Rhine Dystopian Quotes

We can change so many times in our lives. We're born into a family, and it's the only life we can imagine, but it changes. Buildings collapse. Fires burn. And the next second we're someplace else entirely, going through different motions and trying to keep up with this new person we've become. ~ Lauren DeStefano

I might not have believed this if a Human had said it. Humans said one thing with their bodies and another with their mouths and everyone had to spend time and energy figuring out what they really meant. And once we did understand them, the Humans got angry and acted as though we had stolen thoughts from their minds. ~ Octavia E. Butler

There is a reason you didn't die that day,' I said with compassion, devotion, 'and it had nothing to do with cowardice. You deserved to live, and every day after that, because you had a purpose - and yes, you still had a family.' I pressed his hand firmer against my heart. 'I am your family, Atticus, and you are mine, and if you believe in fate, you'd see we were meant to meet, that everything that has happened to bring us together, was meant to be. ~ Jessica Redmerski

In the first couple of weeks there were big piles of trash outside every house. All the stuff you couldn't find another use for and couldn't compost. Yogurt cups, torn trash bags, dirty diapers, hair-spray cans, paper towels. Sometimes you'd see a pile that was as high as your waist. Nathan said it was a purge, a cleanse. But you could just as well say that who we were went out with the empties. We will never get our selves back. ~ Jess Row

If the only option you leave poor people with is to resort to violence in order to survive, they'll do just that. And there are lots more poor people in this world than there are rich ones. ~ Michael Monroe

An army of principles will penetrate where an army of soldiers cannot. Neither the Channel nor the Rhine will arrest its progress. It will march on the horizon of the world and it will conquer. ~ Thomas Paine

If I could, I'd take the food and art of Italy, for example, couple it with the quiet, understated personality of France and the orderliness of Germany, the cinematic and literary wit of Britain, and blend it into one utopian, and ultimately dystopian, probably, civilization. ~ Tsh Oxenreider

Slowly, he lifts the flashlight. Her shorts are torn and frayed, her shirt ripped from chest to naval, exposing her black bra and dirty stomach. And then he raises the light so it reflects off her face, off the crimson tears streaming from the girl's eyes. Her boney hands fly up to protect her face, and her head tilts sharply as she hisses. ~ Laura Kreitzer

Houellebecq has created a new genre - the dystopian conversion tale. Submission is not the story some expected of an armed coup d'état, and no one in it expresses hatred or even contempt of Muslims. At one level it is simply about a man who through suffering and indifference finds himself slouching toward Mecca. At another level, though, it is about a civilization that after centuries of a steady, almost imperceptible sapping of inner conviction finds itself doing the same thing. The literature of civilizational decline, to which Zemmour's Le Suicide français is a minor contribution, is typically brash and breathless. Not so Submission. There is not even drama here - no clash of spiritual armies, no martyrdom, no final conflagration. Stuff just happens, as in all Houellebecq's fiction. All one hears at the end is a bone-chilling sigh of collective relief. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. Whatever. ~ Mark Lilla

So if you're trying to play games with me, I should let you know up front that it's not going to work.
"What?" I frown "what are you talking abou-"
"You can't play hard to get, kid." He raises his eyebrow. "I can't even touch you. Takes 'hard to get' to a whole new level, if you know what I mean." "Oh my god," I mouth, eyes closed, shaking my head. "You are insane." He falls to his knees. "Insane for your sweet, sweet love!" "Kenji" I can't lift my eyes because I'm afraid to look around, but I'm desperate for him to stop talking. To put an entire room between us at all times. I know he's joking, but I might be the only one. "What?" he says, his voice booming around the room. "Does my love embarass you?" "Please-please get up-and lower your voice-"
"Hell no."
"Why not?" I'm pleading now.
"Because if I lower my voice, I won't be able to hear myself speak. And that," He says, "Is my faviorite part."
I can't even look at him.
"Don't deny my Juliette I'm a lonely man."
What is wrong with you?"
"You're breaking my heart." His voice is even louder now, ~ Tahereh Mafi

I was ten," I said. "Give me a little credit."
"To a boy with aspirations like that, I would extend my respect - but not credit. Or life insurance." Abraham sounded amused. "You are an interesting man, David Charleston, but you sound like you were an even more interesting child. ~ Brandon Sanderson

Frown deepening, Jared bounces a hand off the chair arm. 'You know you're different, Princess. And it's not just because you're some fancy, spoiled rich girl. Hell, you don't smell like anyone else. Money can't buy that smell.' I assume he wasn't talking about my expensive perfume, which money did in fact buy. ~ L.E. Sterling

