Apocalypse Quotes

“It was actually good that the world had ended, because now no one could make her play Settlers of Catan.”
― Gretchen Felker-Martin, Manhunt

“If matter were prone to birthing monsters of this kind, Schwarzschild asked with a trembling voice, were there correlations with the human psyche? Could a sufficient concentration of human will--millions of people exploited for a single end with their minds compressed into the same psychic space--unleash something comparable to the singularity? Schwarzschild was convinced that such a thing was not only possible but was actually taking place. . . . He babbled about a black sun dawning over the horizon, capable of engulfing the entire world, and he lamented that there was nothing we could do about it. Because the singularity sent out no warnings. The point of no return--the limit past which one fell prey to its unforgiving pull--had no sign or demarcation. Whoever crossed it was beyond hope. Their destiny was set, as all possible trajectories led irrevocably to the singularity. And if such was the nature of that threshold, Schwarzschild asked, his eyes shot through with blood, how would we know if we had already crossed it?”
― Benjamín Labatut, When We Cease to Understand the World

“The end had left them stiff and fragile, unable to accept that the suburbs were gone, that there was no more escaping the mob, no more pretending floors and toilets scrubbed themselves and reading about black people in monthly book clubs the way you’d read about the construction of London’s sewers or the history of the fur trade, as a kind of boutique curiosity, instead of actually talking to them.”
― Gretchen Felker-Martin, Manhunt

“There was no giant sign proclaiming the end of life as they'd known it; instead, there was a mounting pile of annoyances and disappointments.”
― Annalee Newitz, Four Lost Cities: A Secret History of the Urban Age

“Society is doomed for one very simple reason: it takes dozens of men working months with millions of dollars in material to build a building, but only one dumb-ass with a bomb to bring it down.”
― Jason Pargin, John Dies at the End

“The universe is a strange and wonderful place, and this is a strange and wonderful world, no matter how broken it is right now.”
― Kayleigh Gallagher, Radio Apocalypse

“Hard to describe what those next years felt like to live through. Except as a hollowing out, a loss beyond repair...even as it kept begging to be repaired. While the promise of what had been so very close haunted me. In so many ways.

"So much in motion, such energy, it disguised the decay of things, the incremental rot. How much was hollowed out."

Impossible to tell how fast society was collapsing because history had been riddled through with disinformation, and reality was composed of half-fictions and full-on paranoid conspiracy theories. You couldn't figure out if collapse was a cliff or a gentle slope because all the mental constructs obscured it. Multinationals kept their monopolies, shed jobs or even their identities, but most did not go under. Governments became more autocratic, on average.

Here was fine, there was a disaster. But here was just a different kind of disaster. A thick mist drenched in the smoke of flares that kept curling back on us. Why fight a mist if all that lay ahead was more of the same?

Those of us who survived the pandemic, and all the rest, passed through so many different worlds. Like time travelers. Some of us lived in the past. Some in the present, some in an unknowable future. If you lived in the past, you disbelieved the conflagration reflected in the eyes of those already looking back at you. You mistook the pity and anger, how they despised you. How, rightly, they despised you.

So we stitched our way through what remained of life. The wounds deeper. The disconnect higher.

The shock that shattered our bones yet left us standing.”
― Jeff VanderMeer, Hummingbird Salamander

“Les 'hommes de bonne volonté', feel
Their politics perhaps unreal
And all they have believed untrue,
Are tempted to surrender to
The grand apocalyptic dream
In which the persecutors scream”
― W.H. Auden

“Midnight's Toll by Stewart Stafford

As the lungs of our world burn,
SS Nero crashes on plastic rocks,
Kamikaze Captain Mann at the helm,
Safety is beyond our salvation.

As a loved one cruelly disfigured,
By a crazed passerby in the street,
The house we once loved as life,
Now a distant, renovated stranger.

Midnight's toll becomes due,
The malicious piper paid in full,
Only desolation, bones and dust,
Our necropolis legacy to the future.

