β
It feels like weβre the last survivors of a zombie apocalypse. Wonder Woman and a gay dementor. It doesnβt bode well for the survival of the species.
β
β
Becky Albertalli (Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda (Simonverse, #1))
β
We could be surrounded by walking dead in the zombie apocalypse and sheβd look for the bright side.
β
β
Karen M. McManus (One of Us Is Lying (One of Us is Lying, #1))
β
I like living in my head because in there, everyone is kind and innocent. Once you start integrating yourself into the world, you realize that people are nasty, mean creatures. They're worse than zombies. People try to crush your soul and destroy your happiness, but zombies just want to have a little nibble of your brain.
β
β
J. Cornell Michel (Jordan's Brains: A Zombie Evolution)
β
My Zombie apocalypse plan is simple but effective; I fully intend to die in the very first wave.
Seems more logical than undergoing all kinds of hardships only to die eventually anyway (through bites/malnutrition/or terminally chapped lips)
β
β
Graham Parke
β
Why is it beautiful that humanity keeps coming back? So does herpes.
β
β
Isaac Marion (Warm Bodies (Warm Bodies, #1))
β
The pretty ones are usually unhappy. They expect everyone to be enamored of their beauty. How can a person be content when their happiness lies in someone else's hands, ready to be crushed at any moment? Ordinary-looking people are far superior, because they are forced to actually work hard to achieve their goals, instead of expecting people to fall all over themselves to help them.
β
β
J. Cornell Michel (Jordan's Brains: A Zombie Evolution)
β
Hope flickered in my chest. 'Do you think they'll stop this... zombie-apocalypse-in-the-making if they realize I'm back on Team Not-Insane?
β
β
Jennifer L. Armentrout (Apollyon (Covenant, #4))
β
I don't want to hear music, I don't want the sunrise to be pink. The world is a liar. Its ugliness is overwhelming; the scraps of beauty make it worse.
β
β
Isaac Marion (Warm Bodies (Warm Bodies, #1))
β
Holy shit." Rehv shook his head and muttered, "Now we know what the zombie apocalypse looks like.
β
β
J.R. Ward (The King (Black Dagger Brotherhood #12))
β
People could say a lot of negative things about the apocalypse, but there was no arguing the air quality in Los Angeles had really improved.
β
β
Peter Clines (Ex-Heroes (Ex-Heroes, #1))
β
You never explained the change of heart."
"Maybe I got tired of seeing Kevin bend. Or maybe it was the zombies. A few weeks back you and Renee argued contingency plans for a zombie apocalypse. She said she'd focus on survivors. You said you'd go back for some of us. Five of us. You weren't counting Abby or Coach. Since you trust Renee to handle the rest of the team, I'm guessing the last spot is for Dobson. I didn't say anything then because I knew I'd look out for only me when the world went to hell. I don't want to be that person anymore. I want to go back for you.
β
β
Nora Sakavic (The King's Men (All for the Game, #3))
β
Yes, because in a zombie apocalypse, there's a lot of downtime to get your hair done.
β
β
J. Lynn (Wait for You (Wait for You, #1))
β
What I learned in this tragedy was the eternal lesson of good people going bad.
β
β
Steven Ramirez (Tell Me When I'm Dead)
β
I promise not to hurt you, unless you try to take my shit. Then I'll twist your head off and hide it in a bush somewhere.
β
β
Cedric Nye (The Road to Hell is Paved With Zombies (Zombie Fighter Jango, #1))
β
It ainβt how hard you are when youβre standing over top of someone that really matters. Itβs how hard you are when someoneβs standing over top of you that shows what youβre made of.
β
β
Cedric Nye (Jango's Anthem)
β
Are you going to rape me at any point or anything?" I just figured it was good to get things out in the open, get myself in the right headspace. He whipped his head around and looked at me like I'd just insulted his grandmother.
"The fuck? No, I'm not." He gave me the squint side-long. "Are you going to rape me?