I fell silent after that. I didn't want to talk about such things anymore, at least today. My chest already hurt and I was trying to keep my mind calm. I didn't want to think of a future so bleak and dark. I had plans for my future and they didn't involve the world ending or society collapsing. ~ J.M. Northup

There has to be beauty left in the world, Julia," said Kiyu. "Otherwise we have nothing. ~ Erica Lindquist

When I see your scars, do I want to erase them? Absolutely. But not your physical scars. The real ones, beneath the surface. The ones that compel you to stay silent or force you to cringe. Those are the scars I want to obliterate." His finger circles the dip of a burn mark on her forearm. "This is a battle trophy and nothing to be ashamed of. Every one of your scars makes you more beautiful to me. ~ Laura Kreitzer

What we are probably given is a mixture of truth and untruth. It's anybody's guess as to which part is which and how much there is of each. ~ Ira Levin

My chest tightens to the point I fear my heart will suffocate from the pressure of it. Society's standards are the total opposite from how I was raised. The boy who I thought to be so strikingly handsome has less than a year of his life to live, my new friend only a few more months beyond that. Yet they are living these uneventful lives in which they don't think there is a reason for anything. Will I ever see my mother again, or is this how I will be forced to live the rest of my life, as well? ~ Jen Naumann

I pat Eden's head. I'll be right back okay? Stay on the bench. Don't go anywhere. If someone tries to make you move, you scream. Got it? ~ Marie Lu

Time keeps ticking away, unaware of the suffering each second generates. Time doesn't care, because if it did, it would've reversed. ~ Laura Kreitzer

I don't know how it happened. Nobody does. There are only theories, empty rhetoric and doomsday prophecies. None of them are right, but none of them are completely wrong, either. They all have a grain of truth. All I know is where I was and what I was doing when it happened. ~ Summer Lane

What are you doing here..." he whispered she put her hand over her lips Ingra nodded. Of course pick the most awkward time to show up "Two days. ~ Charon Lloyd-Roberts

For the first time she realized she'd spent so much time mourning a world that had ended ages ago, hoping to resurrect it, that she'd never paid attention to what it was becoming. Or returning to again, now that it was unfettered. Where were the centaurs, she might have asked instead. Where were the gorgons, the furies, the giants and the gods? ~ Brian Hodge

Be sure to volunteer to make your community a better place. We all win when everyone gives. ~ Alexandra Swann

People read vampire novels and say, 'Oh I want to read another vampire novel.' People read fantasy, and they're like, 'Oh I love fantasy.' I don't know that people are necessarily finishing 'Hunger Games' and immediately wanting to read another dystopian tale. ~ David Levithan

It's not a war. It's an annihilation," he'd mumbled low for her ears only. She'd been unable to respond, only focusing on her own breath and marveling that she in fact was still breathing. ~ Jettie Necole

If there's a heaven, it's a dark place. A cold place. A lonely place. ~ Sakurazaka Hiroshi

He whispered for her ears only as he listed off the facts: "Military are allowed a larger portion. Being second in command restricts me from no room and giving orders is what I've been hired to do. As far as ignoring you, that is not the case. I've checked up on you, and you are doing well. My intentions have never been to harm you or insult you. You actually are quite breathtaking in that dress and that is the problem, you need not draw attention to yourself. You are my responsibility and the answer to 'why' will always be because I have to. ~ Jettie Necole

I want you. I need you. I need everything that you are and everything you were and everything that you will be. ~ Jessica Redmerski

No one wore high heels anymore. They were in the same category as corsets –a torturous invention of the past that had served to make men desire women and caused women nothing but sore feet and broken ankles. ~ Elin Peer

Social conservatives do have a pretty decent predictive track record, including in many cases where their fears were dismissed as wild and apocalyptic, their projections as sky-is-falling nonsense, their theories of how society and human nature works as evidence-free fantasies. . . . If you look at the post-1960s trend data - whether it's on family structure and social capital, fertility and marriage rates, patterns of sexual behavior and their links to flourishing relationships, or just trends in marital contentment and personal happiness more generally - the basic social conservative analysis has turned out to have more predictive power than my rigorously empirical liberal friends are inclined to admit. . . .
In the late 1960s and early '70s, the pro-choice side of the abortion debate frequently predicted that legal abortion would reduce single parenthood and make marriages more stable, while the pro-life side made the allegedly-counterintuitive claim that it would have roughly the opposite effect; overall, it's fair to say that post-Roe trends were considerably kinder to Roe's critics than to the "every child a wanted child" conceit. Conservatives (and not only conservatives) also made various "dystopian" predictions about eugenics and the commodification of human life as reproductive science advanced in the '70s, while many liberals argued that these fears were overblown; today, from "selective reduction" to the culling of Down's Syndrome fetuses to worldwide tr ~ Ross Douthat

