After the End/Quotes

"Four hundred centuries have passes since man stepped out into the cold depths of space. Forty thousand years. An age so long that that its history lies shrouded in legend. Who knows how Mankind came to be scattered across a million disparate worlds? Who remembers the wars that tore ancient Earth asunder and dragged man down to the level of brute beasts? Who could recognize the names of Earth's ancient ruins, of nations destroyed and peoples long since crumbled to dust? To these questions, there can be no answers. From these times there come only whispers of horror and death."

- Warhammer 40000

"Oh! We're so tired Watching the world expire Time that we retire Up in cathedral spires."

- Cathedral Spires by Judas Priest

"The once green earth Is scattered with horror and gray No winners, just losers Who die with a few months delay"

- Straight to Hell by Running Wild

"Cathy: Does the future always have to be post-apocalyptic? Dewey: No, but it helps."

- Unshelved, 2008 Nov. 23 review of Shade's Children by Garth Nix

"Learn by heart this poem of mine so, dead, I still will share the time when you cannot endure a house deprived of water, light, or gas, and, stumbling out to find a cave, roots, berries, nuts to stay alive, get you a cudgel, find a well, a bit of land, and, if it's held, kill the owner, eat the corpse. I'll trudge beside your faltering steps between the ruins' broken stones, whispering "You are dead; you're done! Where would you go? That soul you own froze solid when you left your town." Learn by heart this poem of mine."

- György Faludy Learn by Heart This Poem of Mine

"They called it The Last War. Not because it was the last war that was fought, but because it was the last one that would ever BE fought. It began over the usual shit, but this time the men in the fancy hats didn't know when to put their toys away. When it was over, it was over for good. The lakes were sand, the fields were ash and the cities were all cemeteries. Humanity was a cloud of dust blowing over everything it had built. Senators and their speeches, priests and their bibles... all they were now was soot that floated in the air and clogged in your nostrils. Cockroaches inherited the earth and mankind's survivors learned their ways. No law, faith, or creed would ever unite men again. There was nothing left to come together over, nothing left worth having. Of course, there was still plenty left to fight about."

- The opening for Weapon Brown

"A long, long time ago, there weren't any monsters. People used to live in one place and never move. They worked in small rooms and slept in small rooms and only went outside to move between the rooms. We know this because sometimes we find books and papers in the ruins."

- Clorian, A Moment of Peace

""I do not know with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.""

- Albert Einstein

"The explosion that destroyed our city Razed our home, transformed our fields into wasteland Was nothing compare to what was now happening To those who survived"

- 65 Days of Static, Another Code Against The Gone

""'Thou Shalt Not Kill... And ye Shalt build up the old wastes...' Sounds like a mighty good book o' rules. Too bad they didn't listen...""

- Grandpa Squirrel ("They" being humans), Peace on Earth

"Not one will know of the war, not one Will care at last when it is done. Not one would care, neither bird nor tree If mankind perished utterly. And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn, Would scarcely know that we were gone."

- Sara Teasdale, There Will Come Soft Rains,

"Termination (termination) Expiration (expiration) Cancellation (cancellation): Human Race Expectation (expectation) Liberation (liberation) Population (population) laid to waste See our mother Put to death See our mother die [interlude] Smouldering decay Take her breath away Millions of our years In moments dissapear ... Fire Is the outcome of hipocracy Darkest potency In the exit of humanity Coulor our world Blackened Blackened"

- Metallica

"First there was the collapse of civilization... anarchy, genocide, starvation... then we got The Plague."

- Opening Narration, Cyborg