Claire North

Wildly original, funny and moving, The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August is an extraordinary story of a life lived again and again from World Fantasy Award-winning author Claire North. Harry August is on his deathbed. Again. No matter what he does or the decisions he makes, when death comes, Harry always returns to where he began, a child with all the knowledge of a life he has already lived a dozen times before. Nothing ever changes. Until now. As Harry nears the end of his eleventh life, a little girl appears at his bedside. "I nearly missed you, Doctor August," she says. "I need to send a message." This is the story of what Harry does next, and what he did before, and how he tries to save a past he cannot change and a future he cannot allow.

The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August

Alesha Clifford

Time is not wisdom; wisdom is not intellect.

High Fidelity

Are you the only living creature that matters? Do you think, because you remember it, that your pain is bigger and more important? Do you think, because you experience it, that your life is the only life that gets counted? Do you?”

Blackmail is surprisingly difficult to pull off. The art lies in convincing the target that whatever harm they do themselves–for, by definition, you are compelling them rather than coaxing them into obedience–is less than the harm which will be caused by the reve lation of the secrets in your power.

Zachary Roberts

When I am optimistic, I choose to believe that every life I lead, every choice I make, has consequence. That I am not one Harry August but many, a mind flicking from parallel life to parallel life and that when I die, the world carries on without me, altered by my deeds, marked by my presence. Then I look at the deeds I have done and, perhaps more importantly considering my condition, the deeds I have not done, and the thought depresses me, and I reject the hypothesis as unsound. What is the point of me? Either to change a world - many, many worlds, each touched by the choices I make in my life, for every deed a consequence, and in every love and every sorrow truth - or nothing at all. 

Cassandra Tang

Knowledge is not a substitute for ingenuity, merely an accelerant.

The secret to being unafraid of the darkness is to challenge the darkness to fear you, to raise your eyes sharp to those few souls who stagger by, daring them to believe that you are not, in fact, more frightening than they are.

But in the name of progress we have eaten our souls up, and nothing else matters to us any more.

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