Wreckage Quotes

We can no longer afford to worship the God of hate or bow before the altar of retaliation. The oceans of history are made turbulent by the ever-rising tides of hate. History is cluttered with the wreckage of nations and individuals that pursued this self-defeating path of hate. Love is the key to the solution of the problems of the world. ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

When Salter was fifty-five, his twenty-five-year-old daughter, Allan, died in an electrical accident. She was in the shower in a cabin next door to his in Aspen. He walked in and found her lying naked on the floor, the water running. He carried her dead body in his arms. He took her outside and tried to resuscitate her, somehow thinking she was drowning. We do not talk about this. He says only, There was the wreckage of that. ~ Katie Roiphe

How much wreckage and destruction justifies the creation of a better world? ~ Julie Bertagna

To view, I had started for the first time in my adult life to live in a world without secrets. I looked at all the laughing women, hips swinging, sashaying down the wide boulevards of Paris, and as spring became summer I started to believe anything was possible. The problem with the spy business, though, is that while you can resign, you can never leave. I suppose I didn't want to acknowledge it then, but too much wreckage floats in the wake of a life like mine - people you've hurt don't forget. And at the back of your mind is the ~ Terry Hayes

This is a paradise of rising to the occasion that points out by contrast how the rest of the time most of us fall down from the heights of possibility, down into diminished selves and dismal societies. Many now do not even hope for a better society, but they recognize it when they encounter it, and that discovery shines out even through the namelessness of their experience. Others recognize it, grasp it, and make something of it, and long-term social and political transformations, both good and bad, arise from the wreckage. The door to this ear's potential paradises is in hell. ~ Rebecca Solnit

In the periods of crisis, the bigger firms absorb the smaller ones,and when the industrial monsters eventually go down, the wreckage is far greater than when the little enterprises buckle. ~ Robert Heilbroner

Everywhere, in the wreckage around him, he found evidence to support the same bitter thesis: that he had encountered nothing in his life - no person, no state of mind or body - he wanted sufficiently to suffer even passing discomfort for. ~ Clive Barker

I think I'm the most hurt by the fact that I'm not like him. I would've chosen him over everything else. The whole world could've burned down and I would've pulled him from the wreckage of it. ~ Amy A. Bartol

You can only arrive at mastery by practicing the techniques you have learned, facing challenges and apprehending them, using to the fullest the tools you have been taught, until they shatter in your hands and you are left in the midst of wreckage absolute ... I cannot create masters. I have never known how to create masters. Go, then, and fail ... You have been shaped into something that may emerge from the wreckage, determined to remake your Art. I cannot create masters, but if you had not been taught, your chances would be less. The higher road begins after the Art seems to fail you; though the reality will be that it was you who failed your Art. ~ Eliezer Yudkowsky

You're in the arms of the Angels; may you find some comfort here. ~ Sarah McLachlan

If you can create even the illusion of high profitability for a few years, then when the thing collapses you can walk out of the wreckage a very rich man. ~ Paul Krugman

Without any outward sign or motion, in the wreckage of herself, she donned her armor, made it firm around her heart. Raise her mask: a cold discipline, a steel beneath her skin.
Grow comfortable, she told herself. It will never come off. ~ Seth Dickinson

Ace-king is a fine hand. Ace-queen is a little weaker, but still good. With ace-jack, you're already sliding rapidly down a slippery slope. With ace-ten, you've slid down the slope, fallen off the cliff, and lie in wreckage at the bottom with hands like ace-five and ace-six. ~ Dan Harrington

[When explaining over reactions to small mistakes] I get swallowed up in the moment, and I can't tell the right response from the wrong response. All I know is that I have to get out of the situation as soon as I can, so I don't drown. To get away, I'll do anything. Crying, screaming and throwing things, hitting out even ... Finally, finally, I'll calm down and come back to myself. Then I see no sign of the tsunami attack
only the wreckage I've made. And when I see that, I hate myself. I just hate myself. ~ Naoki Higashida

We left this love in ruins, wreckage and debris. A ghost of our former glory, artifacts of what used to be. ~ Liz Newman

Unexpected clashes between past and present may arouse a surge of bewilderment, but 'time' can be a redeemer and heal mental wreckage. Time might prove to be a dependable ally and a reliable coach to find a new inspiring sequel for the future. ("Disruption") ~ Erik Pevernagie

