Dystopian Book Quotes

I understand more that pain is evidence to our awakening to truth and also a measure of closeness to truth.

Keep those eyes of yours, mate, wide-fucking-open. Never know when it’s watching.

She lowers the volume of this Safe and Top-Trending song titled... "Love Ain’t No Thang But a Chicken Wang.” 

You’re easy to read, Ivy, but the whole book of you is complicated.

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

The fuck is this shit?" it says. "Can you bloody believe this shit?" "No, honey," I say. "This is absolutely ridiculous." "Aren't you pissed the fuck off?" "Someone really should do something about this." "Why don't we bloody do something about it?" "Yeah, why don't we?" I say. "But how." "Well, we find whatever prick is in charge and give the fucker a piece of our minds, of course." 

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.

And what would they be scared of? There's nothing to fear in a perfect world, is there?

She was hot. You could take a poll, write a book, break down all the reasons, the intellectual and physical gifts that shaped her personality, and whatever that intangible part was. Write poems about it, document it all in photos and movies, try to stay woke, but the reality was, what it all came back to, she was hot.

You don't stop loving someone just because they disappoint you.

There might be some lost tribe somewhere on the planet who hadn’t been exposed to the movies and books of the genre, but these eight men—Mills was the oldest at 28—had grown up in a world where reanimated dead who shambled along eating brains were part of the fabric of everyday life. Where zombie movies equated to drinking games, late night laughs, and getting laid.

Loyalty is the key to our survival. Without it, we are just like them.

Helen dared to look up without being invited to do so. “I cannot thank you enough for your kindness, Lady Consort.” “Kindness had nothing to do with it. You have skills and training I need just now, and I intend to use you shamelessly, and expose you to greater danger.” “Get in line, Lady Consort,” Helen replied. “Danger-filled usury seems to be a holiday pastime in this city.” The Consort stopped pretending to do her needlework. “I could have you whipped for such insolence, girl.” “Before or after you use me.

If you put enough sheep together you have a herd- a force to be reckoned with.

The scars are just something that happened to me. They aren't me. Not anymore.

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?

My mission is not to make him happy and bear his children and be his wife. My mission is to kill him.

I just want to be with you. Walk next to you, Ivy, wherever you're headed. That's all.

You won't find the tales I bear in any books . . . My tales are from the Moon Realm.” —Ebb Autumn

I want you to be mine alone and I want to give you everything.

Oh, do shut up, boy. It’s not like I’ve ever been one for goodbyes.", FADE by Kailin Gow

If you can direct the power you call up, it can do a lot.”, FADE by Kailin Gow

Jack Simple. Though the name is ironic, because there is never anything simple about Jack.", Falling (Fade Book 2) by Kailin Gow

Memory is all we really have. All we are. Without memories to give us a context for what’s happening around us, anything could be happening.", Falling (FADE Book 2) by Kailin Gow

I know my brother. It comes down to it, to saving your life or saving his crown, we both know what he will choose.

In theory, solar storm activity could act like an EMP, damaging electronic equipment and causing power surges. And we’ve just experienced the solar storm to end all solar storms.”, FADE by Kailin Gow

Bishop stares at me. "What do you want me to say, Ivy?" he asks finally. "That I agree with what my father did? That I don't? What's the answer you're looking for?" "I'm not looking for a specific answer," I tell him, although the part of me that's been coached to kill him hopes he agrees with his father. "I want to know what you think." "I think," Bishop says, "that we can love our families without trusting everything they tell us. Without championing everything they stand for." He delivers the words matter-of-factly, but his eyes are locked on mine. "I think that sometimes things aren't as simple as our fathers want us to believe.

You must remember, burn them or they'll burn you...

That night we played truth or dare. You said that after a while you stopped trying to earn your mother's affection." I pause. "Why didn't you give up with me, too?" "You know why," he says quietly. I close my eyes. I do know, but I'm not sure if I'm ready to hear it. But some part of me must be, because I wouldn't have asked the question otherwise, not of Bishop, the boy who never chooses to say something easy just because the truth is hard. Maybe I want to hear it so that i will know, once and for all, that there is no going back. "Because I'm in love with you, Ivy," he whispers. "Giving up on you isn't an option." He lifts my hair away from the back of my neck and kisses the delicate skin there. My breath shudders out of me. The silence spirals into the dark room, and maybe it was foolish to ask the question, but I'm not sorry. I uncurl his hand and kiss his palm, his skin cool and dry. I place his hand over my heart, cover it with my own. We fall asleep that way. His lips on my neck. My heart in his hand.

