a cheeseburger, I would kill them for it.

In case you're an alien and you're reading this: BITE ME.

Is this how humanity waves good-bye? Hell no.

Even the most sensitive person can get used to even the most insensitive thing. Cruelty isn’t a personality trait. Cruelty is a habit.

Some things you don't have to promise. You just do.

It's an either/or world now.

People die. Love endures.

I found you, but in finding you, I lost myself.

The minute we decide that one person doesn´t matter anymore, they´ve won.

I took one look at it and demanded that he name three things he isn't good at. "Roller skating, singing, and talking to girls." "You left out stalking," I told him as he helped me out of the bed. "I can always tell when you're lurking around corners." "You only asked for three.

Love is forever. If it wasn't, it wouldn't be love. The world is beautiful. If it wasn't, it wouldn't be the world.

Ha-ha. The dumb jock who can’t talk the Queen’s English. I swear to God, the next person who corrects my grammar gets punched in the face.

There's the bullshit you know that you know; the bullshit you don't know and know you don't know; and the bullshit you just think you know but really don't.

Why did they come billions of miles just to stare at us? It's rude.

The world ended once. It will end again. The world ends, then the world comes back. The world always comes back.

Maybe the last human being on Earth won't die of starvation or exposure or as a meal of wild animals. Maybe the last one to die will be killed by the last one alive.

I will teach you to love death. I will empty you of grief and guilt and self-pity and fill you up with hate and cunning and the spirit of vengeance. I will make my final stand here, Benjamin Thomas Parish.

It's always been this way...We bear the unbearable. We endure the unendurable. We do what must be done until we ourselves are undone.

Are you okay?" I (Cassie) call up to him. "Um. Define okay." (Ben) "Okay means you're not bleeding to death." "I'm okay.

The next time you better have a good reason," I tease him. "Okay." He kisses me again. "Reason?" I ask softly. "Um. You're really pretty?" "That's a good one. I don't know if it's true, but it's good.

You never know when the truth will come home. You can’t choose the time. The time chooses you.

Something weird," Ben said. "You would think, with ninety-nine percent of us gone, the two percent would get along better." Um, that would be one percent, Parish.

You can’t force yourself to trust. So you put all your doubts in a little box and bury it deep and then try to forget where you buried it

And if humanity is the last war, then I am the battlefield.

Somentimes you're in the wrong place at the wrong time and what happens is nobody's fault.You just want to feel bad so you'll feel better.

I start to unbutton his shirt. "Got to get these clothes off," I mutter. "You don't know how long I've waited to hear you say that." Smile. Lopsided. Sexy.

He spreads his fingers over my heart, like he’s holding it, like it belongs to him, the hard-fought-for territory he’s won fair and square.

If the world breaks a million and one promises, can you trust the million and second?

Do you know how to tell who the enemy is, Cassie?

If I had faced it then, I wouldn't be facing it now, but sooner or later you have to choose between running and facing the thing you thought you could not face.

It isn't up to me to break his heart; that's time's job.

Some things down to the smallest of things, are worth the sum of all things

But I don’t panic. I don’t bolt like a frightened gazelle. I am more than the sum of my fear. It isn’t fear that will defeat them. Not fear or faith or hope or even love, but rage.

After another half second, he's locked me in a bear hug, crushing me into his chest and lifting my feet a couple inches off the ground as I kick furiously with my heels, twisting my head back and forth, snapping at his forearm with my teeth. And the whole time his lips tickling the delicate skin of my ear. "Cassie. Don't. Cassie..." "Let...me...go." "That's been the whole problem. I can't.

Climb onto my shoulders. I will not let you fall.

Some things, down to the smallest of things, are worth the sum of all things.

Pain is necessary. Pain is life. Without pain there can be no joy.

I am the one, Not Running, Not Staying, But FACING

´Because love is irrational,´ I tell Vosh. ´It doesn´t follow rules. Not even its own rules. Love is the one thing in the universe that´s unpredictable.´

Because promises matter. They matter now more than ever.

It's almost dawn. You can feel it coming. The world holds its breath, because there's really no guarantee that the sun will rise. That there was a yesterday doesn't mean there will be a tomorrow.

I didn't know until then that rage had a taste and it tasted like your own blood.

A moment comes in war when the last line must be crossed. The line that separates what you hold dear from what total war demands. If he couldn't cross that line, the battle was over, and he was lost. His heart, the war. Her face, the battlefield. With a cry only he could hear, the hunter turned. And ran.

It's hard to plan for what comes next when what comes next is not something you planned for.

And no answer when we sent our message. Something like, "Hello, welcome to Earth. Hope you enjoy your stay. Please don't kill us.

It wasn't aliens that first made us gear up for war; it was our fellow humans.