β
β
Domashita Romero (El Presidio Rides North)
β
Bodies lay in the sun. Bodies stood in the sun.
β
β
N.J. Hallard (Breaking News: An Autozombiography)
β
Sure, at some level scientists know nanobots will destroy mankind. They just can't resist seeing how it happens.
β
β
Cracked.com (You Might Be a Zombie and Other Bad News)
β
We never surrendered. We always kept in our hearts the most noble, beautiful feeling that sets human beings apart: hope.
β
β
Manel Loureiro (Apocalypse Z: The Beginning of the End (Apocalypse Z, #1))
β
There was one thing no one considered, however: Australia was populated by Australians. While the rest of us were trying to adapt to a world that suddenly seemed bent on eradicating the human race, the Australians had been dealing with a hostile environment for centuries. They looked upon our zombie apocalypse, and they were not impressed.
β
β
Mira Grant (How Green This Land, How Blue This Sea (Newsflesh, #3.2))
β
Oh, you're a picky sort, huh?" He laughed. "That takes balls, being choosy at a time like this.
β
β
Domashita Romero (El Presidio Rides North)
β
You and I are victims of the same disease. We're fighting the same war, just different battles in different theaters, and it's way too late for me to hate you for anything, because we're the same damn thing. My soul, your conscience, whatever's left of me woven into whatever's left of you, all tangled up and conjoined. We're in this together, corpse.
β
β
Isaac Marion (Warm Bodies (Warm Bodies, #1))
β
We are born. We die. Somewhere in between we live. And how we live is up to us. Thatβs it.
β
β
Steven Ramirez (Tell Me When I'm Dead)
β
You canβt get the blood out.
β
β
Steven Ramirez (Tell Me When I'm Dead)
β
We need to put your sister in a glass case like Snow White,β Colonel Hamilton said, his arms crossed. He was monitoring the radio chatter from the deck of a gunboat. βWith a sign on it that says βBreak in the event of a zombie apocalypse.β
β
β
John Ringo (Islands of Rage & Hope (Black Tide Rising, #3))
β
And donβt tell me that you were sick because no one is sick for two weeks and canβt even make a phone call! Well, unless sheβs patient zero at the beginning of a zombie apocalypse.
β
β
Erin Watt (Broken Prince (The Royals, #2))
β
Alice is fictional. This isn't.
β
β
Jess C. Scott (Zombie Mania: A Zombie Apocalypse Parody)
β
There is a child - a baby - who long since kicked off her blankets. Her skin is ashen and her mouth open in a perpetual yet silent scream. She isn't old enough to roll over, to sit up, to climb. So she lies there kicking her fat legs against the footboard of the crib, eternally calling for her mother. For food. For flesh.
β
β
Carrie Ryan (The Forest of Hands and Teeth (The Forest of Hands and Teeth, #1))
β
You can't take highways during the apocalypse, because they'll be packed with panicky people.
β
β
J. Cornell Michel (Jordan's Brains: A Zombie Evolution)
β
So, itβs the zombie apocalypse, right? Zombies are coming out of the ass, running amuck through buildings and streets. Youβve already almost died three times by this point and have been mutated by the T virus twice, which appears to be painful. Would you take time in your obviously hectic daily routine to do your hair and put makeup on?
β
β
J. Lynn (Wait for You (Wait for You, #1))
β
I think scientists have a valid point when they bemoan the fact that it's socially acceptable in our culture to be utterly ignorant of math, whereas it is a shameful thing to be illiterate.
β
β
Jennifer Ouellette (The Calculus Diaries: How Math Can Help You Lose Weight, Win in Vegas, and Survive a Zombie Apocalypse)
β
This is the strange thing about life, when people are confronted, they all say that the truth is what they want but when the truth disagrees with them, they balk at it as if it were an unwanted zombie apocalypse that only wants to destroy civilization.
β
β
Leviak B. Kelly (Religion: The Ultimate STD: Living a Spiritual Life without Dogmatics or Cultural Destruction)
β
It's more useful to have someone fear you than respect you.