Who do you want to turn into?" I mean the question to be mocking, but that's not how it comes out. I sound interested. I reach down and scratch my leg, trying to hid my embarrassment. Bishop looks at me. "Someone honest. Someone who tries to do the right thing. Someone who follows his own heart, even if it disappoints people." He pauses. "Someone brave enough to be all those things." A boy who doesn't want to lie, married to a girl who can't tell the truth. If there is a God, he has a sick sense of humor.

The more I write stories for young people, and the more young readers I meet, the more I'm struck by how much kids long to see themselves in stories. To see their identities and perspectives—their avatars—on the page. Not as issues to be addressed or as icons for social commentary, but simply as people who get to do cool things in amazing worlds. Yes, all the “issue” books are great and have a place in literature, but it's a different and wildly joyous gift to find yourself on the pages of an entertainment, experiencing the thrills and chills of a world more adventurous than our own. And when you see that as a writer, you quickly realize that you don't want to be the jerk who says to a young reader, “Sorry, kid. You don't get to exist in story; you're too different.” You don't want to be part of our present dystopia that tells kids that if they just stopped being who they are they could have a story written about them, too. That's the role of the bad guy in the dystopian stories, right? Given a choice, I'd rather be the storyteller who says every kid can have a chance to star.

There must be something in books, things we can't imagine, to make a woman stay in a burning house; there must be something there. You don't stay for nothing.

But there's something fundamentally wrong in a system where a girl like Meredith would even consider staying with a boy like Dylan if she has the chance to be free of him.

There are so many signs in the Book of Revelations, and we know from our research that they happened. They will happen, I should say. The false prophet, the Serpent, acquires followers. He brings fire upon the Earth, he takes away religious freedom to force everyone to worship him. He promises prosperity, but just brings plague instead.", FADE by Kailin Gow

I want to see you naked. I want to touch you. I want you to touch me. I just...want.

Funny how if you were reading his dystopian sci-fi novel with a minor subplot about fascists ruling Korea, you'd be taken to jail. So you gotta wonder. Do they ban books because they see danger in their authors, or because they see themselves in their villains?

My skin burs under Maven's gaze, with the memory of one stolen kiss. It was him who saved me from Evangeline. Cal who saved me from escaping and bringing more pain upon myself. Cal who saved me from conscription. I've been too busy trying to save others to notice how much Cal saves me. How much he loves me.

I made so many promises when I arrived here. Now I'm not so sure. Now I'm worried. Now my mind is a traitor because my thoughts crawl out of bed every morning with darting eyes and sweating palms and nervous giggles that sit in my chest, build in my chest, threaten to burst through my chest, and the pressure is tightening and tightening and tightening Life around here isn't what I expected it to be.

LLMs represent some of the most promising yet ethically fraught technologies ever conceived. Their development plots a razor’s edge between utopian and dystopian potentials depending on our choices moving forward.

Relax," the girl says. She holds out a hand but doesn't touch me. "We're not going to hurt you." "Yet," the man in the doorway says with a smirk.

What’s not to love? I made friends with a pretty girl and now we get to plan a castle break in. This beats the day to day kill, eat and survive.

Where am I?” I ask. “Where are my parents and my brother? Where’s my home? And who are you?” He blinks a couple of times before smiling faintly as though something has just amused him. “I’m afraid you’re not in Kansas anymore, Dorothy.” Wizard of Oz references? I’m somewhere, I don’t know where, and that’s the best I get? Well, I’m not some dumb little girl willing to put up with that, and he certainly isn’t any kind of wizard. - Celestra Caine, FADE by Kailin Gow

You have no idea," she whispered, repeating the first secret Ben had given her. "How fast my heart beats every time you're near.

So, the book is not 'anti-religion.' It is against the use of religion as a front for tyranny; which is a different thing altogether.

The question of this book is simple: What is the best use of my smartphone in the flourishing of my life? To that end, my aim is to avoid both extremes: the utopian optimism of the technophiliac and the dystopian pessimistic of the technophobe.

