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“What the fissure through which one sees disaster? The circle is unbroken; the harmony complete. Here is the central rhythm; here the common mainspring. I watch it expand, contract; and then expand again. Yet I am not included.”
― Virginia Woolf, The Waves

“This is a paradise of rising to the occasion that points out by contrast how the rest of the time most of us fall down from the heights of possibility, down into diminished selves and dismal societies. Many now do not even hope for a better society, but they recognize it when they encounter it, and that discovery shines out even through the namelessness of their experience. Others recognize it, grasp it, and make something of it, and long-term social and political transformations, both good and bad, arise from the wreckage. The door to this ear's potential paradises is in hell.”
― Rebecca Solnit, A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster

“[T]he relentless note of incipient hysteria, the invitation to panic, the ungrounded scenarios--the overwhelming and underlying desire for something truly terrible to happen so that you could have something really hot to talk about--was still startling. We call disasters unimaginable, but all we do is imagine such things. That, you could conclude mordantly, is the real soundtrack of our time: the amplification of the self-evident toward the creation of paralyzing, preëmptive paranoia.”
― Adam Gopnik

“[T]he normal and the everyday are often amazingly unstoppable, and what is unimaginable is the cessation of them. The world is resilient, and, no matter what interruptions occur, people so badly want to return to their lives and get on with them. A veneer of civilization descends quickly, like a shining rain. Dust is settled.”
― Lorrie Moore

“In fact, I suspect that our only hope is disaster. Cruel tho' it is to say it, there has got to be a vast die-off in the human population -- likely including us and our families -- before the survivors find themselves in a world where a new and humble and 'religious' adaptation with nature is possible.
Disaster is not necessary; the better world could be achieved through reason and common sense and a sense of fellowship -- but most of the present human world is dead set against us. Thus I was forced to the disagreeable resolutions (not solutions) which I attempted to sketch out in the novel 'Good News.' The title is of course deliberately ambiguous.”
― Edward Abbey, Postcards from Ed: Dispatches and Salvos from an American Iconoclast

“We are terrible for each other, and, yes, we are a disaster. But tell me your heart doesn't race for a hurricane or a burning building. I'd rather die terrified than live forever.”
― Joey Comeau

“He said it hit him travelling one time in the year or so before he met my mother. Whatever country of the world it was, the poor were starting to look alike, live alike, eat alike, and dress alike in the same kind of clothes all made in the same part of China. To him, it was a sign that the people had got severed from the land.”
― Marcel Theroux, Far North

“How strange it (the earthquake) must all have seemed to them, here where they lived so safely always! They thought such a dreadful thing could happen to others, but not to them. That is the way!”
― William Dean Howells, A Sleep and a Forgetting

“We can act to deal with the consequences of the earthquake and tsunami, but the disaster was only faintly political in the economics and indifference...the relief will be very political, in who gives how much (Bush offering 15 million, then 35 million under pressure, the cost of his inauguration and then 350 million under strong international pressure)...but the event itself transcends politics, the realm of things we cause and can work to prevent. We cannot wish that human beings were not subject to the forces of nature, including the mortality... we cannot wish for the seas to dry up, that the waves grow still, that the tectonic plates ceast to exist, that nature ceases to be beyond our abilities to predict and control... But the terms of that nature include such catastrophe and suffering, which leaves us with sorrow as not a problem to be solved but a fact. And it leaves us with compassion as the work we will never finish”
― Rebecca Solnit, Storming the Gates of Paradise: Landscapes for Politics

“The tornado the alarms had screamed about ... hadn't actually happened, but around here you never know. Better safe in the cellar than sorry halfway up the sky.”
― Stephen Graham Jones, Night of the Mannequins

“The energy was high, people were smiling, laughing, clowning around. It was a manic high. Panic pressed through a cheesecloth mask of normalcy. It wasn't going to last.”
― James S.A. Corey, Leviathan Wakes

“I know. Ah, hell. Do what you think best, Kim. It's not the decision I'd make, but I'm not you. So you do whatever and I'll back you up, and if it’s a disaster we’ll have learned something.â€�
“Won’t we just.â€� Kim reached across the table for Will’s hand. “Thank you.”
― K.J. Charles, Subtle Blood

“The big social utopias—Communism, Fascism—have led to incredible disasters. Overpopulation of our planet. You just name it. Destruction of what nature is. All of that started in the 20th century... I do believe that the 20th century, in its entirety, was a mistake.”
― Werner Herzog

“The world froze, every second stretching to contain my trepidation. In these miniature eternities, I sought to find any way he was not saying what I could no longer deny he was. Their expressions slowed as in the moment before some epic disaster, blooming in fractions.”
― Valentine Glass, Jarring Sex

“Fortune, because of whom all good leaves us,
was thereupon born, and was complicit in the whole affair. She did this because of her fickleness. And I believe her to be the daughter of the devil because I do not find any writing or text—not prose, not verse—that says or proves that God, who makes all good, beneficial works out of nothing, ever formed or loved Fortune. So I believe that the devil made her, so that she would undo all good and put man in servitude, because there is no shame, damage, or misfortune that does not come to man because of Fortune (may all remember that!). And she does even greater harm to the best than to the worst, night and day. Her disruptive influence will not be short-lived; rather, her control will last until Judgment Day”
― Christine de Pizan, The Book of the Mutability of Fortune (Volume 52)

“The only thing worse than being a disaster is being a disaster with a witness.”
― Saeed Jones, How We Fight For Our Lives

“It was like watching the universe split in half.”
― Alice Winn, In Memoriam

“The Edge of Reason by Stewart Stafford

I do not want to die or take my own life,
I cling to the outside of skyscraper metal,
Thick, choking smoke rakes my shoulder,
Scorching flames lash my back and legs.