β
β
J. Cornell Michel (Jordan's Brains: A Zombie Evolution)
β
One thing Red had learned from years of reading and movie watching was that people were far scarier than any disease or zombie or alien or face-eating monster.
β
β
Christina Henry (The Girl in Red)
β
Before I can answer, the horde descends on him. Itβs scarier than a zombie apocalypse.
βShit,β he mutters.
βOh my God, I love ketchup too!β a girl squeals at the bottle in his hand. βWe have so much in common!
β
β
Miranda Kenneally (Jesse's Girl (Hundred Oaks))
β
Father's always saying that South Africa must be one of the best countries in the world for surviving a zombie apocalypse,' Megan says seriously. 'It's full of security estates and high fences.
β
β
Lily Herne (Death of a Saint (Mall Rats, #2))
β
When it's my time, and the reaper calls my name, there will be no stink of fear on me, and my only wish will be to die with grace, covered in the blood of my enemies.
β
β
Cedric Nye (Jango's Anthem)
β
People talk about survival. What they mean is killing the other guy.
β
β
Steven Ramirez (Tell Me When I'm Dead)
β
Well thatβs one benefit of the zombie apocalypseβ¦drunk driving isnβt a crime anymore.
β
β
Mark Tufo ('Till Death Do Us Part (Zombie Fallout, #6))
β
Please, do you see the apocalypse? Because I'd give up on that happening until you do. And even then, it's negotiable."
"I'm holding out for a hot zombie."
"Yeah, or, like, the hot scientist who finds the cure."
"Or the hot government agent who's assigned to protect you from the international terrorist who plans to wipe out the nation with the world's first zombie virus weapon of mass destruction."
"Because you carry the zombie virus antidote in your blood."
"Exactly."
"It's a recessive trait.
β
β
Jocelyn Davies (A Beautiful Dark (A Beautiful Dark, #1))
β
The nurse snorted, and said. βAll men are pigs.β
βNot all men.β Jango said. βSome of the men are zombies.
β
β
Cedric Nye (Jango's Anthem)
β
I had spent hundreds of hours gazing out at the calm, conquered suburban landscape surrounding my school, silently yearning for the outbreak of a zombie apocalypse, a freak accident that would give me super powers, or perhaps the sudden appearance of a band of time-traveling kleptomaniac dwarves.
β
β
Ernest Cline (Armada)
β
The arc of history is long, but it bends towards zombie apocalypse.
β
β
Nick Land (The Dark Enlightenment)
β
You're also going to be out of luck with weapons. And weapons are mandatory for zombie apocalypse survival.'
Camilla is silent for a moment. 'You couldn't just beat them to death with Tupperware? That stuff's tough.'
I grin. 'Maybe if it's filled with Adrian's grandma's cupcakes. I think those are a valuable addition to any arsenal.
β
β
Melissa Keil (Life in Outer Space)
β
Everything dies eventually. We all know that. People, cities, whole civilizations. Nothing lasts. So if existence was just binary, dead or alive, here or not here, what would be the fucking point in anything? My mom used to say that's why we have memory. And the opposite of memory - hope. So things that are gone can still matter. So we can build off our pasts and make futures.
β
β
Isaac Marion (Warm Bodies (Warm Bodies, #1))
β
I've never really had time for romantic relationships. I have much more important things to worry about, like saving the world from zombies.
β
β
J. Cornell Michel (Jordan's Brains: A Zombie Evolution)
β
I thought if I loved you enough I could change you. I was so stupid.
β
β
Steven Ramirez (Tell Me When I'm Dead)
β
Sometimes you have to do something ugly so that something beautiful can grow.
β
β
Cedric Nye (Jango's Anthem)
β
When she had died, his anchor was gone and the world had burned from his untethered insanity.
β
β
Cedric Nye (Jango's Anthem)
β
Who would want to be the prey in a world full of hunters?