You've seen them. They have mouths that twitch, and eyes that stare, and they babble and they mewl and they whimper. Some of them walk the cities in ragged clothes, their belongings under their arms. Others of their number are locked in the dark, in places where they can no longer harm themselves or others. They are not mad, or rather, the loss of their sanity is the lesser of their problems. It is worse thn madness. They will tell you, if you let them: they are the ones who live, each day, in the wreckage of their dreams. ~ Neil Gaiman

Churches should be places where people come to hear the story of God and to tell their own. That's how we find out how the two relate. Tell your story with all of its shadows and fog, so people can understand their own. They want a leader who's authentic, someone trying to figure out how to follow the Lord Jesus in the joy and wreckage of life. They need you, not Moses, ~ Angie Smith

I lifted myself up to check behind us, but Sage pushed my back down. "Don't do that."
"I just want to know how many there are."
"Too many." Sage pushed the car to a breakneck pace, then screeched a U-ie and started twisting wildly through alleys, one hairpin turn after another.
I heard tires screeching, and a massive crash.
"WHOOOOO!" Sage laughed triumphantly. "Check it out!"
I spun around, and out the rear windshield I caught a glimpse of the seaming wreckage of two smashed cars receding into the distance. Other cars pulled around them, picking up the chase. I ducked back down into my seat.
"Not bad, right?" Sage asked.
He was grinning. The chase fueled him. Adrenaline lit up his eyes, and his muscles tensed as he pushed himself and the car to their limits.
I had never seen him look hotter. In a sick way, I kind of didn't want the chase to end.
"Hold on!" Sage cried. We were out of the alleys now. He raced the car to top speed before whirling a three-sixty, sending three more cars piling into one another.
Sage caught my eye. "Heart pounding yet?"
It was...and I got the sense that he knew exactly why. He smiled-the gunshots brought his attention back to the chase. I breathlessly watched him through several more minutes of death-defying driving until we'd lost every car that was after us. ~ Hilary Duff

The organ has a mind of its own, disregarding what might be unhealthy for you. Once it's been jolted by that spark, awakened by that all-consuming flame, it plays the dirtiest game of all. With each curious beat of wanting to touch, taste, and feel love, the heart routes all logical thoughts from your brain, siphoning them out of that sucker like a thief, spitting them back out onto a highway piled high with nothing but bloody wreckage. ~ Gail McHugh

Once a journey is designed, equipped, and put in process, a new factor enters and takes over. A trip, a safari, an exploration, is an entity, different from all other journeys. It has personality, temperament, individuality, uniqueness. A journey is a person in itself; no two are alike. And all plans, safeguards, policing, and coercion are fruitless. We find after years of struggle that we do not take a trip; a trip takes us. Tour masters, schedules, reservations, brass-bound and inevitable, dash themselves to wreckage on the personality of the trip. Only when this is recognized can the blown-in-the glass bum relax and go along with it. Only then do the frustrations fall away. In this a journey is like marriage. The certain way to be wrong is to think you control it. ~ John Steinbeck

She was a fever from which I will never recover. All heat and hunger. She inflamed my senses. And when she devoured my very soul, when I had nothing left to surrender, she abandoned me to the wreckage of my self, and smiled. In the kingdom of passion the ruler is obsession. ~ Calvin Klein

Another roll like that, and we shall have no masts,' said Pullings, as the remaining crockery, the glasses and the inhabitants of the gun-room all shot over to the lee. 'We'll lose the mizen first, Doctor,' - picking Stephen tenderly out of the wreckage - 'and so we'll be a brig; then we'll lose the foremast, so we'll be a right little old sloop; then we'll lose the main, and we'll be a raft, which is what we ought to have begun as. ~ Patrick O'Brian

wreckage before the sun went down. The final toll was a hundred and two. Eighty-eight of the dead were children. On the following Wednesday, while the city still lay in stunned silent contemplation of the tragedy, a woman found the head of nine-year-old Robert Dohay caught in the limbs of her back-yard apple tree. There was chocolate on the Dohay lad's teeth and blood in his hair. He was the last of the known dead. Eight children and one adult were never accounted for. It was the worst tragedy in Derry's history, even worse than the fire at the Black Spot in 1930, and it was never explained. All four of the Ironworks' boilers were shut down. Not just banked; shut down. But: ~ Stephen King

No matter your wreckage. There will be someone to find you beautiful, despite the cruddy metal. Your ruin is not to be hidden behind paint and canvas. Let them see the cracks. Someone will come to sing into these empty spaces. ~ Sarah Kay