© Stewart Stafford, 2022. All rights reserved.”
― Stewart Stafford

“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!”
― Kayleigh Gallagher, Radio Apocalypse

“The restlessness of a heartbroken Genius often destroys the world.”
― Pradip Bendkule

“Okay, look out at this bar, and this city. This way of people dressing, and the way we talk, and our dumb jobs and our dumb lives.

I think this will end.

It'll end slowly, though. It'll crack apart, systems will break down because they always break down.

America won't last forever because nothing does or ever will.

And we'll think that's the end of the world. Like while it's happening, that's what we'll call it. but then, thousands of years later. . . . There will still be people.

They'll just be . . . you know . . . different.”
― James Tynion IV, The Nice House on the Lake, Vol. 1

“Two weeks into the apocalypse, Daphne burned her hometown to the ground.”
― Emily S. Hurricane, The Beginning of the End

“When an orthodoxy decays, the old dark gods, the savage gods, win back their burnt offerings”
― Russell Kirk, Lord of the Hollow Dark

“When an orthodoxy decays, the old dark gods, the savage gods, win back their burnt offerings.”
― Russell Kirk, Lord of the Hollow Dark

“Funny how even then, as systems failed, flickered out, institutions revealed as paper thin, that so many couldn't bring themselves to believe in anything. That it helped if you didn't. Better to observe the rituals, use the catchphrases. Share your concern.”
― Jeff VanderMeer, Hummingbird Salamander

“The Woke will be receiving ecstatic applause as they order the Apocalypse to submit to Wokeness and to stop being so cruel and heartless. Will the Apocalypse be laughing in response?”
― David Sinclair, Without the Mob, There Is No Circus

“Lloyd didn’t even flinch, he didn’t even try to dodge when Mr. Rogers swiped the nearest utensil and went to stab him in the neck.
Feng caught his arm just as the spoon dipped in Lloyd’s jugular. “Dude, what are you doing?” he hissed.
“Committing murder. Give me a second.”
“With a spoon? No, you’re not. Not now at least.”
Lloyd gave him a ‘What the Hell?’ look that he ignored.”
― Heather Chambers, Earth Sucks

“Just ‘cause they’re dead don’t mean they’re gone, nutter.”
― Heather Chambers, Earth Sucks

“Maybe they are running out of land for themselves…Forests cut down by the thousands. Conquests. New Kingdoms. Shifting cultivation. In the world we men have made, there is no room for them…or for that matter, us”
― Gourav Mohanty, Sons of Darkness

“I try to live in hope when I think of America. Things are terrible everywhere, all the time, I know, but let me have my hope anyway. It does not alter how I walk through the world and what I know to be true. Yet I take comfort in the burning embers. There are still embers! With enough life left to burn.”
― Attenberg, Jaimie

“The greatest battle in life is between letting go and holding on.”
― Brandon LeMar Bass, How to Overcome Apocalyptic Events

“The galaxy was in flames and crowded with pyromaniacs eager to claim possession of the ashes. Bile had no interest in the conflagration, its cause or celebrants. Let the galaxy burn. From its ashes would rise a new future.

One created by him.”
― Josh Reynolds, Fabius Bile: The Omnibus

“In new worlds, old ways must die.”
― Halo Scot, Burn the Sun: An Apocalyptic Science-Fantasy Novel

“A princess who pleads has little power. A woman who asks has little control.”
― Halo Scot, Burn the Sun: An Apocalyptic Science-Fantasy Novel

“Everything is only what we pretend it to be.”
― Halo Scot, Burn the Sun: An Apocalyptic Science-Fantasy Novel

“Sin looks different on everyone.”
― Halo Scot, Burn the Sun: An Apocalyptic Science-Fantasy Novel

“Honor is a whore’s prayer, and glory is a virgin’s dream.”
― Halo Scot, Burn the Sun: An Apocalyptic Science-Fantasy Novel

“Most people are weapons, regardless of magic.”
― Halo Scot, Burn the Sun: An Apocalyptic Science-Fantasy Novel

“You may choose your battles wisely, but you can never choose your war.”
― Halo Scot, Burn the Sun: An Apocalyptic Science-Fantasy Novel