Post Apocalypse Quotes

My dad had always said to not trust something unless it's taken a tumble in the dirt. He'd meant it for people, and for things. Shiny and new didn't exist for humankind any more. ~ Katherine McIntyre

Make me a weapon," I whispered as he pulled away. "Make it so I never have to dream about this again - make it so we can have this ... forever. ~ Cassandra Giovanni

Every new generation of women, it seems, feminist and housewife alike, is encouraged by popular culture to disavow its forebears and rebrand itself as an all-new, never-before-seen generational phenomenon, completely different in every way from what came before. The 'housewives' of the 1970s gave way to the Martha Stewart 'homemakers' of the 1980s, then the 'soccer moms' of the 1990s, then the stay-at-home moms of the 2000s. Next may come the homeschooling homesteaders of the impending post-apocalypse - who knows? What's significant is that the cycle of idealization, devaluation, and revision gives an appearance of progress, of superficial change, that distracts us from the big picture. ~ Carina Chocano

This is a dystopia, but also a post-apocalypse. The dystopia survived the apocalypse, nobody can get their head around it - too bad! You can do post-apocalypse things, survivalist stuff, rationing, killing, new tribalism, but you can also go the dystopia route, struggle against the decadent lords and masters, smash the seductive machine that's controlling your head. Just because you're crazy doesn't mean you're not also stupid, and neither precludes the possibility that you've got your boot on the neck of someone even worse off. ~ Jonathan Lethem

If you want to survive, you're going to have to learn to be more ruthless. ~ Suzanne Lowe

History is replete with the seeds of apocalypse. In particular, the 19th/early 20th Century in France was a time of country-shattering events, whether it was the rise and fall of Napoleon Bonaparte (the creation and brutal upending of a whole new social order, within scarcely more than a decade), or the Great War (which devastated the country to a degree that is hard to believe today, wiping out an entire generation in the trenches). It was no great stretch to imagine a magical war engulfing Europe in 1914, and leaving Paris as a field of ruins filled with magical booby traps–the familiar monuments destroyed, the Seine overflowing with the residue of spells.

It's no secret that I'm fascinated by the narrative of war, and of recovery after war: how people struggle to rebuild lives and go on in the wake of world-shattering devastation; how the past can still cast a long, terrible shadow over everything; how the years before the war become a golden thing, regardless of how many injustices and hardships might have been happening then. I'm equally fascinated by history–the narratives that get preserved and enshrined, the stories that are passed down; and the speed with which some things get forgotten while others endure for generations. For me, the vocabulary and tropes of post-apocalypse were a great way to tackle those subjects, and to imagine what would happen in a city that had such a traumatic event in its past. ~ Aliette De Bodard

When he woke in the woods in the dark and the cold of the night he'd reach out to touch the child sleeping beside him. Nights dark beyond darkness and the days more gray each one than what had gone before. Like the onset of some cold glaucoma dimming away the world. ~ Cormac McCarthy

I'd say it was a relief to have at last nothing, nothing, but I was too hollow to register relief, too empty to carry it. ~ Peter Heller

The world was already a miserable place in the spring of that cursed year. The New Depression was at its height. Stocks fell, jobs were lost, and consumer consumption fell in a corporate death spiral as the aging technoczars were revealed to have feet of clay. Financial institutions underreacted, the government overreacted, and a society living on borrowed time paid for with borrowed dollars failed. Hard times and hunger came to the Western world, which was all the more of a shock because the generation that survived the last financial collapse had virtually died out. ~ E.E. Knight

Maruman does not loll. ~ Isobelle Carmody

The main element crucial for the survival of life is also a demon in disguise; it will snatch your life away as quickly as you were given it. ~ Scott A. Butler

We all love after-the-bomb stories. If we didn't, why would there be so many of them? There's something attractive about all those people being gone, about wandering in a depopulated world, scrounging cans of Campbell's pork and beans, defending one's family from marauders. But some secret part of us thinks it would be good to survive. All those other folks will die. That's what after-the-bomb stories are all about. ~ John Varley

Who would want to be the prey in a world full of hunters? ~ Alexia Purdy

In the front was a man he knew only as "Samson," a big man that from all appearances was a former juice head gym rat with exquisitely defined muscles, stripped to the waist and carrying a huge nine foot cross hewn from raw timber and held together with nails and twine. Behind him in a rough line were the flagellates: five men also stripped to the waist, holding various chains, heavy corded ropes, and one with what looked like a leather whip from the S&M sex shop. They beat their backs as they slowly walked down the center of the street. ~ Joseph M. Chiron