Whatever alleged 'truth' is proven by results to be but an empty fiction, let it be unceremoniously flung into the outer darkness, among the dead gods, dead empires, dead philosophies, and other useless lumber and wreckage! ~ Anton Szandor LaVey

Disgust rose in Samantha like vomit. She wanted to seize the over-warm cluttered room and mash it between her hands, until the royal china, and the gas fire, and the gilt-framed pictures of Miles broke into jagged pieces; then, with wizened and painted Maureen trapped and squalling inside the wreckage, she wanted to heave it, like a celestial shot-putter, away into the sunset. The crushed lounge and doomed crone inside it, soared in her imagination through the heavens, plunging into the limitless ocean, leaving Samantha alone in the endless stillness of the universe. ~ J.K. Rowling

A Klee painting named 'Angelus Novus' shows an angel looking as though he is about to move away from something he is fixedly contemplating. His eyes are staring, his mouth is open, his wings are spread. This is how one pictures the angel of history. His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such violence that the angel can no longer close them. This storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress. ~ Walter Benjamin

In mindful grief, we become the landing strip that allows any feelings to arrive. Some crash, some land softly. Some harm us, but none harm us in a lasting way. We remain as they taxi away or as their wreckage is cleared away. We can trust that we will survive. ~ David Richo

At forty-two, I had never done anything that took my own breath away, and I suppose now that was part of the problem
my chronic inability to astonish myself. I promise you, no one judges me more harshly than I do myself; I caused a brilliant wreckage. Some say I fell from grace; they're being kind. I didn't fall. I dove. ~ Sue Monk Kidd

Here dwells a snake, one thousand miles long
Coiled, one thousand miles deep
Eyes like candy, it has eyes like candy
Hard and blue, but soft as kittens feet
Out of sight or in the element of light
It could be a devil, it could be an angel
With spiders inside a vision from hell
Its spine is a vertical scream
Slow as concrete, blurred as a dream
Fueled by inertia, depth, radius, and velocity,
Its soul
a twisted wreckage of despair and pain
And the spiders inside are just praying for rain
Killing time killing time
And praying for rain
One thousand miles deep ~ James O'Barr

They drank from a spring which filled an ancient stone trough behind the ruin. Beyond it lay overgrown beds and plants John had never set eyes on before: tall resinous fronds, prickly shrubs, long grey-green leaves hot to the tongue. Nestling among them he found the root whose scent drifted among the trees like a ghost, sweet and tarry. He knelt and pressed it to his nose.
'That was called silphium.' His mother stood behind him. 'It grew in Saturnus's first garden.'
She showed him the most ancient trees in the orchards, their gnarled trunks cloaked in grey lichen. Palm trees had grown there too once, she claimed. Now even their stumps had gone.
Each day, John left the hearth to forage in the wreckage of Belicca's gardens. His nose guided him through the woods. Beyond the chestnut avenue, the wild skirrets, alexanders and broom grew in drifts. John chased after rabbits or climbed trees in search of birds' eggs. He returned with mallow seeds or chestnuts that they pounded into meal then mixed with water and baked on sticks. The unseasonal orchards yielded tiny red and gold-streaked apples, hard green pears and sour yellow cherries. ~ Lawrence Norfolk

She'd lost so much in the process of becoming Zyne, but somewhere in the middle of it all, she'd found herself. Her heritage had shattered her illusions of a tranquil life. Destiny swept behind in a blaze, decimating everything she tried to hold on to. She was left alone, like the solitary tree standing after a forest fire. She'd thought she would crumble to ash, just another memory on the wind. But as blackened pieces of her cracked and fell away, she saw the truth. Under all that charred wreckage was the heartwood. Bruised. Scarred. But still good. Still capable of growth. When she looked in the mirror, she no longer saw a victim, but a survivor. ~ Gwen Mitchell

Wealth and power are also often disasters, with casualties and wreckage. Maybe what often gets called wealth in booms should mostly be imagined as impoverishment of the majority who don't become wealthy and often become displaced or priced out locally, served up with the collateral damage from the concentration of power, resources, and the control of place. ~ Rebecca Solnit

A high-speed collision gave a new sense of sight
To me
And now my vision can render the scene
A blurry image of wreckage and roadside debris
Happiness returned to me
Through a grave emergency ~ Owl City

The face of the angel of history is turned toward the past. Where we perceived a chain of events, he sees a single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such violence that the angel can no longer close them. This storm irresistably propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. The storm is what we call progress. ~ Walter Benjamin

