Post Apocalyptic Fiction Quotes

“I haven’t been this high-functioning since last century.” - Chief Morray, The City Center”
― Simone Pond

“To take away a woman's ability to walk is one thing; it's quite another to take away her ability to speak. -(Lady Meesha) I Am Lady Sasha -The Journey From Slave to Slave-”
― Julienne Russell

“The day Mother Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? killed Father The Outlaw Josey Wales, they were arguing again about the Pre-Reddening game of Major League Baseball.”
― Nick DiChario, Valley of Day-Glo

“When she sat down on the tile next to him, unafraid, his kaleidoscope senses drank in the years that had been printed onto her mind before she was old enough to remember, and he told her a story, projecting into her darkness sensations of light and color and shape, butterflies swirling like silk-spun gold out through a window that opened to a big green field in the days before the bomb.”
― Mel Paisley, Love Hurts: A Speculative Fiction Anthology

“When the truth
Is the opposite
The silent liars
Are the true criminals

When the truth
Becomes fear
It's altered
But reveal
The memories
Of light

It's the only justice
In this corrupted earth

The Memories Are The Only Justice”
― Jazalyn, vViIrRuUsS: I Never Forget

“A good writer must first be a great reader.”
― Sylvia Talo, Surviving the Day of Destruction: Apocalypse to New World Earth

“The corners of my mouth twitched. Wait. Did this boy just make me smile in the middle of the apocalypse?”
― Candice Jarrett, Mortal Tether

“...the post-apocalyptic mode has long attracted writers not generally considered part of the science fiction tradition. It's one of the few subgenres of science fiction, along with stories of the near future (also friendly to satirists), that may be safely attempted by a mainstream writer without incurring too much damage to his or her credentials for seriousness. The anti-science fiction prejudice among some readers and writers is so strong that in reviewing a work of science fiction by a mainstream author a charitable critic will often turn to words such as 'parable' or 'fable' to warm the author's bathwater a little, and it is an established fact that a preponderance of religious imagery or an avowed religious intent can go a long way toward mitigating the science-fictional taint, which also helps explain the appeal to mainstream writers such a Walker Percy of the post-apocalyptic story, whose themes of annihilation and recreation are so easily indexed both to the last book of the New Testament and the first book of the Old. It's hard to imagine the author of Love in the Ruins writing a space opera.”
― Michael Chabon, The Road

“As they travel the father feeds his son a story, the nearest that he can come to a creed or a reason to keep on going: that he and his sone are 'carrying the fire'. In what this fire might consists he can never specify, but from this hopeful fiction or hopeless truth the boy seems to intuit a promise: that life will not be always this; that it will improve, that beauty or purpose, sunlight and green plenty will return; in short that everything is goin to be 'okay', a word that both characters endlessly repeat to each other, touching it compulsively like a sore place or a missing tooth. They are carrying the fire through a world destroyed by fire, and therefore - a leap of logic or faith that by the time the novel opens has become almost insurmountable for both of them - the boy must struggle on, so that he can be present at, or somehow contribute to, the eventual rebirth of the world.”
― Michael Chabon, The Road

“This paradox, like a brutal syllogism, leads McCarthy, almost one sense in spite of himself, to conclude The Road on a note of possible redemption that while moving and reassuring is prepared for neither by one;'s reading of his prior work nor, perhaps, by the novel itself. In order to destroy the world, it becomes necessary to save it.”
― Michael Chabon, The Road

“No damn cat. No damn cradle.”
― Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

“Stalker. Dokładnie tak ich sobie wyobrażał – z opowiadań ojczyma i historyjek straganiarzy. Poplamiony i miejscami osmalony skafander ochronny, długa ciężka kamizelka kuloodporna, potężne bary, na prawym ramieniu niedbale zarzucona potężna bryła erkaemu, z lewej, na podobieństwo bandoletu, zwisa pobłyskująca smarem taśma z nabojami. Masywne sznurowane buty, wpuszczone do środka spodnie, na plecach przepastny płócienny plecak. Stalker zdjął okrągły hełm specnazu, ściągnął gumową maskę przeciwgazową i, zaczerwieniony, mokry, rozmawiał o czymś z dowódcą posterunku.”
― Dmitry Glukhovsky, Metro 2033

“When he'd finally managed to access the heavily damaged upper floors, he had moved through them carefully, prepared to find her dead body under the broken furniture or the fallen walls. But he never did. He found no one. That's when Mael had started to hope. Surely they would come looking for him, he told himself. He must keep the building ready for them. He would say it out loud when his loneliness and loud sobs threatened to swallow him and all he wanted was to end it all: She would come. If he was patient and stayed put, she would come. He couldn't leave. One day she would come.
- “Worker of the Year” in Gone Lawn #15, 2014”
― Margrét Helgadóttir

“Four hooded figures emerge from the shadowy depths of the sea. They carry no weapons or arms to defend themselves. With a careful tread, the four quietly make their way from the water to a nearby brick building, which is emblazoned with the Crown’s insignia. Night cloaks their secret wanderings, but the golden moon spills its rays over their heads.”
― Mary Usufzy, The Heir of Illgarat

“Leave me,” he groaned in pain. “Run.”
His face paled, blood dribbling between his lips as he coughed.

I’d seen death on people’s faces more times than I could count. Death had a way of revealing people’s true natures. Some people begged, some threatened, some tried to bargain. And this idiot I didn’t even know was dying and still trying to help me. I hated him for it.


He started trying to talk again, grabbing at my hands. 


“Shut up, dumbass,” I hissed at him, pressing harder at his wound. 


He cried out in pain, but his cry cut off as the familiar warmth spread from my chest down my arms and into his stomach. The bullet had gone clean through his gut. Normally a death wound, but not tonight. I could feel his body mending beneath my fingers, all the muscles and organs knitting themselves back together. His hand curled over the top of one of mine, squeezing gently, and I glanced up to see his eyes full of awe. The wound closed shut, leaving what I knew would be a fresh pink scar, and all the warmth left me.”
― K.L. Speer, Bones

“Oh, the inimical echo of this world of men and women alone! Where be the feet of goats? The wings of butterflies? The buzz of bees? The raging fire of bulls? The dolphin’s foamy music and the whale’s divided temperance? The arachnid’s stalking! Nay; they are all but shadows of wisps, but reflections inside the memories of trees!”
― Ilias I. Sellountos, The Tragedy of Allyra, Princess of Selena

“I’m not looking for protection. I’m looking for a partner.”
― Ernie Gammage, After the Before

“There was a Mosquito in the room.
And it was two metres long.”
― David Alan Woods, Brid: Fight or Flight

“She’s already drained something, Xavier realised.
A darker thought.
Or someone.”
― David Alan Woods, Brid: Fight or Flight

“And, as the last rays of the westering sun poured over the Windsor Colony walls...
So did the living forest.”
― David Alan Woods, Brid: Fight or Flight

“Its scales refracted the early morning light, causing it to sparkle in tiny starbursts of every imaginable hue and colour.
Xavier gasped. Death had never looked more beautiful.”
― David Alan Woods, Brid: Fight or Flight

“The silence was absolute.
It was so quiet in the laboratory; you could have heard a cell divide.”
― David Alan Woods, Brid: Fight or Flight

“We are the Choosers of the Slain, the Shield Maidens of Myth. Join us now sister, come forthwith.”
― TRL Boyd, Valkyries on the Rise: A Colliding Realms Novel