Then I'm a paunchy guy in a room, with a note pinned to his sleeve:
"You were alone in the world," it says, "and did a kindness for someone in need. Good for you. Now post this module, and follow this map to the home of Mrs. Ken Schwartz. Care for her with some big money that will come in the mail. Find someone to love. Your heart has never been broken. You've never done anything unforgivable or hurt anyone beyond reparation. Everyone you've ever loved you've treated like gold. ~ George Saunders

Nowadays shots are created in post-production, on computers. It's not really photography. ~ Mary Ellen Mark

After my second, I started working with a nutritionist who specializes in post-baby weight loss. It's called Simply Beautiful Mom. I'm in restaurants all the time because of work, and she actually will look at menus online before I go and she says, 'These are the three things you're allowed to order. Don't even open a menu.' ~ Lauren Weisberger

The Pre-Historic Age Ended With A Bang. This Post-Historic Age Will End With A Cumshot Of An Auto Asphyxiated Minor Celebrity ~ Dean Cavanagh

Just as I suspected, my room does look different, post-eclipse. It looks smalled, like it can't contain me anymore.
After all, I've got a whole new world to see. ~ Wendy Mass

Centuries of dire prophecy have taught us all to be, well, unconvinced. And there have been decades, entire scores of years when, to be frank, wholesale destruction didn't sound so bad, considering. You remember, we were all disappointed. That the world never ended meant we had to get out of bed after all... ~ Scott Cairns

The history of a movement, the history of a nation, the history of a race is the guide-post of that movement's destiny, that nation's destiny, that race's destiny. ~ Marcus Garvey

He led me out of that tangle of alleys in another direction, it seems, for when we sighted a lamp-post we were in a half-familiar street with monotonous rows of mingled tenement blocks and old houses. Charter Street, it turned out to be, but I was too flustered to notice just where we hit ~ H.P. Lovecraft

... there are certain questions that must never be asked. Of anyone. Even oneself. ~ Jenny Lynne

See, the 'On the Road' that came out in 1957 was censored. A lot of the honesty of it, the bitter honesty, is in the original scroll version that came out in 2007 on the 50-year anniversary. Back then, there was so much post-Second World War fear that was imposed on everybody - 'You must live life this way' - and these guys were bored. ~ Garrett Hedlund

This post-college world felt different from everything that had come before it ... ~ Meg Wolitzer

Yes, because in a zombie apocalypse, there's a lot of downtime to get your hair done. ~ J. Lynn

Her [Sarah Palin] son went to Iraq under George W. Bush, but it gives us a chance to explain what post-traumatic stress disorder is. ~ Jon Soltz

After the meal was done, the brothers moved slowly, as if drugged or sleepy, which made me wonder if it was similar to the post-turkey feeling on Thanksgiving Day. ~ Colleen Houck

The right hon. Gentleman will be known for ever as the only Chancellor in the post-war period who brought this country to the brink of bankruptcy. ~ Denis Healey

I don't back down. Like, I don't know how to flop. That's never been a part of my game. For me to know if a guy likes to turn left shoulder or right shoulder in the post, I have an advantage. Or if he likes to go left all the time, I have an advantage. Or if he can't make open jump shots, I have an advantage. ~ Kenyon Martin

First things first: studies show policing is hard. At a minimum, they prove many LEO's struggle to cope with what they are exposed to. For example, research indicates that while 8.2% of the general population suffers from an active alcohol or substance abuse addiction, up to 23% of public safety personnel, including law enforcement officers, are engaged in the same struggle. Furthermore, due to the constant exposure to violence, conflict, death, pain and suffering, coupled with the extremely stressful and draining nature of their work, police run a significant risk of experiencing Post-Traumatic Stress Injuries (PTSI)/Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Lastly, research by Dr. John Violanti in 2004 indicates a combination of alcohol use and PTSD produces a tenfold increase in the risk of suicide. This small snapshot of research paints a grim picture on how policing can negatively impact those that take up its calling. ~ Karen Rodwill Solomon

There's nothing to fear from the end of the world. Annihilation is a fire that cleanses what it burns. For a corrupted world, apocalypse is the only hope for redemption. ~ Jennifer Giesbrecht

The moment I start to feel that sinking feeling of dissatisfaction welling up in me, I know I need to message a friend, give her a call, or post a note telling her what I love about what she's doing. I need to deliberately write down how all the ways she's running confidently in her lane inspire me. Because the more I focus on how her work blesses, the less I'm able to want it for myself. It's hard to hate something that inspires you. ~ Lisa-Jo Baker

LA isn't a walking city, or a subway city, so if someone isn't in my house or my car we'll never be together, not even for a moment. And just to be absolutely sure of that, when I leave my car my iPhone escorts me, letting everyone else in the post office know that I'm not really with them, I'm with my own people, who are so hilarious that I can't help smiling to myself as I text them back. ~ Miranda July