I am so glad Todd and I eloped," she said sincerely. "There was no way to salvage the wreckage. But I think that you deserved this, and I'm very happy for you." She leaned forward and kissed my cheek. Then she whispered, "He is really, really a hottie. How did you mange that?"
"Brat," I told her, and gave her a hug. "Todd's not exactly chopped liver."
She smiled smugly and took another sip. "No he's not."
"He could be," said Ben from behind me, his British accent giving him a civilized air that he didn't deserve. "Do you want him to be chopped liver, darling?"
I turned, making sure I was between Ben and Nan, "My sisters are off-limits," I reminded him.
A flash of hurt came and went on his face. With Ben, it was even odds whether the emotion was genuine or not -but my instincts told me they had been. So I continued in a mock-chiding tone, "Ruthie is too young for you, and Nan is married to a very nice man. So be good."
Nan had caught the flash of hurt, too, I thought. She was softer than our mother, more like her father in temperament as well as looks. She couldn't stand to have anyone hurting and not do anything about it.
She sighed dramatically. "All the pretty men, and I'm tied to just one."
Ben smiled at her. "Anytime you want to change that…"
I poked him in the side-he could have slipped out of the way, but he didn't bother.
"Okay," he said, backing away with exaggerated fear. "Ill be good, I promise. Just don't hurt me ~ Patricia Briggs

Lets say from the first moment of my life, everything's always been about me and nothing else, including apocalypse and chaos; let's say even apocalypse and chaos have been conceits of my psyche and bad faith
this assumes I ever kept any kind of faith at all, bad or otherwise ... Let's say I'm faithlessness made flesh, the modern age's leap of faith stopped dead in its tracks, fucking around with apocalypse and chaos only because in some broken part of me, among any wreckage of honor or altruism or commitment of compassion, or the bits and pieces of moral vanity, I really believed the abyss was always just the playground of my imagination, and I was its bully. ~ Steve Erickson

The Layers

I have walked through many lives,
some of them my own,
and I am not who I was,
though some principle of being
abides, from which I struggle
not to stray.
When I look behind,
as I am compelled to look
before I can gather strength
to proceed on my journey,
I see the milestones dwindling
toward the horizon
and the slow fires trailing
from the abandoned camp-sites,
over which scavenger angels
wheel on heavy wings.
Oh, I have made myself a tribe
out of my true affections,
and my tribe is scattered!
How shall the heart be reconciled
to its feast of losses?
In a rising wind
the manic dust of my friends,
those who fell along the way,
bitterly stings my face.
Yet I turn, I turn,
exulting somewhat,
with my will intact to go
wherever I need to go,
and every stone on the road
precious to me.
In my darkest night,
when the moon was covered
and I roamed through wreckage,
a nimbus-clouded voice
directed me:
"Live in the layers,
not on the litter."
Though I lack the art
to decipher it,
no doubt the next chapter
in my book of transformations
is already written.
I am not done with my changes. ~ Stanley Kunitz

MYTH 141. | Amelia Earhart mysteriously vanished. The mystery behind her sudden disappearance was solved just four years after she went missing. Her plane was found to be crashed near an island in Kiribati and her skeletal remains were found close by as well. The skeleton matched her measurements. They also found her equipment near the wreckage. ~ John Brown

We are learning that through striving for justice, tears and laughter, seem more dynamic and shared as each step is taken with communal courage together. Record a legacy, they truly lived, not once stepped back on the path that beckoned. I am proud of my partner, of my family, of our friends. We have learned to value the quiet patience of gentle support both, unspoken and felt, heard and embraced. And if we seem cryptic in message at times, we wish to lift to the world the cause as artists, using the language of our nature and craft, to address the twisted currents of current laws and corruption, where ears are dulled from light by agendas, that the beauty of Art may be expressed in the reclaiming of itself, from the wreckage of the court system mired with soiled attorney and tainted judge. Colors to where there is grey, to lift the hues cast in cast iron graves, stamped Summary Judgement, with no judgement applied. So together we formulate, and forge what is possible, while tear stains cheek, falling upon lighted smile, in thought of our loved ones, that keeps our current path clear. ~ Tom Althouse

Empty - it was utterly empty here. Like a tomb. "Tam?" I called. I bounded up the front steps and into the house. I rushed inside, swearing as I slid on a piece of broken porcelain - the remnants of a vase. Slowly, I turned in the front hall. It looked as if an army had marched through. Tapestries hung in shreds, the marble banister was fractured, and the chandeliers lay broken on the ground, reduced to mounds of shattered crystal. "Tamlin?" I shouted. Nothing. The windows had all been blown out. "Lucien?" No one answered. "Tam?" My voice echoed through the house, mocking me. Alone in the wreckage of the manor, I sank to my knees. He was gone. ~ Sarah J. Maas