I showered, dressed and went to work,
I arrived early, said hello, found my desk,
Then the building shifted, smiles faded,
Everything changed, and here we are.

God, please take me quickly, I beg you,
Bless my loved ones, I hope they understand,
A Rorschach test for shocked rubberneckers,
I let the air pressure suck me out and drop.

The initial relief of vacating impossibility,
Turns to violent buffeting in wind currents,
Clothes ripped off as I spin, falling faster,
Crowds point, the ground rushes towards me.

© 2024, Stewart Stafford. All rights reserved.”
― Stewart Stafford

“Proxy wars have us on the edge of the next nuclear disaster!”
― Steven Magee

“You are beautiful like demolition. Just the thought of you draws my knuckles white. I don’t need a god. I have you and your beautiful mouth, your hands holding onto me, the nails leaving unfelt wounds, your hot breath on my neck. The taste of your saliva. The darkness is ours. The nights belong to us. Everything we do is secret. Nothing we do will ever be understood; we will be feared and kept well away from. It will be the stuff of legend, endless discussion and limitless inspiration for the brave of heart. It’s you and me in this room, on this floor. Beyond life, beyond morality. We are gleaming animals painted in moonlit sweat glow. Our eyes turn to jewels and everything we do is an example of spontaneous perfection. I have been waiting all my life to be with you. My heart slams against my ribs when I think of the slaughtered nights I spent all over the world waiting to feel your touch. The time I annihilated while I waited like a man doing a life sentence. Now you’re here and everything we touch explodes, bursts into bloom or burns to ash. History atomizes and negates itself with our every shared breath. I need you like life needs life. I want you bad like a natural disaster. You are all I see. You are the only one I want to know.
Henry Rollins”
― Henry Rollins

“I don't think anyone deserves disaster. I think a lot of people wish for disaster because it's the only thing left with the power to turn heads."
"Attention-seekers?"
"Some people don't get any attention," he says, and here again is the boy from the ice rink: serious, genuine, morose, old and silently angry. "Some people get no attention. You can understand why they'd go seeking it. If they're waiting forever for something that might never come.”
― Alice Oseman, Solitaire

“I am my own worst disaster.”
― Kathleen Glasgow, Girl in Pieces

“Disaster is the great equaliser.”
― H.C. Roberts, Harp and the Lyre: Exchange

“The roaring of the seas; the turmoil of the sands; the howling of the winds; the fall of the hail; the burning sulphur. Woeful was the episode of the unexpected.”
― H.C. Roberts, Harp and the Lyre: Exchange

“Every politician I talk to seems to say the same thing: "Now is not the time to point fingers." Spin doctors even come up with the term blame game. "I'm not going to play the blame game," they say, dismissing you when you ask for answers, for the names of officials who made key decisions. I notice that some reporters start using the term too. I can't understand why. Demanding accountability is no game, and there's nothing wrong with trying to understand who made mistakes, who failed. If no one is held accountable for their decisions, for their actions, all of this will happen again. Not one person has yet to stand up and admit wrongdoing. No politician, no bureaucrat, has admitted a specific mistake. Some have made blanket statements, saying they accept responsibility for whatever went wrong. But that's not good enough. We need to know specifics. What was done wrong? What were the mistakes? I ask any official I can. No one will answer. The only "mistakes" they admit to are actually veiled criticisms of others. The mayor should have declared a mandatory evacuation on Saturday, instead of waiting until Sunday. Precious hours were lost. The governor could have done that as well, but didn't. They could have moved hundreds of city buses and local school buses to higher ground and used them to evacuate the nearly one hundred thousand residents who had no access to private transportation. They didn't. There were plenty of mistakes to go around. I just want someone to admit to them.”
― Anderson Cooper, Dispatches from the Edge: A Memoir of War, Disasters, and Survival

“Where there is a disaster, there is definitely negligence, unpreparedness; where there is negligence, unpreparedness, there is crime, and where there is crime, there is also the culprit!”
― Mehmet Murat ildan

“Every fire burns itself out,
but only when all the fuel has been exhausted.

Here we are,
surrounded by fire.
Who throws fodder on the flames?
Who is lost in the blaze
to the blaze?
And what damage will it do
before it burns itself away
completely?

Here we are,
surrounded by fire,
fire starters, fire growers, and
fire revelers.

Where are the firefighters?

We are the firefighters.”
― Shellen Lubin

“They say that the best travel stories are the ones that go supremely wrong.”
― Britni Pepper, Good Travel, Bad Sex: A young Australian discovers the world

“At its best, art can be nothing more than a means of forgetting the human disaster for a while.â€�

I am still working hard to make this ‘while� worthwhile.

â€� I.B.S., ‘Author's Note,â€� July 6, 1981.”
― Isaac Bashevis Singer, The Collected Stories of Isaac Bashevis Singer

“Medical tourism isn't a vacation; it's a necessary journey. Crossing borders for the healthcare lifeline they deserve, it's patients becoming pilots, taking control before their health script turns into a disaster movie.”
― Dr Prem Jagyasi, Dr Prem's Guide Book - Medical Tourism [Paperback]