β
β
Alexia Purdy (Disarming (Reign of Blood, #2))
β
The book of war, the one we've been writing since one ape slapped another, was completely useless in this situation. We had to write a new one from scratch.
β
β
Max Brooks (World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War)
β
He first noticed it on the plane ride. There was an odor about her and it was becoming more pronounced with each passing hour. It was like the smell of rotting meat.
β
β
Joseph M. Chiron (Tagged: The Apocalypse)
β
Shall I kill her now? Shall I not even investigate, but kill her and burn her?
His throat moved. Such thoughts were a hideous testimony to the world he had accepted; a world in which murder was easier than hope.
β
β
Richard Matheson (I Am Legend)
β
This place is Hellβs waiting room.
β
β
Steven Ramirez (Tell Me When I'm Dead)
β
The procedure, not yet approved in the United States or in Europe, was a form of stem cell therapy.
β
β
Joseph M. Chiron (Tagged: The Apocalypse)
β
Suddenly living in the Zombie apocalypse didn't feel like the seventh circle of hell It felt possible and full of potential
β
β
Rachel Higginson (Love and Decay, Vol. One (Love and Decay, #1-6))
β
When approaching a prospective human, first ask them what their name is.
* If it replies "Brains," blow its fucking head off.
* If it replies "Brian," ask it again, as you may have encountered a zombie with a speech impediment, or a zombie that was mildly retarded in life.
* Keep in mind that it is entirely possible that you did encounter a human named "Brian.
β
β
Shamus McCarty (The Zombie Survival Guide: How to Live Like a King After the Outbreak)
β
Anyway, I learned an important lesson from all of this: While gun ownership is
morally reprehensible in the civilized world, firepower is more or less
de rigeur in a zombie apocalypse.
β
β
John Green (Zombicorns)
β
As far as plans went, it was like facing the zombie apocalypse with a nail file and a bag of Skittles. It might work, but chances were good that I'd die a horrible, painful death.
At least the end would be filled with fruity, candy goodness. And for my dramatic death scene I could whisper, in a creepy, quivery death rattle, taste the rainbow. Boy would those zombies be confused.
β
β
E.J. Stevens (The Pirate Curse (Spirit Guide, #5))
β
Whatβs more insane? Hearing imaginary voices? Or not hearing the real ones?
β
β
Forrest Carr (A Journal of the Crazy Year)
β
Civilization, as a process, is indistinguishable from diminishing time-preference (or declining concern for the present in comparison to the future). Democracy, which both in theory and evident historical fact accentuates time-preference to the point of convulsive feeding-frenzy, is thus as close to a precise negation of civilization as anything could be, short of instantaneous social collapse into murderous barbarism or zombie apocalypse (which it eventually leads to). As the democratic virus burns through society, painstakingly accumulated habits and attitudes of forward-thinking, prudential, human and industrial investment, are replaced by a sterile, orgiastic consumerism, financial incontinence, and a βreality televisionβ political circus. Tomorrow might belong to the other team, so itβs best to eat it all now.
β
β
Nick Land (The Dark Enlightenment)
β
I do care. That's why I hunt them. But if you've seen what I have, then you learn to deal with the murders and disappearances. You learn to push it aside and move on. The other life isn't here anymore. This new world has its own rules. Survival of the fittest is one of them. If you're hoping for kindness and pity, don't hold your breath.
β
β
Susanne Winnacker (The Other Life (The Other Life, #1))
β
They all call me "Excuse me," even though my nametag clearly says "Jordan." It's like people don't actually exist while they're working. Workers are just tools who aren't supposed to have feelings or personalities. You don't become human until your shift is over. Until then, we're all just zombies. We're dead to the world: infected people who need to be avoided, unless, of course, someone needs to know where the paintbrushes are located.
β
β
J. Cornell Michel (Jordan's Brains: A Zombie Evolution)
β
I wanted to see the bullet coming, wanted to know the exact moment of my death.