(an apocalypse is a vision of heavenly secrets that can make sense of earthly realities), ~ Bart D. Ehrman

Technology isn't what makes us "post-human" or "transhuman," as some writers and scholars have recently suggested. It's what makes us human. Technology is in our nature. Through our tools we give our dreams form. We bring them into the world. The practicality of technology may distinguish it from art, but both spring from a similar, distinctly human yearning. ~ Nicholas Carr

Post-9/11, we saw an immediate uptick in the amount of people in our stores, all over the country. People wanted that human connection. We are not going to fracture the Starbucks experience. ~ Howard Schultz

IT IS SAID that time is unrelated to everything else. It goes on and on, unnoticing of our actions, our falls, our triumphs. Who's to care then, if time does not remember us? It flies by, fleeting, inattentive and disinterested in any occupants of this earth. What are we, then, if time thinks so little of everyone it passes? Time is truly apathetic to the many to whom a little empathy would mean so much.
~April~
Disarming Reign of Blood ~ Alexia Purdy

Corruption ultimately guilts the corrupt, and it hardens the innocent who suffer as a result of it. It isn't the young who corrupt the old, rather it's the inverse.
The aim of the old should be to ensure that the young grow up incorruptible. ~ Justin K. McFarlane Beau

The dead die hard, trespassers on the beyond, they must take the place as they find it, the shafts and manholes back into the muck, till such time as the lord of the manor incurs through his long acquiescence a duty of care in respect of them. They are free among the dead by all means, then their troubles are over, their natural troubles. But the debt of nature, that scandalous post-obit on one's own estate, can no more be discharged by kicking the bucket than descent can be made into the same stream twice. This is a true saying. ~ Samuel Beckett

Your ... Your aura. It's ... amazing. It's shining. I mean, it always shines, but today ... Well I've never seen anything like it. I didn't expect that after everything that happened.'
I shifted around uncomfortably. If I lit up around Dimitri normally, what on earth happened to my aura post-sex? ~ Richelle Mead

If Ford is to Chevrolet what Dodge is to Chrysler,
what Corn Flakes are to Post Toasties,
what the clear blue sky is to the deep blue sea,
what Hank Williams is to Neil Armstrong -
can you doubt we were made for each other? ~ Lyle Lovett

Those crazy physicists that spend all day cooking themselves under an atomic reactor and all night writing stories for Weird World have done it. Spoiled my day completely. One of those idiots has hung the world up like a celluloid ball in an airstream. ~ Shirley Jackson

Particularly during the late 1960s, a large number of American skyjackers earnestly believed that Fidel Castro's Cuba was an egalitarian, post-racial utopia. ~ Brendan I. Koerner

Houses without personality are a series of walled enclosures with furniture standing around in them. Other houses are filled with things of little intrinsic value, even with much that is shabby and yet they have that inviting atmosphere ... ~ Emily Post

We have so long been subject to external criticism that we don't know how to react to internal criticism, because whereas the most enduring, positive and sensible response to the former is a united front – you shall not divide us, here we stand – responding to the latter is an entirely different ballgame.

This is my fear: that as a community, we don't know how to critique ourselves, and that this is dong us damage. Criticism, and specifically the criticism of both literary publications and the mainstream press, has so long been the weapon of the enemy that our first response on seeing it wielded internally is to call it the work of traitors. We have found strength in the creation of our own conventions and the hallowing of our own legends, flourishing to such an extent that, even if we are not yet accepted into the mainstream literary establishment, we are nonetheless part of the cultural mainstream. We are written about inaccurately, yet we are written about; and if there ever was a time when the whole genre seemed a precarious, faddish endeavour, then that time is surely past.

Blog post: Criticism in SFF and YA ~ Foz Meadows

There's a certain time in the core of making a movie from pre-production to halfway through post-production I don't read any project, my agent will tell people that "he's not reading." And then when I know how the movie's probably gonna work halfway into post-production, I'll come along. ~ Ang Lee

After studying in Sheffield, I went down to London to do my post-graduate degree at the National Film and Television School, embarking on the movie that would eventually become 'A Grand Day Out.' ~ Nick Park

In the post-individualistic era, science and spirituality will become allies, and human beings will realize a vast potentiality now only dimly felt. ~ Huston Smith

Post-structuralism is among other things a kind of theoretical hangover from the failed uprising of '68, a way of keeping the revolution warm at the level of language, blending the euphoric libertarianism of that moment with the stoical melancholia of its aftermath. ~ Terry Eagleton

