Clavain

“We gaze at the dark mass, where buildings, streets, trees, hordes of people, wide stretches of country with farms and herds of cattle are set solid like flies in amber; a hand has gripped a bottle of beer and one can no longer tell the difference between the hand and the bottle; one face has turned to another and the two faces are forever grafted together; two outstretched arms are ready to hold the child that is running towards them and the child is ready to run to the outstretched arms; a kitchen knife is stuck in the middle of the loaf, even though the person holding the knife had thought through to the end of the slice; water streams out of the taps and the cars are piled up in the streets and nothing of this can be changed; the world has spun full circle and the survivors must exist without it.”
― Sven Holm

“They’re afraid because we exist, she says. There’s nothing we did to provoke their fear, other than exist. There’s nothing we can do to earn their approval, except stop existing – so we can either die like they want, or laugh at their cowardice and go on with our lives.”
― N.K. Jemisin, The Stone Sky

“If they were all identical, there would be reason to throw up your hands and lose hope. But they were still people, the bearers of the spark of reason. And here and there in their midst, the fires of the incredibly distant and inevitable future would kindle and blaze up. They would kindle despite it all. Despite all their seeming unworthiness. Despite the oppression. Despite the fact that they were being trampled with boots. Despite the fact that no one in the world needed them, and that everyone in the world was against them. Despite the fact that at best, they could expect contemptuous, puzzled pity.

They didn't know that the future was on their side, that the future was impossible without them. They didn't know that in a world belonging to the terrible ghosts of the past, they were the only manifestation of the future”
― Arkady Strugatsky, Hard to Be a God

“The immutable, awful quiet of a dying world.”
― William Hope Hodgson, The House on the Borderland