False Dawn Quotes

“It was a waste.” His voice was harsh. “A whole city died because too damn many people lived there. They all wanted things. Another car. Television. Wash-after-one-wearing clothes. Freezers full of food. Everyone wanted that.” He stopped long enough to finish the brandy in the glass and pour more. “It wasn’t their fault, though it wasn’t. No one told them the truth.No. Not the truth Truth. Truth.” He wagged a finger at her – “Doesn’t win elections. Or sell papers Truth isn’t popular. So they died. Suddenly he stopped. So we’re like goths living in the ruins. The dark ages comes again.”
― Chelsea Quinn Yarbro, False Dawn

“But there’s lots of deformed kids,” Thea said reasonably, not quite understanding. She had never seen families who, if they had children at all, did not have at least one child who had not turned out right. Even in her controlled environment where each of the pregnancies had been tended with precision and care, her brother Davey had not been normal. For a moment she could see him again as she had last seen him, nine years old, lying in his bed and crying as he flailed his spidery arms about, futilely trying to grasp something, anything, with his limp bony hands.”
― Chelsea Quinn Yarbro, False Dawn

“Poor Bastards,” Evan muttered as he moved closer to the road. His eyes dwelled for a moment on the cart with the children, then he turned away. Even in the years when he lead the Pirates, he got used to the terrible deformities that were appearing more and more in the diminishing number of live births of the few surviving men and women. These children in the carts were no exception: Only one looked close to normal, all the other seven had defects ranging from a few extra fingers on each hand to hideously stunted bodies, to limbless trunks, to hornlike growth on lead-colored skin. Evan saw that two of the women were pregnant, and wondered, as he had done before, what could drive them to bear children with the hopeless testimony of children riding in the cart.”
― Chelsea Quinn Yarbro, False Dawn

“She stood in the doorway looking down at him. “Why’d you keep it?”
He drew in a breath. “They were looking for a man with one arm. So I pinned this to my jacket. It’s going bad-I can’t use it much longer. He paused a moment, then finished, “I can’t get any further without help.”
― Chelsea Quinn Yarbro, False Dawn