β
β
Steven Ramirez (Tell Me When I'm Dead)
β
Thereβs no better way for a woman to punish a man than to make him sleep away from her.
β
β
Steven Ramirez (Tell Me When I'm Dead)
β
If you can cut the head off of this broom-goober with that sword, then I'll believe you can gank zombies with it.
β
β
Cedric Nye (The Road to Hell is Paved With Zombies (Zombie Fighter Jango, #1))
β
The job of every generation is to discover the flaws of the one that came before it. That's part of growing up, figuring out all the ways your parents and their friends are broken. So pity the first people to reach puberty after a zombie apocalypse, who would have some truly heavy lifting in this department...You become whatever they fear the most. Now THAT'S evolution
β
β
Justine Larbalestier (Zombies Vs. Unicorns)
β
I once fed a dog-fight operator to the dogs he had abused for so long, and do you want to know something? It felt so good. It was justice, girl. The fucking law never gave a shit about a victim, but justice is all heart.
β
β
Cedric Nye (Jango's Anthem)
β
Zombies are not just fictional creatures that devour the flesh of the living. They also include those who follow the words of others without thinking for themselves. This world is falling apart. I donβt think anyone can disagree with that. People live in their twenty-mile-radius realities and donβt notice the world happening around them, until it finally breaks down their front door.
β
β
Joseph McGinnis (The Weathering, Dawn of the Apocalypse)
β
I felt a lunaticβs laugh welling up inside me.
β
β
Steven Ramirez (Tell Me When I'm Dead)
β
You take all of our pain, you are the spine. You are the blood soaked rag that holds closed the wounds in our soul.
β
β
Cedric Nye (The Road to Hell is Paved With Zombies (Zombie Fighter Jango, #1))
β
I grab at Smitty and he at me, and, for one horrible, deperately embarrassing second we fly into each others arms like Shaggy and Scooby Don't.
β
β
Kirsty McKay
β
But if you want to know who the scariest person in the group is, look for the one whoβs been fighting zombies without smearing her eyeliner.
β
β
Mira Grant (Feedback (Newsflesh, #4))
β
Sanity is over-rated. It lacks color.
β
β
Forrest Carr (A Journal of the Crazy Year)
β
Iβm just trying to do my part to save the world.
β
β
J. Cornell Michel (Jordan's Brains: A Zombie Evolution)
β
Benny Imura was appalled to learn that the Apocalypse came with homework.
"Why do we have to study this stuff?" he demanded. "We already know what happened. People started turning into zoms, the zoms ate just about everyone, everyone who dies becomes a zom, so the moral of this tale is: Try not to die.
β
β
Jonathan Maberry (Dust & Decay (Rot & Ruin, #2))
β
I turned on Fox News and jumped when I saw that they had one of those things in their studio. "Are you people crazy?" I screamed at the television. "Get out of there. Somebody shoot it!" Then I realized I was watching Special Report and had mistaken Charles Krauthammer for a zombie.
β
β
Ian McClellan (Zombie Apocalypse 2012: A Political Horror Story)
β
I think I remember what love was like before. There were complex emotional and biological factors. We had elaborate tests to pass, connections to forge, ups and downs and tears and whirlwinds. It was an ordeal, an exercise in agony, but it was alive. The new love is simpler. Easier. But small.
β
β
Isaac Marion (Warm Bodies (Warm Bodies, #1))
β
...with that I turned into a punching, struggling, kicking psycho redneck zombie bitch.
β
β
Diana Rowland (White Trash Zombie Apocalypse (White Trash Zombie, #3))
β
Did you ever think it wonβt be the undead who kill us, but ordinary people?
β
β
Steven Ramirez (Tell Me When I'm Dead)
β
I like to think she hates my guts a little less every hour.
β
β
Steven Ramirez (Tell Me When I'm Dead)
β
If youβd saved the girl, youβd be a hero. Next time.
β
β
Steven Ramirez (Tell Me When I'm Dead)
β
She played me with a bad hand, and I fell for it every time.