I'm not a complete idiot, you know," I tell him. "I do think about alternatives if things were to change in Westfall." Bishop swings his legs off the sofa and sits forward, facing me. "I have never, not for a single second, thought you were an idiot, Ivy." "You listen to your father, too, don't you?" I ask him. Bishop looks down at his clasped hands, then back up at me. "Sometimes I just think that because of who we are... the president's son and the founder's daughter..." He rolls his eyes, making me smile. "It's doubly important that we think for ourselves. We're not our parents. We don't have to agree with everything they stand for.

The James Bond movies and the comic books had it all wrong. You did not need elaborate contraptions, complicated plans, and futuristic doomsday weapons to wipe out of all of humankind. All you needed was a fully realized vision and an intense focus. All you needed to do is give a little push to what was already happening; what was inevitable. All you had to do is get one group of people who believe in an invisible man in the sky to get really pissed off at another group of people who believe in a slightly different version of the same invisible man in the sky.

People. And the brutal things we do to one another. The fence shakes against my cheek and I turn, careful to keep my gaze lifted. I don't have it in me to look at her again. Bishop is grasping the chain-link with both hands, knuckles white, his eyes closed. His whole body is wound tight as a spring, like if I reached for him he would simply break apart at the joints, splinter into a hundred pi8eces. I don't try to touch him. He lets out a yell and then another and another, loud and wild and out of control. He shakes the fence hard with both hands. His anger and frustration are more potent somehow because they are unexpected. When his scream fades into silence, he rests his forehead against the metal. "Sometimes," he says, voice raw, "I hate this place." He twists his neck and looks at me, hands still hooked in the fence above his head. "I know," I say, barely a whisper. "Me, too.

I concentrate on the simple act of putting one foot in front of the other and continue moving forward even as part of me is left behind, beyond a fence I cannot breach.

I would rather never make a penny on book sales and know that many had derived some fair pleasure from my writing, than to know that very few had ever taken a chance on my work. I certainly won't last forever, but I'd love to think that my imagination will continue to surface in the minds of others.

Books don't change lives... People change lives... Sometimes, if you're lucky, if you get the thing right, a book can say some important things and that's all fine and good... but a book is just an artifact... a thing that sits on a desk or a shelf... People make the real difference... People and love...

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.*

He glances back at me. "But there's hardly ever any activity outside the fence these days, at least close by. Only the people we put out, and they rarely try to get back into Westfall. I guess they figure it's better to take your chances out there than be guaranteed a death sentence in here." "Either option sounds pretty horrible to me." Bishop shrugs. "I don't know, sometimes I think we should just tear down the fence. Towns didn't have fences around them before the war and everything was fine. I think it was supposed to keep us safe, but instead it's made us scared.

Sometimes we like more than one and that's okay too. It's not like you have a finite source of love and if you share it too much it will drain twice as fast. You love them for different reasons, because they speak to different parts of your soul.

Tendrils of mist began to creep into the landscape, like the slow fingers of a dream. They covered the river's surface and blanketed the air so thoroughly that Musashi had to reach down with a pole to reassure himself that he was still on the Nile.

I think people make it out to be something that's complicated, maybe because there are a million emotions involved and we all haven't become mind readers yet, but it's not, it's terribly simple. You like who you like and maybe if you're lucky they like you too.

Over the past couple of months, Chantel had become a pro at leading book discussions and inventing fun games and trivia questions that all related to that particular month's book selection. Although, last month's theme, dystopian and the book selection "Matched" by Allie Condie, had the retirement home director a little concerned when everyone wanted to stop taking their medications. Not... a good... thing!

Don't know when my life came to visualising intense pain and tragedy to putting it down on paper, to putting across a message of love in times of abject hate. Thank you everybody and the conspiracy of the stars for showing me this day. To many, many more books, inshallah, and to many more launches.

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I was in a place I had never visited before and I didn’t want to ever visit again. I was in hell, or so I thought…

As Grayson breathed, he felt the wild and its ever-moving dance going from one location to the next. He sighed, knowing already the ambivalence the elements felt for his situation.

Our choices in these next few moments could only change how we suffered. Not if. From everything I could see, that was already decided.

I have no idea what I'm doing. What if I fail them all?

To Lilo, Suleika, Constance, and Raul, thank you for coming up with some really good character names when I was in a pinch.

who all wore thin skins of humanity to cloak the beast lurking below the surface.

