Doomsday Book Quotes

“I wanted to come, and if I hadn’t, they would have been all alone, and nobody would have ever known how frightened and brave and irreplaceable they were.”
― Connie Willis, Doomsday Book

“None of the things one frets about ever happen. Something one's never thought of does.”
― Connie Willis, Doomsday Book

“Explain! Perhaps you’d like to explain it to me, too. I’m not used to having my civil liberties taken away like this. In America, nobody would dream of telling you where you can or can’t go.” And over thirty million Americans died during the Pandemic as a result of that sort of thinking, he thought.”
― Connie Willis, Doomsday Book

“It is the end of the world. Surely you could be allowed a few carnal thoughts.”
― Connie Willis, Doomsday Book

“Kivrin reached out for Dunworthy's hand and clasped it tightly in her own. "I knew you'd come," she said, and the net opened.”
― Connie Willis, Doomsday Book

“It’s strange. When I couldn’t find the drop and the plague came, you seemed so far away I would not ever be able to find you again. But I know now that you were here all along, and that nothing, not the Black Death nor seven hundred years, nor death nor things to come nor any other creature could ever separate me from your caring and concern. It was with me every minute.”
― Connie Willis , Doomsday Book

“No," she said. "No. It's only a bad time. A terrible time, but not everyone will die. And there will be wonderful times after this. The Renaissance and class reforms and music. Wonderful times. There will be new medicines, and people won't have to die from this or smallpox or pneumonia. And everyone will have enough to eat, and their houses will be warm even in the winter." She thought of Oxford, decorated for Christmas, the streets and shops lit. "There will be lights everywhere, and bells that you don't have to ring.”
― Connie Willis, Doomsday Book

“Kneeling on St. Mary’s stone floor she had envisioned the candles and the cold, but not Lady Imeyne, waiting for Roche to make a mistake in the mass, not Eliwys or Gawyn or Rosemund. Not Father Roche, with his cutthroat’s face and worn-out hose.

She could never in a hundred years, in seven hundred and thirty-four years, have imagined Agnes, with her puppy and her naughty tantrums, and her infected knee. I’m glad I came, she thought. In spite of everything.”
― Connie Willis , Doomsday Book

“io sui ici en liu dami amo’ (‘I am here in place of a friend love’)”
― Connie Willis, Doomsday Book

“None of the things one frets about ever happen. Something one’s never thought of does.”
― Connie Willis, Doomsday Book

“Perhaps that’s what’s wrong with our time, Mr. Dunworthy, it was founded by Maisry and the bishop’s envoy and Sir Bloet. And all the people who stayed and tried to help, like Roche, caught the plague and died.”
― Connie Willis, Doomsday Book

“When I was nineteen—which was, oh, Lord, forty years ago, it doesn’t seem that long—my sister and I traveled all over Egypt,” she said. “It was during the Pandemic. Quarantines were being slapped on all about us, and the Israelis were shooting Americans on sight, but we didn’t care. I don’t think it even occurred to us that we might be in danger, that we might catch it or be mistaken for Americans. We wanted to see the Pyramids.”
― Connie Willis, Doomsday Book

“She was afraid she’d have no hope at all of recognizing the drop without the wagon and boxes there. She would have to get Gawyn to show it to her,”
― Connie Willis, Doomsday Book

“Belki bizim zamanımızın sorunu da budur Bay Dunworthy. Kurucuları Maisry, piskoposun elçisi ve Sir Bloet ne de olsa. Roche gibi kalıp yardım etmeye çalışan bütün insanlar vebaya yakalanıp öldüler.”
― Connie Willis, Doomsday Book

“Why do you weep?" he said.
"You saved my life," she said, and her voice caught in a sob, "and I can't save yours."
"All men must die," Roche said, "and none, nor even Christ, can save them."
"I know," she said. She cupped her hand under her face, trying to catch her tears. They collected on her hand and fell dripping onto Roche's neck.
"Yet have you saved me," he said, and his voice sounded cleared. "From fear." He took a gurgling breath. "And unbelief.”
― Connie Willis, Doomsday Book

“Of course with seven bells, we should be doing Triples, but the North American Council rang Philadelphia Triples here last year, and did a very sloppy job of it, too, as I understand. The tenor a full count behind and absolutely terrible stroking. Which is another reason we’ve got to have a good practice room. Stroking is so important.” “Of course,” Dunworthy said.”
― Connie Willis, Doomsday Book

“Colin and Dunworthy took turns going over to the hall for Christmas dinner. Colin was back in something less than fifteen minutes. “The bell ringers started to play,” he said. “Mr. Finch said to tell you we’re out of sugar and butter and nearly out of cream.” He pulled a jelly tart out of his jacket pocket. “Why is it they never run out of Brussels sprouts?”
― Connie Willis, Doomsday Book

“But Kivrin wouldn’t care. She would curl up like Colin and sleep the easy, the unappreciated sleep of the young.”
― Connie Willis, Doomsday Book

“39.5.”
― Connie Willis, Doomsday Book

“He rang off, pocketed the disk,”
― Connie Willis, Doomsday Book

“Dunworthy glanced anxiously at the displays. His temp was nearly 40.0. “The year is 2054,” he said, bending over him to calm him. “It’s December the twenty-second.”
― Connie Willis, Doomsday Book

“He watched the screen go gray.”
― Connie Willis, Doomsday Book

“All the trunk lines have been engaged. The Americans have been trying to reach Ely to cancel their concert, but the lines are jammed.”
― Connie Willis, Doomsday Book

“He was almost too tired to do that, though he knew he would regret it if he went to bed in his clothes. That was the province of the young and nonarthritic. Colin would wake refreshed in spite of digging buttons and constricting sleeves. Kivrin could wrap up in her too-thin white cloak and rest her head on a tree stump none the worse for wear, but if he so much as omitted a pillow or left his shirt on, he would wake stiff and cramped.”
― Connie Willis, Doomsday Book

“Probability was projecting an 85 percent morbidity rate with 32 percent mortality even with antimicrobials and T-cell enhancement, and that was without adding in the supply shortages and so many of the staff being down. As it was, we had nearly nineteen percent mortality and a good number of the cases are still critical.”
― Connie Willis, Doomsday Book

“They’re saying it’s some sort of biological weapon,” Colin said. “They’re saying it escaped from a laboratory.”
― Connie Willis, Doomsday Book

“Grandmother. Agnes had not said anything like “grandmother.” The word hadn’t even existed until the eighteenth century,”
― Connie Willis, Doomsday Book

“The Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918 was a myxovirus. It killed twenty million people. Viruses mutate every few months. The antigens on their surface change so that they’re unrecognizable to the immune system. That’s why seasonals are necessary.”
― Connie Willis, Doomsday Book

“The original regulations had required it in every case of “unidentified disease or suspicion of contagion,” but those had been passed in the first hysteria after the Pandemic,”
― Connie Willis, Doomsday Book

“I’m not used to having my civil liberties taken away like this. In America, nobody would dream of telling you where you can or can’t go.” And over thirty million Americans died during the Pandemic as a result of that sort of thinking, he thought. “I”
― Connie Willis, Doomsday Book