Alas, Babylon Quotes

“I love you. I worry about you. I wonder whether I tell you enough how I love you and want you and need you and how I am diminished . . . when you are not with me and how I am multiplied when you are here.”
― Pat Frank, Alas, Babylon: The Classic Apocalyptic Novel of Courage, Survival, and Determination After Nuclear Holocaust

“If Man retained faith in God, he might also retain faith in Man.”
― Pat Frank, Alas, Babylon: The Classic Apocalyptic Novel of Courage, Survival, and Determination After Nuclear Holocaust

“He was tough as an antique ivory figurine, which has withstood the viscissitudes of centuries and can accept more.”
― Pat Frank, Alas, Babylon: The Classic Apocalyptic Novel of Courage, Survival, and Determination After Nuclear Holocaust

“It was a surprise, and a delight, to see children devour books. Without ever knowing it, they were receiving an education.”
― Pat Frank, Alas, Babylon: The Classic Apocalyptic Novel of Courage, Survival, and Determination After Nuclear Holocaust

“ 'I think you ought to go to New York or Chicago or San Francisco or any city with character and vitality. You should go to work. This place is no good for you, Randy. The air is like soup and the people are like noodles. You're vegetating. I don't want a vegetable. I want a man.' " - Lib McGovern”
― Pat Frank, Alas, Babylon: The Classic Apocalyptic Novel of Courage, Survival, and Determination After Nuclear Holocaust

“ 'Legs are for men's pleasure, breasts are for babies'.' " - Lib McGovern”
― Pat Frank, Alas, Babylon: The Classic Apocalyptic Novel of Courage, Survival, and Determination After Nuclear Holocaust

“It was strange, she thought, pedaling steadily, that it should require a holocaust to make her own life worth living.”
― Pat Frank, Alas, Babylon

“The white flashed back into a red ball in the southeast. They all knew what it was. It was Orlando, or McCoy Base, or both. It was the power supply for Timucuan County.

Thus the lights went out, and in that moment civilization in Fort Repose retreated a hundred years.

So ended The Day.”
― Pat Frank, Alas, Babylon: The Classic Apocalyptic Novel of Courage, Survival, and Determination After Nuclear Holocaust

“none of this talk. A week or so later, thinking about Mark’s words, Randy had decided to go into”
― Pat Frank, Alas, Babylon

“Small nations, when treated as equals, become the firmest of allies.” It”
― Pat Frank, Alas, Babylon

“This disaster was perfectly predictable, Randy realized. He had been a fool. Instead of buying fresh meat, he should have bought canned meats by the case. If there was one thing he certainly should have foreseen, it was the loss of electricity.”
― Pat Frank, Alas, Babylon

“Throughout the following era, while we struggled with our institutions, with one another, and with our own moral flaws, one of the things that kept many of us going was a sense of privilege. Only the very fortunate get to struggle. Only the living may improve.”
― Pat Frank, Alas, Babylon

“Now at this hour, when the cirrus clouds stretched like crimson ribbons high across the southwest sky, in such a hush that not even a playful eddy dared stir moss or palm fronds, the day died in calm and in beauty.”
― Pat Frank, Alas, Babylon

“I don’t want money. What the hell’s money good for? You can’t drive it and you can’t eat it and it won’t even fix a flat.”
― Pat Frank, Alas, Babylon: The Classic Apocalyptic Novel of Courage, Survival, and Determination After Nuclear Holocaust

“Out of death, life; an immutable truth”
― Pat Frank, Alas, Babylon: The Classic Apocalyptic Novel of Courage, Survival, and Determination After Nuclear Holocaust

“One calling for optimism, pragmatism, and a belief that all problems might be solved, with enough courage, determination, good”
― Pat Frank, Alas, Babylon

“Some nations and some people melt in the heat of crisis and come apart like fat in the pan. Others meet the challenge and harden. I think you’re going to harden.”
― Pat Frank, Alas, Babylon