Now I know you're lying.” His fingers slipped under the waistband of her panties. “In the morning you think of blood, knives and... me.

no one knew how quickly a human changed into a monster. All she could do was love him until that day came.

dressed in pajamas, snatched from sleep, and dead before she ever had a chance to wake up.

Of course this means you'll have to deal with two people's crazy instead of one, but I always thought you could handle it.

I'm better for you,” he said

He let out a sigh. “Thank you.” He lowered his head to her chest.

who want to control the size of their families and better manage their limited resources.

He flashed the group an angelic smile.

The Slither that she'd passed was no longer there, the body it had been consuming lay discarded, ribs spread and innards glistening. The Slither had found tastier prospects— her.

He shuffled to the door and didn’t look back. In his memory she would remain there forever, in her scarlet robe, surrounded by the dusty feathers of dead birds.

You can't have a slaughter without laughter.

the young looked to the old and tried to blame them; the old looked to the young and despaired that nothing had changed and this was the world they’d brought them into.

In exchange for material reassurance, little-by-little we, the people of Avantica, gave up our basic freedoms.

Biking up the same mile-and-a-half long asphalt hill is so much harder when I know that at the end of the journey I’ll either be an outlaw, or I’ll be dead.

The only thing you humans are bloody good for—Comedy.

A book is a loaded gun in the house next door.

dripped down her neck and stained the collar of her shirt. It was a mirror to the wash of blood pouring from her scalp, blinding her left eye and trailing down her cheek like macabre tears.

The books I was given to learn from were about a boy and a girl called Dick and Jane. The books were very old, and the pictures had been altered at Ardua Hall. Jane wore long skirts and sleeves, but you could tell from the places where the paint had been applied that her skirt had once been above her knees and her sleeves had ended above her elbows. Her hair had once been uncovered.

He gripped the little book tightly, staring at its dark blue cover, its silver designs, and its ribbon bookmark. Imprinted on the front in gold lettering was the Greek word μπλεβιβλιο. Bluebook.

No one survives beyond the fence. At least that's what my father always told me when I was a child. But I'm not a little girl anymore, and I no longer believe in the words of my father. He told me the Lattimers were cruel and deserved to die. He told me my only choice was to kill the boy I loved. He has been wrong about so many things. And I'm determined that he's going to be wrong about my survival as well.

There were some people who thought that Slithers looked like humans, and while they did share the same basic shape, their claws, their teeth, their inhuman appetites shifted them firmly to the realm of monster.

He caught the swell of her hip between his teeth and bit down. There was a purpling mark just outside her hipbone when he raised his head. He returned her waistband back to its original position and lovingly patted the mark.

One kiss wouldn't be so bad, but-- No. That was the problem right there. It would be a gateway kiss. Then there'd be tongue and heavy breathing and feelings. I needed to nip that right in the bud. Because after the kissing came all the dying.

Their conversation ceased abruptly with the entry of an oddly-shaped man whose body resembled a certain vegetable. He was a thickset fellow with calloused and jaundiced skin and a patch of brown hair, a frizzy upheaval. We will call him Bell Pepper. Bell Pepper sidled up beside The Drippy Man and looked at the grilled cheese in his hand. The Drippy Man, a bit uncomfortable at the heaviness of the gaze, politely apologized and asked Bell Pepper if he would like one. “Why is one of your legs fatter than the other?” asked Bell Pepper. The Drippy Man realized Bell Pepper was not looking at his sandwich but towards the inconsistency of his leg sizes. “You always get your kicks pointing out defects?” retorted The Drippy Man. “Just curious. Never seen anything like it before.” “I was raised not to feel shame and hide my legs in baggy pants.” “So you flaunt your deformity by wearing short shorts?” “Like you flaunt your pockmarks by not wearing a mask?” Bell Pepper backed away, kicking wide the screen door, making an exit to a porch over hanging a dune of sand that curved into a jagged upward jab of rock. “He is quite sensitive,” commented The Dry Advisor. “Who is he?” “A fellow who once manipulated the money in your wallet but now curses the fellow who does.

Imagine how cool it would be to share this with someone. It's cozy, you can build things from scratch, there's this whole radiation-weather-hermit-hole vibe, endless books, terrible movies, and giant fuck-you monsters wait right outside. Imagine the adventure!

