Quotes About Desolation

Do you know what it means to look at a headless baby sitting in a shovel? It is as if all the languages in the world have been forgotten, as if all the books ever written have been given up to dust. And that you are glad of it. Because such people as we have no right to speak or write or leave any trace for history.

My mother was gone. The whole world should be black and cold. Nothing should look beautiful.

Will and Nico sat shoulder to shoulder, bantering good-naturedly. They were so cute together it made me feel desolate.

There is a lot of love in him, a lot of love in his heart... And he is up there with no one and nothing to love. It is a bad thing to have love and no where to put it.

Mostly, he looked like a big piece of old brown carpet that had been left out in the rain.

And he is up there with no one and nothing to love. It is a bad thing to have love and nowhere to put it.

There were oil wells everywhere. The soil had been abandoned to dust and lizards, and the backyard of every wind-blistered bungalow in town had thrown over ideas of shade or geraniums in favor of the whiskey promise in the mutter of those green grasshopper pumps...A dozen ravenous steel insects sucked at the shit-caked loam in the mile-square meatfield of empty pens where the beeves, when there were beeves, milled waiting for the knife. (125)

In the grim blasted regions where the soil had failed or the factories were shut down, whole congregations would drift through the gates

completely alone. He could not imagine being more completely alone as he gazed up at the tree that seemed to vanish into the clouds. He sighed and muttered, "So alone, so alone." And yet, deep inside him

For a long time, I was very unhappy, very unhappy indeed. ... occasions now and then -- extremely desolate occasions -- when you think to yourself: What a terrible mistake I've made with my life. And you get to thinking about a different life, a better life you might have had.

The interior looked like I expected. Two rooms--a main one and a tiny bedroom. Dusty stuffed fish and moth-eaten elk heads on bare walls. A wood plank floor that seemed as if it hadn't been swept in years. Cobwebs decorating the ceiling. Furniture that would have been rejected by Goodwill. Mouse droppings everywhere. A few dark furry bat forms hung from the upper eaves. In the city, the place would have been condemned as a public health hazard. Here, it was just a typical hunting shack.

Every nerve in my body is so vacant and numb/I can't even remember what it was I came here to get away from/Don't even hear a murmur of a prayer/It's not dark yet, but it's getting there.

the love had grown cold, and in the night he heard it whistling through the chambers of his heart like a lost and gently crying wind.

To live a barren sister all your life,Chanting faint hymns to the cold fruitless moon.

Having nothing, nothing can he lose.

He had been "drunken" on their rhythms. But now his mind had gone silent, and sitting alone with nothing to do in his remote cabin, all seemed lost. The wind rattled at the door. "It is sad," Steinbeck said in closing, "when the snow is falling.

It is hopelessness even more than pain that crushes the soul.

War is at best barbarism…. Its glory is all moonshine. It is only those who have neither fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for blood, more vengeance, more desolation. War is hell.

I am tired and sick of war. Its glory is all moonshine. It is only those who have neither fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for blood, for vengeance, for desolation. War is hell.

Hitler is a monster of wickedness, insatiable in his lust for blood and plunder. Not content with having all Europe under his heel, or else terrorized into various forms of abject submission, he must now carry his work of butchery and desolation among the vast multitudes of Russia and of Asia…. So now this bloodthirsty guttersnipe must launch his mechanized armies upon new fields of slaughter, pillage and devastation.

nothing on earth is lovable or trustworthy.

The stars are not wanted now; put out every one, Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun, Pour away the ocean and sweep up the woods; For nothing now can ever come to any good.

I have to make do with a hollow heart full of holes.

An isolated person is doomed beyond remedy." Yasmina Khadra, Swallows of Kabul