Quotes About Survival

If you were going to live in hell on earth, there was something to be said for being one of the devils.

The first few days, the worst thing he seen Harold do was take a dump and use the pages from one of the camp library books for toilet paper. Renée wined. "It turned out to be The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter . Our only copy. If I had known what he was going to do with it, I would've given him a copy of Atlas Shrugged .

Jude wondered if the chip was smart enough to tell the difference between a dog and a naked psychotic scrambling around on all fours with a knife in his teeth.

The child outliving the parents is the only happy story us human beings get.

Humanity is a germ that thrives on the very edge of catastrophe.

A flock isn't such a bad thing if you belong, but a few hundred starlings will tear an unlucky martin to feathers if it crosses their path.

Out of the frying pan and into the Fireman.

It was the end of the world, but you could still hit the drive-thru on your way to oblivion.

It was bad enough to be stuck in a pipe with a porcupine, worse to be in there with a lunatic, even if the lunatic happened to be herself.

Humanity is worse than flies. If even one dried nugget of offal survives the flames, we'll be swarming all over it. Fighting about who owns it and selling the most fragrant chunks to the wealthy and the gullible.

Death and ruin is man's preferred ecosystem. Did you ever read about the bacterium that thrives in volcanoes, right on the edge of boiling rock? That's us. Humanity is a germ that thrives on the very edge of catastrophe.

They have eighties sing-alongs after breakfast. Toto and Hall & Oates." "In that case," the Fireman said, "I think I'd rather burn alive.

The Gasmask Man

But they could not stay, because you could not raise a baby in a trench.

There have been six extinction events in the life of this planet. I bet every one of them was the spore.

Ma'am," Cline said, "I hid under dead bodies less cold than you." He glanced at Harper and

So much kindness," Renée said. "So many people looking after us. They don't know a thing about us except we're in need. I read a Cormac McCarthy novel once, about the end of the world. People hunting dogs and each other and frying up babies, and it was awful. But we need kindness like we need to eat. It satisfies something in us we can't do without.

They're not bad people, most of them. All they want is to be safe." "Isn't that always a permission slip for ugliness and cruelty? All they want is to be safe, and they don't care who they have to destroy to stay that way. And

The people who had witnessed the mushroom cloud rising from Hiroshima could've felt no less.

There are two infections running rampant. One is the Dragonscale, and the other is panic." "It

Humanity is worse than flies. If even one dried nugget of offal survives the flames, we'll be swarming all over it. Fighting about who owns it and selling the most fragrant chunks to the wealthy and the gullible. You're afraid it's the End Times because we're surrounded by death and ruin. Nurse Willowes, don't you know? Death and ruin is man's preferred ecosystem. Did

In any random slaughter, the difference between living and dying rarely has anything to do with willpower, or wisdom, or pluck. It's just a matter of where you're standing. Two inches to the right, and the bus hits you. If your office is on the ninety-second floor instead of the ninetieth, you don't make it out in time.

If you are a parent, teacher, camp counselor, or school resource officer and you see children severely change or restrain their arm behavior around their parents or other adults, at a minimum it should arouse your interest and promote further observation. Cessation of arm movement is part of the limbic system's freeze response. To the abused child, this adaptive behavior can mean survival.

Gavin de Becker was talking about in his insightful book, The Gift of Fear.