For every path that leads to success, there are a million billion paths to failure. The Anchor’s quest is to live her life again and again and again until she finds the one true path. Only then can she shepherd humanity from bloodshed and destruction to peace and harmony.

James would only look for music composed and performed by humans. Nowadays people didn’t feel the need to learn to play musical instruments. And why would they, since the sounds they produced could be perfectly generated digitally. Human voices were sample recorded, then modified and remastered by artificial intelligence. Where did our creativity go?

We wrote this book because we must channel our rage, our heartbreak, and our love of country to fight for our home and prevent a dark, dystopian future in which immigrants are no longer part of the story of America,” Mendoza says. “We must declare ourselves sanctuary for not only immigrants but for everyone who is vulnerable to the violence of white supremacy..

Why you?” “I don't know, ask him.” “I'm asking you, so, why don't you just come out and say it?” Rafe released the door, letting it close. “What are we talking about?” I dug my nails into my palms, letting the pain brace me for his answer. “Is he your father?” Rafe's smile returned. “Nope. I'm not your brother, Lane. I know that's got to be a disappointment.” He paused, considering it. “Or maybe not. Now you can throw yourself at me. Just not when Mack's around okay? He's not my dad, but he is the guy who busted me out of an orphan camp when I was ten.

Twenty years? No kidding: twenty years? It’s hard to believe. Twenty years ago, I was—well, I was much younger. My parents were still alive. Two of my grandchildren had not yet been born, and another one, now in college, was an infant. Twenty years ago I didn’t own a cell phone. I didn’t know what quinoa was and I doubt if I had ever tasted kale. There had recently been a war. Now we refer to that one as the First Gulf War, but back then, mercifully, we didn’t know there would be another. Maybe a lot of us weren’t even thinking about the future then. But I was. And I’m a writer. I wrote The Giver on a big machine that had recently taken the place of my much-loved typewriter, and after I printed the pages, very noisily, I had to tear them apart, one by one, at the perforated edges. (When I referred to it as my computer, someone more knowledgeable pointed out that my machine was not a computer. It was a dedicated word processor. “Oh, okay then,” I said, as if I understood the difference.) As I carefully separated those two hundred or so pages, I glanced again at the words on them. I could see that I had written a complete book. It had all the elements of the seventeen or so books I had written before, the same things students of writing list on school quizzes: characters, plot, setting, tension, climax. (Though I didn’t reply as he had hoped to a student who emailed me some years later with the request “Please list all the similes and metaphors in The Giver,” I’m sure it contained those as well.) I had typed THE END after the intentionally ambiguous final paragraphs. But I was aware that this book was different from the many I had already written. My editor, when I gave him the manuscript, realized the same thing. If I had drawn a cartoon of him reading those pages, it would have had a text balloon over his head. The text would have said, simply: Gulp. But that was twenty years ago. If I had written The Giver this year, there would have been no gulp. Maybe a yawn, at most. Ho-hum. In so many recent dystopian novels (and there are exactly that: so many), societies battle and characters die hideously and whole civilizations crumble. None of that in The Giver. It was introspective. Quiet. Short on action. “Introspective, quiet, and short on action” translates to “tough to film.” Katniss Everdeen gets to kill off countless adolescent competitors in various ways during The Hunger Games; that’s exciting movie fare. It sells popcorn. Jonas, riding a bike and musing about his future? Not so much. Although the film rights to The Giver were snapped up early on, it moved forward in spurts and stops for years, as screenplay after screenplay—none of them by me—was

the biggest risk we face as a civilization,” comparing the creation of it to “summoning the demon.” Intellectual celebrities such as the late cosmologist Stephen Hawking have joined Musk in the dystopian camp, many of them inspired by the work of Oxford philosopher Nick Bostrom, whose 2014 book Superintelligence captured the imagination of many futurists.

The Judge transported Darius and I to that chamber

Imara shrugged. “A hundred years ago, no one thought they had hilas. People thought they were just strangely good at mundane things.

Imara smoothed the hair on the back of her neck then flounced the curls on top of her head. She tugged at the strands of hair on the back of her neck while she stared at the jar of coconut oil on her desk. With a nod to herself, she threw the coconut oil into the backpack. It took up valuable space, but she’d never be able to tame her curls without it.

I was a new person. A new Aurora. I was Aurora of Itchikan City-State.