“The bell announced that there was food on the table and a women in the kitchen.”
― Pat Frank, Alas, Babylon

“I love you. I worn’ about you. I wonder whether I tell you enough how I love you and want you and need you and how I am diminished and afraid when you are not with me and how I am multiplied when you are here.” His”
― Pat Frank, Alas, Babylon

“Since The Day, he had lived in the imperative present, not daring to plan beyond the next meal or the next day. This bit of paper tacked on peeling white paint abruptly enlarged his perspective, as if, stumbling through a black tunnel, he saw, or thought he saw, a chink of light. If Man retained faith in God, he might also retain faith in Man.”
― Pat Frank, Alas, Babylon

“There’s an old saying that anyone can make colonel on his own, but it takes a wife to make a general.”
― Pat Frank, Alas, Babylon

“There is a new crisis in the Middle East. A report from Beirut, via Cairo, says that Syrian tanks of the most modern Russian design have crossed the Jordanian frontier. This is undoubtedly a threat to Israel. At the same time Damascus charges that Turkish troops are mobilizing….” Florence”
― Pat Frank, Alas, Babylon

“You react to crisis the right way. You remember what Toynbee says? His theory of challenge and response applies not only to nations, but to individuals. Some nations and some people melt in the heat of crisis and come apart like fat in the pan. Others meet the challenge and harden. I think you're going to harden.”
― Pat Frank, Alas, Babylon: The Classic Apocalyptic Novel of Courage, Survival, and Determination After Nuclear Holocaust

“With the use of the hydrogen bomb, the Christian era was dead, and with it must die the tradition of the Good Samaritan. And yet Randy stopped...The incident was important only because it was self-revelatory. Randy knew he would have to play by the old rules. He could not shuck his code, or sneak out of his era.”
― Pat Frank, Alas, Babylon: The Classic Apocalyptic Novel of Courage, Survival, and Determination After Nuclear Holocaust

“In this second Randy made an important decision. Yesterday, he would have stopped instantly. There would have been no question about it. When there was an accident, and someone was hurt, a man stopped. But yesterday was a past period in history, with laws and rules as archaic as ancient Rome's. Today the rules had changed, just as Roman law gave way to atavistic barbarism as the empire fell to Hun and Goth. Today a man saved himself and his family and to hell with everyone else. Already millions must be dead and other millions maimed, or doomed by radiation . . . And the war was less than a half hour old. So one stranger on the roadside meant nothing, particularly with a blinded child, his blood kin, depending on his mission. With the use of the hydrogen bomb, the Christian era was dead, and with it must die the tradition of the Good Samaritan.”
― Pat Frank, Alas, Babylon: The Classic Apocalyptic Novel of Courage, Survival, and Determination After Nuclear Holocaust

“Our whole raison d’être was deterrent force. When you don’t deter them any longer, you lose.”
― Pat Frank, Alas, Babylon

“If Man retained faith in God, he might also retain faith in Man. He remembered words which for four months he had not heard, read, or uttered, the most beautiful words in the language - faith and hope.”
― Pat Frank, Alas, Babylon: The Classic Apocalyptic Novel of Courage, Survival, and Determination After Nuclear Holocaust

“[He was disgusted] at the beasts who in callous cruelty had dragged down and maimed and destroyed the human dignity of this selfless man. Yet it was nothing new. It had been like this at some point in every civilization and on every continent. There were human jackals for every human disaster.”
― Pat Frank, Alas, Babylon: The Classic Apocalyptic Novel of Courage, Survival, and Determination After Nuclear Holocaust

“There are as many good things about civilization as bad. Perhaps more. And we would miss them. From toothbrushes to electric lights. From clean water to democracy. From bookstores to the kind of gentle, tolerant argumentation that never resorts to violence and allows for the slow changing of opinions,…and the gradual and diverse evolving of everybody’s minds. The core of what we now know that it means”
― Pat Frank, Alas, Babylon

“You know how it is. When you’ve never been some place, you want to go.” Randy”
― Pat Frank, Alas, Babylon