We contain things and give shape to things in order to be less afraid of them. Yes. The crafted idea does this. It's why I write. The metaphor does this. The intact body does it, too. Sometimes I worry I do this instead of allowing myself to feel things. . . . Reveal the pain, but hide the wreckage. I can hear Montaigne hollering: break it open, look inside, feel it, write it down. ~ Nina Riggs

She was drained from the shock and fear of looking at the emotional wreckage of real humans, desperate people with little hope and looking to her for help. ~ John Grisham

She'd made a wreck of things, but thankfully God could take the wreckage and turn it into something beautiful. ~ Jody Hedlund

Excerpted From Chapter Eighteen
Pacific Coast Highway ends with a sharp right turn onto Sepulveda. Approaching that intersection, I saw several cars pulled to the shoulder of the road and two fresh, black skid marks leading straight to the edge of the beach beyond Sepulveda. Halfway between the road and the water, a big red Caddy convertible lay upside down on the sand.
I parked and jogged to the wreckage. The windshield and the cloth top had collapsed, so the car was resting on its hood and trunk lid. A young man in swimming trunks and an older fellow in a suit were pulling at the driver's side door, trying to get it open. The twisted metal was resisting their efforts, but the door finally came loose just as I got there. Through the opening I could see Diana Dean sprawled across the shredded remains of her convertible top. From where I stood, she looked to be in about the same shape as her mangled red Caddy. Maybe worse. ~ H.P. Oliver

This is my belief: that through difficulties and problems God gives us the opportunity to grow. So when your hopes and dreams and goals are dashed, search among the wreckage, you may find a golden opportunity hidden in the ruins'. ~ A. P. J. Abdul Kalam

Amidst the wreckage of overturned furniture and shattered belongings, lying motionless and silent, are my parents. ~ Rachel Morgan

Man can and must prevent the tragedy of famine in the future instead of merely trying with pious regret to salvage the human wreckage of the famine, as he has so often done in the past. ~ Norman Borlaug

They are strewn with the wreckage of dead Empires-past Powers only the Albanian "goes on for ever." ~ Edith Durham

Rebuilding us. Isn't that what the spirit requires, when we climb over the wreckage of our lives, sometimes, we go on to make our lives our own affirmation? We are perfect expressions of perfect Love, here and now. There is no permanent injury. ~ Richard Bach

As I walked past I saw the extraordinary wreckage of beer-corpses. Somehow, despite all their economic mismanagement, these parties must have brought about an unexpected level of prosperity. Well, not having to wage war certainly saves the odd cost. Looking at the state of the Volk here, however, even the most deluded individual would have to admit than in 1942 or 1944, yes, even in the most harrowing nights of bombardment, the Germans were in better shape than on this September evening at the beginning of the third millennium. ~ Timur Vermes

Nietzsche was the one who did the job for me. At a certain moment in his life,the idea came to him of what he called 'the love of your fate.' Whatever your fate is, whatever the hell happens, you say, 'This is what I need.' It may look like a wreck, but go at it as though it were an opportunity, a challenge. If you bring love to that moment--not discouragement--you will find the strength is there. Any disaster you can survive is an improvement in your character, your stature, and your life. What a privilege! This is when the spontaneity of your own nature will have a chance to flow.

Then, when looking back at your life, you will see that the moments which seemed to be great failures followed by wreckage were the incidents that shaped the life you have now. You'll see that this is really true. Nothing can happen to you that is not positive. Even though it looks and feels at the moment like a negative crisis, it is not. The crisis throws you back, and when you are required to exhibit strength, it comes. ~ Joseph Campbell

I went to Communism as one goes to a spring of fresh water, and I left Communism as one clambers out of a poisoned river strewn with the wreckage of flooded cities and the corpses of the drowned. ~ Arthur Koestler

Thinking has a quiet skin. But I feel the and of things inside it.
Blue hills most gentle in calm light, then stretches of assail
And ransack. Such tangles of charred wreckage, shrapnel-bits
Singling and singeing where they fall. I feel the stumbling gait of what I am,
The quiet uproar of undone, how to be hidden is a tempting, violent thing
Each thought breaking always in another.
All the unlawful elsewheres rushing in. ~ Laure Sheck

I'd prefer to never witness that again, so a full weather report will be added to Shera's daily tasks," Arion chimes in, looking idly around the airplane. "On another note, so long as I learn to land a plane, I'll already be an exceptionally better pilot than Vance."