Everybody stood dead still. It was as if now that we were about to get out of the Tower for the first time since the flood, we were scared, like we were crossing some line that we wouldn't be able to uncross.
Greenleigh ~ B.E. Scully

We are gathered here to send our gratitude to Pinnacle Officer Wilcox
and FERTS, for our daily provision and protection from those who would seek to strike against our Vassals, our Fighters and our Internees. ~ Grace Hudson

The copyright industry has managed to kill civil liberties for their own children, ushering in a dystopian surveillance machine, merely to avoid taking responsibility for their own business failures. I lack words to quantify my contempt for these utter parasites. ~ Rick Falkvinge

The Freaks are coming. ~ J.O. Young

He didn't save me, though. He allowed me the freedom to save myself, which is the very best type of rescue. ~ Amy Engel

God can save all who call upon His name. He isn't finished with the human race. There was still time. Time to repent, to accept His grace, to be saved. Yes, it might mean death by a fear-crazed government and their minions, but he didn't care. He wanted Jesus. ~ T.C. Avey

Why aren't you smiling?" Cameron asks. She picks up the Astropad and stops the video.
"Because this is the beginning, not the end. ~ Laura Kreitzer

We made a pact the day you left for Novo - I know you don't remember that, but I do - and I'm holding fast to our promise. To never give up hope. And I have hope, because I know that deep-down, hidden within the innermost fragments of your heart is the love you feel for me. I know it's still there, waiting to be reclaimed. When it comes to you, no amount of time spent waiting is a waste. ~ Siobhan Davis

Death and his scythe do not come. No sweeping black capes or ethereal escapes. There's no pearly gate, no prisms of colors as his soul slips away. The stillness is cold steel. The silence is empty with no memory to mend it. ~ Laura Kreitzer

I have been speaking to you all of your life. In the gurgle of a tide pool, I breathed myself into you. I drew you down from the trees and I lifted you onto your feet. I freed your hands to become your tools so that you would cradle me in my old age, but you have turned on me. My strongest warrior for life, you have been transformed into an insatiable messenger of death. Only a few of my children are still listening when I howl to them, crying in the night, sending the oceans in great surges to cleanse my land -- to cleanse, and to warn you who no longer listen. I WILL BE HEARD. ~ Sarah Warden

He and Lilly, they knew what Paradise looked like. When nighttime came and bled out its cold darkness into their laps, they would huddle together and paint the air with stories of Paradise. ~ Hannah Heath

The city is a plague ... and I am the penicillin. ~ Jerry J.C. Veit

Beauty? Why is the dance beautiful? Answer: Because this is a non-free movement, because the whole deep meaning of dance is in absolute, aesthetic subordination, ideal unfreedom. ~ Yevgeny Zamyatin

There are people who call themselves Archivists ... Back when the Hundred Committee made their selections, the Archivists knew the works that didn't get selected would become a commodity. so they saved some of them. The Archivists have illegal ports, ones they've built themselves, for storing things ... ~ Allie Condie

Henry rubbed his balding head and yawned. "Why do I think this is worth the risk?…Because I think Betty knew this would one day happen...One time she even said she believed our own government would conspire with other nations to exterminate God's people. ~ T.C. Avey

But really, that is kind of silly,' Abigail tried to explain. 'I mean, a book is much less personal than a programmed screen that can respond to you according to your needs, and concentrate on what's hard for you, and go fast on what's easy. A book stays the same no matter *who's* reading it. And anyway, I don't see how anyone could read a whole long book, it must be so boring!'

'But...but it wasn't,' Peter said faintly. 'I...almost forgot I was reading it. The...the whole story was going on in my head.'

'I still don't understand,' said Oliver. 'I mean, watching a real-life hologram right before your eyes is better than anything you could *imagine.* ~ William Sleator

The kiss has started something bigger between us, and the lies I'm telling Stirling will only get worse from here on in. ~ K.C. Finn

In response to be asked about Boris Johnson becoming UK Prime Minister...

"I'm delighted. As the UK continues to plunge ever faster into a future akin to a dystopian novel I'll never run out of material to write more books. Although now that reality is more bizarre than fiction maybe plot-lines will need to be more ambitious. Perhaps a book where Boris Johnson is really an accidental sentient snafu of Trump's scrotum lint. Kind of a sequel to the Bush-Blair story. I see musical rights being drawn up as we speak. ~ R.D. Ronald

I... believe it, Atticus. Everything under the sun... will be ours. ~ Jessica Redmerski