He didn’t like to see animals in captivity. When he looked into their eyes, something in their eyes looked back at him.

Still, you tend to believe what you always believed, think what you always thought, expect what you always expected

I'm here because they've killed almost all of us, but not all of us. And that's their mistake, son. That's the flaw in their plan. Because if you don't kill all of us at once, whoever's left are not going to be the weak ones. The strong ones- and only the strong ones- will survive. The bent but unbroken, if you know what I mean. People like me. And people like you.

Our hearts, the war. Her body, the battlefield.

You're never perfectly safe. No human being on Earth ever is or ever was. To live is to risk your life, your heart, everything.

Maybe you reach a certain point in evolution where boredom is the greatest threat to your survival. Maybe this isn’t a planetary takeover at all, but a game. Like a kid pulling wings off flies.

So there you go. You can love the good in us and hate the bad, but the bad is in us, too. Without it, we wouldn’t be us.

Sometimes in my tent, late at night, I think I can hear the stars scraping against the sky.

single death is a tragedy; a million is a statistic.

Then the door flew open and Mr. Faulks told us to head over to the gym. I thought that was really smart. Get all of us in one place so the aliens didn't have to waste a lot of ammunition.

The kid who didn't go back when he should have and now goes back when he shouldn't. The kid called Zombie, who made a promise, and if he breaks that promise, the war is over - not the big war, but the war that matters, the one in the battlefield of his heart. Because promises matter. They matter now more than ever.

My bounty is as boundless as the sea, My love as deep; the more I give to thee, The more I have; for both are infinite. —William Shakespeare

When I woke up in you, Cassie. I wasn't fully human until I saw myself in your eyes." And then there are real human tears in his real human eyes, and it's my turn to hold him while his heart breaks. My turn to see myself in his eyes.

In every creepy movie ever made, the barn is the prime nesting ground for the things you don't know you're looking for and always regret finding.

But I am even more than this. I am all those they remember, the ones they loved, everyone they knew, and everyone they only heard about. How many are contained in me? Count the stars. Go on, number the grains of sand. That's me. I am humanity.

No matter how well you know someone, there's still a part of them you won't. You can't. Like, ever. A locked room. I don't know.

Tampons. I’m constantly worrying about my stash and if I’ll be able to find more.

And I open to him, a flower to the rain.

He drops into the room, landing on the balls of his feet like a cat. I'm in his arms in the time it takes to say 'I love you,' which he does, stroking my hair, whispering my name and the words, 'My mayfly.

He asks me what happened to my leg. I told him I was shot by a shark. He doesn't react. Doesn't seem confused or amused or anything. Like getting shot by a shark is a perfectly natural thing in the aftermath of the arrival.

If you're an insect, then you're a mayfly. Here for a day and then gone... It's always been that way. We're here, and then we're gone, and it's not about the time we're here, but what we do with the time.

Once a human named Evan Walker had a dream—a dream it can no longer remember—and in that dream there was a tent in the woods and in that tent there was a girl who called herself humanity, and the girl was worth more to it than its own life.

Onto his stomach. Then knees. Then hands. His elbows quivered, his wrists threatened to buckle under his own weight. Self-centered, stubborn, sentimental, childish, vain. I am humanity. Cynical, naive, kind, cruel, soft as down, hard as tungsten steel. I am humanity He crawled. I am humanity. He fell. I am humanity. He got up.

What is it about him that makes me want to slap him and kiss him, run from him and to him, throw my arms around him and knee him in the balls, all at the same time? I'd like to blame the Arrival for the effect he has on me, but something tells me guys have been doing this to us for a lot longer than a few months.

They sat on the back porch and looked at the stars while Zombie told the story of a queen named Cassiopeia who lived forever on a throne in the sky. “But her throne’s tilted down,” Sam said, looking at the constellation. “Won’t she fall out?” Zombie cleared his throat. “She won’t fall. Her throne is turned that way so she can keep watch over her realm.” “What’s a realm?” Zombie pressed his hand against Sam’s chest. “This is.” Zombie’s hand to Sam’s heart. “Here.

They made a major mistake," he blurted out, "the dumb bastards, when they didn't start by killing you first." "Benjamin Thomas Parish, that was the sweetest and most bizarre compliment anyone's ever given me." I kissed him on the cheek. He kissed me on the mouth. "You know," I whispered, "a year ago, I would have sold my soul for that." He shook his head. "Not worth it." And, for one-ten thousandth of a second, all of it fell away, the despair and grief and anger and pain and hunger, and the old Ben Parish rose from the dead. The eyes that impaled. The smile that slayed. In another moment, he would fade, slide back into the new Ben, the one called Zombie, and I understood something I hadn't before: He was dead, the object of my schoolgirl desires, just as the schoolgirl who desired him was dead.