β
β
Steven Ramirez (Tell Me When I'm Dead)
β
What was the proper etiquette for brain-eating? Pinky up? No slurping sounds? A dainty belch at the end?
β
β
Diana Rowland (White Trash Zombie Apocalypse (A White Trash Zombie Novel))
β
You know,β said Makenna, breaking into his thoughts, βI think Iβd have a decent shot of surviving a zombie apocalypse. What about you guys?β
And just like that, the tension melted away.
βShe does that a lot.β Zac chuckled. βAsk weird questions, I mean.β He twisted slightly in his seat to reply, βUmβ¦yeah, I think I could.β Then he looked at Ryan. βYou?β
Ryan opened and closed his mouth three times. βI donβt know how to involve myself in this conversation.
β
β
Suzanne Wright (Savage Urges (The Phoenix Pack, #5))
β
Mia,' she whispered. I turned around. 'What?' I whispered back.
She smiled at me a little. 'LEEERRROOOY JEEENNKKIINNNSS!' she shouted, then spun around and ran toward the Z's in the lighting section.
β
β
John Green (Zombicorns)
β
She watched as the dancing lights of madness swirled and flickered in his eyes like the fires of hell, and she knew that there would never be anything that could quench those fires except death. Vanessa knew that Jango had become his own Grim Reaper.
β
β
Cedric Nye (Jango's Anthem)
β
... I succeeded at math, at least by the usual evaluation criteria: grades. Yet while I might have earned top marks in geometry and algebra, I was merely following memorized rules, plugging in numbers and dutifully crunching out answers by rote, with no real grasp of the significance of what I was doing or its usefulness in solving real-world problems. Worse, I knew the depth of my own ignorance, and I lived in fear that my lack of comprehension would be discovered and I would be exposed as an academic fraud -- psychologists call this "imposter syndrome".
β
β
Jennifer Ouellette (The Calculus Diaries: How Math Can Help You Lose Weight, Win in Vegas, and Survive a Zombie Apocalypse)
β
... Have you considered that maybe this is the birth of a new world, that what happens next is a golden opportunity to change the nature of man in a fundamental way?β
βThose are brave words, Tiresias.β
βNew parents canβt afford to be anything but brave, Eddie.
β
β
Joe McKinney (Dead City (Dead World, #1))
β
Then she was there in the doorway of the ambulance at his feet. She jumped up like a lion, then stood up on two feet like a human. Her hair was thick and full. She had a mouthful of giant teeth. He could see four pronounced canines in the front and strong claws where her fingernails had been. Her strong body was shriveled and emaciated with her ribs and hip bones sticking out prominently like a concentration camp victim. Her stench was overpowering, like a deer carcass left to rot on the side of the road.
β
β
Joseph M. Chiron (Tagged: The Apocalypse)
β
Warren could see humans further up the street, that had appeared to be dead, now rising to their feet and swaying drunkenly. One man had a huge chunk of flesh bitten from his face and another from his neck, yet he moved forward even though he appeared to be in enormous pain. Many of the newly changed screamed and contorted their limbs and faces in anguish. They moaned in pain almost continuously.
β
β
Joseph M. Chiron (Tagged: The Apocalypse)
β
He grumbles incoherently, opens the window a fraction and continues to smoke away. Itβs like every time Sidney Drake enters a new location he has to readjust the atmosphere, akin to one of those sci-fi shows where they oxygenate the planet, but for my dad itβs in a suffocating reverse. He replaces the clean wholesome air with a non-stop puff of toxic poison.
β
β
Tom Conrad
β
Have you ever noticed that all of the stuff on the posters of what you canβt bring into the airport terminal is pretty much exactly the same stuff that would come in really handy if a zombie apocalypse broke out? Swords, guns, grenades, meat cleavers, fire, disinfectant, booze, chain saws: these are all things Iβd want on me if there were a zombie epidemic in Terminal B. Basically, if we get attacked inside the airport weβre all fucked, so maybe people are just scared because theyβve been disarmed. Even the phrasing of where youβre headed (the βterminalβ) is another word for βapproaching immediate death.