"Do you have any idea how damn fine of a job I just did?" Vance asks Arion with narrowed eyes.

Arion glances over at the smoking wreckage, quirking an eyebrow. "Not really, no," the vampire quips in a very genuine tone.

"Fuck's sake, Arion. It wasn't me who crashed the plane; it was the - fuck it. Never mind," Vance says, sighing in exasperation as he pulls out his phone. "I'll have someone come take care of this and pick us up. ~ Kristy Cunning

The world below is on fire. Through gaps in the smoke, he sees that where Seattle should be, there is only chaos. The wreckage of buildings litter a landscape ablaze. ~ Bryan K. Johnson

Wouldn't it help Americans more, in the long run, if we were forced to accept some responsibility for the environmental wreckage we prefer to assume is totally out of our control? ~ Jane Velez-Mitchell

And Futh, looking at the lighthouse, wondered how this could happen--how there could be this constant warning of danger, the taking of all these precautions, and yet still there was all this wreckage. ~ Alison Moore

I love you and I love you and I love you, on battlefields, in shadows, in fading ink, on cold ice splashed with the blood of seals. In the rings of trees. In the wreckage of a planet crumbling to space. In bubbling water. In bee stings and dragonfly wings, in stars. In the deapths of lonely woods where I wandered in my youth, staring up - and even then you watched me. You slid back through my life, and I have known you since before I knew you. ~ Amal El-Mohtar

People may decry God when all is lost - screaming from the wreckage of their lives, demanding answers, unable to comprehend why. Yet who are we to tell a master painter the shades and colors we approve of and the ones we don't - we who are unskilled, and who have no cognizance of the painting's subject matter? ~ Jessica Dotta

Our old pilgrims believed stories in which the West was a promise, a place where decent people could escape the wreckage of failed lives and start over. Come along, the dream whispers, and you can have another chance. We still listen to promises in the wind. This time, we think, we'll get it right. ~ William Kittredge

It is amusing to wonder whether dreams would matter at all, or "freedom" or "democracy." I think not; I think there would only be the wondering what to eat and where to sleep and how to build out of the wreckage of life and mankind. ~ Sylvia Plath

We were the unflinching prisoners of a grandiose make-believe, we who looked upon ourselves as heard-headed materialists. We dismissed the distress of today, the human wreckage scattered all about us, the terror and militarism prevailing in the country with the stereotyped belief that we were marching forward with great strides. ~ Jan Valtin

The best way to work with dementia is to act as if the person you knew is still inside the wreckage. If you're wrong, and the person you know is gone, then no damage is done but the standards of care stay high; if you're right, and the person you knew is still bricked up inside, then you are the lifeline. ~ David Mitchell

Only the debris of wreckage, and not much of that, was left behind by the sharks who fed on tragedy: the fishermen, too, mourned the death of a living child. ~ William Trevor

Just so surely as we tend to disintegrate these nuclei of nationalistic culture do we tend to create hordes of men and women without a spiritual country, cultural outlaws, without taste, without standards but those of the mob. We sentence them to live on the most rudimentary planes of American life. The influences at the centre of the nuclei are centripetal. They make for the intelligence and the social values which mean an enhancement of life. And just because the foreign-born retains this expressiveness is he likely to be a better citizen of the American community. The influences at the fringe, however, are centrifugal, anarchical. They make for detached fragments of peoples. Those who came to find liberty achieve only license. They become the flotsam and jetsam of American life, the downward undertow of our civilization with its leering cheapness and falseness of taste and spiritual outlook, the absence of mind and sincere feeling which we see in our slovenly towns, our vapid moving pictures, our popular novels, and in the vacuous faces of the crowds on the city street. This is the cultural wreckage of our time, and it is from the fringes of the Anglo-Saxon as well as the other stocks that it falls. America has as yet no impelling integrating force. It makes too easily for this detritus of cultures. In our loose, free country, no constraining national purpose, no tenacious folk-tradition and folk-style hold the people to a line. ~ Randolph Bourne

Tragedy blows through your life like a tornado, uprooting everything, creating chaos. You wait for the dust to settle, and then you choose. You can live in the wreckage and pretend it's still the mansion you remember. Or you can crawl from the rubble and slowly rebuild. Because after disaster strikes, the important thing is that you move on. But if you're like me, you just keep chasing the storm. ~ Rob Thomas