In the early 1950s, Fanny Rosenow, a breast cancer survivor and cancer advocate, called the New York Times to post an advertisement for a support group for women with breast cancer. Rosenow was put through, puzzlingly, to the society editor of the newspaper. When she asked about placing her announcement, a long pause followed. "I'm sorry, Ms. Rosenow, but the Times cannot publish the word breast or the word cancer in its pages. "Perhaps," the editor continued, "you could say there will be a meeting about diseases of the chest wall." Rosenow ~ Siddhartha Mukherjee

The truly apocalyptic view of the world is that things do not repeat themselves. It isn't absurd, e.g., to believe that the age of science and technology is the beginning of the end for humanity; that the idea of great progress is delusion, along with the idea that the truth will ultimately be known; that there is nothing good or desirable about scientific knowledge and that mankind, in seeking it, is falling into a trap. It is by no means obvious that this is not how things are. ~ Ludwig Wittgenstein

What it came down to was a search not for the most talent, the greatest brilliance, but for the fewest black marks, the fewest objections. The man who had made the fewest enemies in an era when forceful men espousing good causes had made many enemies: the Kennedys were looking for someone who made very small waves. They were looking for a man to fill the most important Cabinet post, a job requiring infinite qualities of intelligence, wisdom and sophistication, a knowledge of both this country and the world, and they were going at it as presidential candidates had often filled that other most crucial post, the Vice-Presidency, by choosing someone who had offended the fewest people. Everybody's number-two choice. ~ David Halberstam

The emergent Church is the latest act in the wave of antimodernist revolt by liturgical renewal and charismatic revival, a rebellion whose central insight is that rationalistic fundamentalism, as much as liberalism, is a mass of worldly accretions. The historical record and human feeling, not the illusion of inerrancy, are supposed to command authority in the post-Christian age. Yet American evangelicals' craving for clear authority is second only to their refusal to let any authority boss them around. Skeptics note that the Emergent Church is a movement of quintessentially evangelical individualists. 'By constantly appealing to the "capital T" Tradition, and then in effect picking and choosing from its offerings, they do not succeed in living out any of the traditions that flow from the Tradition, but create their own eclectic, ad hod churchmanship,' wrote D.A. Carson, a professor at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. 'It is controlled by what these emerging thinkers judge to be appropriate in the postmodern world - and this results, rather ironically, in one of the most self-serving appeals to tradition I have ever seen. ~ Molly Worthen

I had an advantage because people would post me on blogs because I had co-signs from Kanye West, Def Jam, and G.O.O.D. Music. Everything I put out, the blogs would put up. When I realized that, I used that to my advantage and helped build my following on my own. ~ Big Sean

An army post in peacetime is a dull place. Things happen, but then they happen over and over again. ~ Carson McCullers

I'm not a big fan of kids' movies that have this knowing snarkiness to them or this post-modern take on storytelling. I think that sails right over the heads of most kids. There's something to be said for a well-told fairy tale. There's a reason that these mythic stories stay with us. ~ John C. Reilly

I have always, essentially, been waiting. Waiting to become something else, waiting to be that person I always thought I was on the verge of becoming, waiting for that life I thought I would have. In my head, I was always one step away. In high school, I was biding my time until I could become the college version of myself, the one my mind could see so clearly. In college, the post-college "adult" person was always looming in front of me, smarter, stronger, more organized. Then the married person, then the person I'd become when we have kids. For twenty years, literally, I have waited to become the thin version of myself, because that's when life will really begin.
And through all that waiting, here I am. My life is passing, day by day, and I am waiting for it to start. I am waiting for that time, that person, that event when my life will finally begin.
I love movies about "The Big Moment" – the game or the performance or the wedding day or the record deal, the stories that split time with that key event, and everything is reframed, before it and after it, because it has changed everything. I have always wanted this movie-worthy event, something that will change everything and grab me out of this waiting game into the whirlwind in front of me. I cry and cry at these movies, because I am still waiting for my own big moment. I had visions of life as an adventure, a thing to be celebrated and experienced, but all I was doing was going to work and coming home, and that ~ Shauna Niequist

Thoughts have power, influencing humanity's collective path. The difference between Mother Teresa and Adolf Hitler lies, ultimately, in how they thought. A thought can change the world for the better - or damn it forever. ~ Diane Shauer

Feminism sounds great when advocated by men. ~ Raheel Farooq

I don't mind when my horse is left at the post. I don't mind when my horse comes up to me in the stands and asks, "Which way do I go?" But when the horse I bet on is at the $2 window betting on another horse in the same race ... ~ Henny Youngman

What is this you write- 'Come home? Surely now, in our terrible dearth of workers, it is not the time for any one to desert his post. Send us only our first twenty men and I may be tempted to come to help you to find the second twenty. ~ Alexander Murdoch Mackay