β
β
Jenny Lawson (Furiously Happy: A Funny Book About Horrible Things)
β
Iβd once again see that bob of blonde hair back on my pillow, that pink hot smile beaming toward me as I heroically win her heart in some kind of Count of Monte Cristo or Great Gatsby-esque gestureβ¦ you know minus the long imprisonment or swimming pool death!
β
β
Tom Conrad
β
Thatβs the thing about the collapse of civilization, Blake. It never happens according to plan β thereβs no slavering horde of zombies. No actinic flash of thermonuclear war. No Earth-shuddering asteroid. The end comes in unforeseen ways; the stock market collapses, and then the banks, and then there is no food in the supermarkets, or the communications system goes down completely and inevitably, and previously amiable co-workers find themselves wrestling over the last remaining cookie that someone brought in before all the madness began.
β
β
Mark A. Rayner (The Fridgularity)
β
I abandoned the assigned problems in standard calculus textbooks and followed my curiosity. Wherever I happened to be--a Vegas casino, Disneyland, surfing in Hawaii, or sweating on the elliptical in Boesel's Green Microgym--I asked myself, "Where is the calculus in this experience?
β
β
Jennifer Ouellette (The Calculus Diaries: How Math Can Help You Lose Weight, Win in Vegas, and Survive a Zombie Apocalypse)
β
Black vomit came gushing out Samanthaβs mouth, adding to the puddle already on the floor. Samantha was covered in a sheen of sweat, crouched on all fours on the wooden hallway floor, like an animal. Her thick yellow fingernails made deep scratches in the wood as her body convulsed with each new expulsion of the black vomit. Her hair was long and thick and full; thicker and fuller than he had ever seen it. It reminded him of a lionβs mane. Her skin was a sickly pale grey with disturbing red boils the size of grapefruit and weeping puss-filled black blotches where others had burst. Spider webs of blue veins were visible under the skin all over her body.
β
β
Joseph M. Chiron (Tagged: The Apocalypse)
β
It was a high ceilinged room with tall, large-panes windows. Apart from the doorway was the desk where book had been checked out in days when books were still being checked out. He stood there for a moment looking around the silent room, shaking his head slowly. All these books, he thought, the residue of a planet's intellect, the scrapings of futile minds, the leftovers, the potpourri of artifacts that had no power to save men from perishing.
β
β
Richard Matheson (I Am Legend)
β
This may explain the odd space that the climate crisis occupies in the public imagination, even among those of us who are actively terrified of climate collapse. One minute weβre sharing articles about the insect apocalypse and viral videos of walruses falling off cliffs because sea ice loss has destroyed their habitat, and the next, weβre online shopping and willfully turning our minds into Swiss cheese by scrolling through Twitter or Instagram. Or else weβre binge-watching Netflix shows about the zombie apocalypse that turn our terrors into entertainment, while tacitly confirming that the future ends in collapse anyway, so why bother trying to stop the inevitable? It also might explain the way serious people can simultaneously grasp how close we are to an irreversible tipping point and still regard the only people who are calling for this to be treated as an emergency as unserious and unrealistic.
β
β
Naomi Klein (On Fire: The (Burning) Case for a Green New Deal)
β
Mark Spitz had met plenty of the divine-retribution folks over the months. This was their moment; they were umbrella salesmen standing outside a subway entrance in a downpour. The human race deserved the plague, we brought it on ourselves for poisoning the planet, for the Death of God, the calculated brutalities of the global economic system, for driving primordial species to extinction: the entire collapse of values as evidenced by everything from nuclear fission to reality television to alternate side of the street parking. Mark Spitz could only endure these harangues for a minute or two before he split. It was boring.The plague was the plague. You were wearing galoshes, or you weren't.
β
β
Colson Whitehead (Zone One)