The Quiet at the End of the World Quotes

“There’s no finish line you need to cross to have lived a worthy life, Lowrie. You don’t need to achieve anything if you don’t want to.”
― Lauren James, The Quiet at the End of the World

“No species has ever survived by trying to cling to what's gone. You can't exist if you're trying to get back to an environment or culture or climate that's changed. You have to adapt if you want to keep going.”
― Lauren James, The Quiet at the End of the World

“…Maybe that’s what matters. Maybe that’s what being “alive” is. It’s not some trick. There’s no magic chemical that gives something a soul. It’s about being loved and loving in return.”
― Lauren James, The Quiet at the End of the World

“We live in the quiet at the end of the world. The slow winding-down clockwork motions before life stops completely. Time is slipping through our fingers.”
― Lauren James, The Quiet at the End of the World

“I think about the legacy we’re leaving behind all the time: pollution and plastic and buildings and everything else. As one of the last humans, my choices and decisions are imbued with the full weight of the billions of lives that came before me. It feels like my ancestors are watching me, waiting to see how I ensure their legacy, how I remember them.”
― Lauren James, The Quiet at the End of the World

“When you know that there's no future, the only thing that's interesting any more is the past.”
― Lauren James, The Quiet at the End of the World

“The only thing really valuable to us any more is the element of surprise.”
― Lauren James, The Quiet at the End of the World

“What difference does it even make, if we all die now instead of in a few decades?" I frown, my expression unseen against her side. "What are we all doing here, anyway? What are we achieving?"

Mum smooths out a section of my hair, before twisting it around her finger. "There's no finish line you need to cross to have lived a worthy life, Lowrie. You don't need to achieve anything, if you don't want to."

"But if we're the last..." I sigh.

"Don't worry about making your ancestors proud. You don't need to be perfect, just on the off chance you're the last of your kind. Life is whatever you want it to be. With whoever you want it to be with. Life is the people around you, the ones you love. You just need to be happy. That's all that matters."

I'm quiet for a moment, taking this in. "Are you happy?"

"I'm happier than I ever thought I'd be."

"What made you happy?"

"Having you.”
― Lauren James, The Quiet at the End of the World

“I am not human because I have a brain made of cells and water and iron. I am human because I think in the same way that my ancestors thought. I feel like they felt. I live like they lived. However much my world has changed, however different my day-to-day life might be, that much is true.”
― Lauren James, The Quiet at the End of the World

“You don’t remember the perfect things when you think about the people you love. You think of the them things. The little habits or guilty pleasures or secret flaws that only they have. Those are the things that make them unique. Those are the things that make us all human.”
― Lauren James, The Quiet at the End of the World

“Our lives are particles on a riverbed being lost by the waters of time. Here and then gone in a moment. Nothing, in the grand scheme of things.”
― Lauren James, The Quiet at the End of the World

“People may die and civilisations may fall, but little pieces of the past linger.”
― Lauren James, The Quiet at the End of the World