Liberalism in various guises - feminism, the sexual revolution, gay activism - has been at war with marriage and family for several decades now. And when do-gooders look around at the wreckage of human lives caused by disintegrating families, they call for government to act as father, mother, brother, and sister. ~ Mona Charen

One misstep was all it took, and it all came crashing down. And they were right there waiting for it - eager and ready to bury me in the wreckage. ~ Bianca Scardoni

There was no longer a fight - my mind and my body were both finally on board. The walls had crumbled and I was clambering over the wreckage with only him in my sights.
I was in it with Henry.
Plain and simple. ~ Aly Martinez

I am not defined by my body or what has happened to it. I am not defined by beatings or an arching whip or a dangerous man, or by the wreckage of prostitution. I am not defined by my age. I am not defined by what others think of me. I am defined by myself. I will define myself to me. I will live, I will laugh, I will love. I will not be silenced. I will not be invisible. I will be me until the very end. And I will look beautiful. ~ Cathy Lamb

When you give your heart away, you usually get it back in pieces, fragments. And often, a great deal of time passes before you realize that every piece wasn't returned to you - and probably never will be. You crave nothing more than to get those small - but vital - fragments back; to return to the unbroken, undamaged version of yourself. But what's been broken cannot be unbroken, and so all you can do is learn to live with the void of the missing pieces, to somehow find beauty in the wreckage.
And so I did.
Sophie Lenon ~ Krystal McLean

I come from the South and I know what war is, for I have seen its terrible wreckage and ruin. It is easy for me as President to declare war. I do not have to fight, and neither do the gentlemen on the Hill who now clamor for it. It is some poor farmer's boy, or the son of some poor widow - who will have to do the fighting and dying. ~ Woodrow Wilson

It's as if I'm afloat in a sea of change. Each piece of wreckage to which I cling has limited buoyancy and soon sinks, forcing me to hold tightly to another and then another. ~ Ken Davis

She glanced over at the twisted wreckage of the chair - (a nice, Swedish chair that had done nothing in its short life to hurt anyone ~ Sylvain Reynard

My mother knew a man during the war. Theirs was a love story, and like any good love story, it left blood on the floor and wreckage in its wake. ~ Mark Slouka

Magnus looked away, so as not to see the wreckage. "I wish you luck," he said. "Luck and love."
Edmund made a small bow. "I bid you good day. I think we will not meet again."
He walked away, into the inner reaches of the Institute. A few feet away, he wavered and paused, light from one of the narrow church windows turning his hair rich gold, and Magnus thought he would turn. But Edmund Herondale never looked back. ~ Cassandra Clare

I could break things in a thousand ways
anything from surgical dismantling as meticulous as a bomb squad work to wrecking ball style mass destruction. If I broke a thing, it stayed broke. If I broke one of my things, I lived with the pieces, or replaced it. ~ Joshilyn Jackson

The past is not a peaceful landscape lying there behind me, a country in which I can stroll wherever I please, and will gradually show me all its secret hills and dales. As I was moving forward, so it was crumbling. Most of the wreckage that can be seen is colourless, distorted, frozen: its meaning escapes me ... all that's left is a skeleton. I shall never find my plans again, my hopes and fears - I shall not find myself. ~ Simone De Beauvoir

Over everything - up through the wreckage of the city, in gutters, along the riverbanks, tangled among tiles and tin roofing, climbing on charred tree trunks - was a blanket of fresh, vivid, lush, optimistic green; the verdancy rose even from the foundations of ruined houses. Weeds already hid the ashes, and wild flowers were in bloom among the city's bones. The bomb had not only left the underground organs of the plants intact; it had stimulated them. ~ John Hersey

Why, I've been all over the world, I tell you, and fairly loafed and lolled in every conceivable sort of ease and luxury, but the Soul of me - the wild, restless, breathless, discontented soul of me - never sat down before in all its life - I say, until my frightened hand cuddled into his broken one. I tell you I don't pretend to explain it, I don't pretend to account for it; all I know is - that smothering there under all that horrible wreckage and everything - the instant my hand went home to his, the most absolute sense of serenity and contentment went over me. ~ Eleanor Hallowell Abbott

Reasons aren't really things that make you do other things. Reasons are things that you make up, much later, to reassure everyone that we are all logical and that the world makes sense. We do unreasonable things, because we want to, at the time. No reason. Much later we sit in the wreckage, building reasons out of little bits of wreckage, so we'll have something to show the crash investigators. Look, this is what caused it. So the whole mess at least appears reasonable. So we can convince ourselves that at least there was a reason for the disaster, something we can prevent or avoid, so it'll never happen again. But a lot of the time there's no reason. We just flew it to the ground. Because we felt like it. And we're still dangerous. And it could happen again anytime.
Its easier to live with each other afterwards if we give each other reasons. ~ Julian Gough

A gentle boy with a gentle soul, but every soul contains its own opposite, and the opposite of gentleness was ruthlessness - the beautiful wreckage of mercy. ~ Cassandra Clare

When was the last time you found treasure coffers ensconced in your own house? Treasures always hide among old ruins and wreckage. ~ Rumi

If you break her heart, I will ruin you."
…
"We were both ruined a long time ago, Caven. Maybe it's time for us to clear the wreckage and rebuild. Starting with her. ~ Aly Martinez

The better part of friendship might be holding one's tongue over the prospect of self-made wreckage. ~ Barbara Kingsolver

Mon Mothma walks among the wreckage, attendants on each side of her: Hostis Ij to her left, and Auxi Kray Korbin on her right. Each serving the role of angel and demon on her shoulder (though the role is never fixed and one becomes the other depending on the situation). Behind them, four New Republic soldiers walking with blaster rifles at the ready. This ~ Chuck Wendig

When I look back all is flux, without beginning and flowing towards no end, or none that I shall experience, except as a final full stop. The items of flotsam that I choose to salvage from the general wreckage - and what is a life but a gradual shipwreck? - may take on an aspect of inevitability when I put them on display in their glass showcases, but they are random; representative, perhaps, perhaps compellingly so, but random nonetheless. ~ John Banville

An Armageddon is approaching at the beginning of the third millennium. But it is not the cosmic war and fiery collapse of mankind foretold in sacred scripture. It is the wreckage of the planet by an exuberantly plentiful and ingenious humanity. ~ E. O. Wilson

I think to myself:
I don't want to survive this one
I want to burn up in the wreckage ~ Henry Rollins

I think my head's a minefield strewn with triggers, and maybe if I survive each explosion, what emerges from the wreckage will be me, really, truly me. ~ Ann Aguirre

A defensive investor can always prosper by looking patiently and calmly through the wreckage of a bear market. ~ Benjamin Graham

Sometimes poetry is a way of finding beauty in the chaos; a flower growing in ruins of love's wreckage. ~ John Mark Green

At the start of the journey, I thought I was walking into the wreckage of Christianity. My impression now was of how much remained, holding tight to its decayed inheritance. Despite the decline of religion in Europe, it was still possible to cross the continent like a medieval pilgrim: traveling on foot, stopping at shrines, and supported by charity. Still possible to find comfort in pilgrim rites, even if the belief was gone. So maybe decline was also evidence of endurance, and loss the price we pay for surviving. ~ Guy Stagg

I don't want to hear how he beat her after the earthquake,
tore up her writing, threw the kerosene
lantern into her face waiting
like an unbearable mirror of his own. I don't
want to hear how she finally ran from the trailer
how he tore the keys from her hands, jumped into the truck
and backed it into her. I don't want to think
how her guesses betrayed her - that he meant well, that she
was really the stronger and ought not to leave him
to his own apparent devastation. I don't want to know
wreckage, dreck and waste, but these are the materials
and so are the slow lift of the moon's belly
over wreckage, dreck, and waste, wild treefrogs calling in
another season, light and music still pouring over
our fissured, cracked terrain. ~ Adrienne Rich

She ran the harder and zagged more erratically, and in the wreckage left from the hurricane the girl misjudged her path and ran straight into the old well.
She didn't even scream. ~ Samuel Snoek-Brown

Mostly I was spending time in the Strand, that bastion of titillating erudition. Not so much a bookstore as a collision of 100 different bookstores, with literary wreckage strewn over 18 miles of shelves. ~ David Levithan

And I listed the cities he said he'd been - Madrid, Granada, San Sebastián, Barcelona, Paris even. Their order was confused but their names made a map of lights in my mind. A constellation leading not back but far. Each a whole world I'd never been, swallowed him up and spewed him back, crustaceans in his pocket and seaweed in his hair, on the shores of our prison town. I considered the cities he talked about not destinations but destructions. A chosen wreckage. Different only in that way from the one handed to us. ~ Gabrielle Lucille Fuentes

I wonder how many ways there are for a mother to produce that wreckage in her own daughter, and my muscles tense as I think of them. ~ Jon McGregor