Survivor Song Quotes

“the final tally of what will be considered the end of the epidemic [but not, to be clear, the end of the virus; it will burrow, digging in like a nasty tick; it will migrate; and it will return all but encouraged and welcomed in a country where science and forethought are allowed to be dirty words, where humanity’s greatest invention—the vaccine—is smeared and vilified by narcissistic, purposeful fools [the most dangerous kind, where fear is harvested for fame, profit, and self-esteem], almost ten thousand people will have died. *”
― Paul Tremblay, Survivor Song

“He jokes about this being a different and ridiculous timeline. Because why? Crazy awful stuff happening. Horrific shit has always happened, is always happening, and everywhere. And will happen, it won't stop. There aren't any other timelines and this one has always been a horror.”
― Paul Tremblay, Survivor Song

“Promises are like wishes. Yeah. They’re great as long as you know they won’t always help and won’t always come true.”
― Paul Tremblay, Survivor Song

“Happiness was for dogs, lovely creatures though they were. Ramola yearned for something more complex, something earned, and something more satisfying.”
― Paul Tremblay, Survivor Song

“a myopic, sluggish federal bureaucracy further hamstrung by a president unwilling and woefully unequipped to make the rational, science-based decisions necessary; and exacerbated, of course, by plain old individual everyday evil.”
― Paul Tremblay, Survivor Song

“the flame of violence is generally fueled by ignorance.”
― Paul Tremblay, Survivor Song

“The virus doesn’t herald the end of the world, or of the United States, or even of the commonwealth of Massachusetts. In the coming days, conditions will continue to deteriorate. Emergency services and other public safety nets will be stretched to their breaking points, exacerbated by the wily antagonists of fear, panic, misinformation; a myopic, sluggish federal bureaucracy further hamstrung by a president unwilling and woefully unequipped to make the rational, science-based decisions necessary; and exacerbated, of course, by plain old individual everyday evil. But there will be many heroes, too, including ones who don’t view themselves as such.”
― Paul Tremblay, Survivor Song

“Hey, life lesson: if it feels like the thing to do, then do it. Trust your gut. A cliché adults say all the time. Okay, we don’t say it all the time, but we say it a lot. I mean, we’re not walking into Dunks, buying coffee, and randomly saying to the guy with a cruller, Hey, trust yer gut, like it’s the secret adult password. You know what, it might as well be the password. Not enough adults tell kids to trust themselves, trust their wee guts. My parents never said it. They only told me what not to do and what to do. Mostly the first thing. No teacher ever told me to trust your gut either. Which is stupid. No one needs to hear it more than kids do. Instead you’re told the opposite. I don’t have to tell you, right? So many of them make you do stuff you don’t want to do because of convenience or laziness or they want to take advantage of you. They’ll say you don’t know better, you don’t know what you’re doing, you don’t know who you are yet. That’s a big one. And it’s such bullshit. So, listen, only you know you, and if something doesn’t feel right and you can’t explain why, who cares. Trust your gut. Team Guts. Gut trust, all the way. You’re in my gut right now, so it’s like you are already telling you to trust your gut. You are your own gut. It’s like the Inception of gut here. Okay, I’ll stop saying “gut.”
― Paul Tremblay, Survivor Song

“You are not supposed to go back, you can’t go back, and if you attempt a return you will be forever lost.”
― Paul Tremblay, Survivor Song

“And love. The kind that’s so good it hurts and will always hurt. A great and most terrible love.”
― Paul Tremblay, Survivor Song

“that’s what people do, we prepare for the worst and think our worst but then we try our best.”
― Paul Tremblay, Survivor Song

“piss-poor federal response,”
― Paul Tremblay, Survivor Song

“Dr. Awolesi will be proven correct in her epidemic forecast: the exponentially increased speed with which this rabies virus infects and progresses will aid in its own containment and control. Nine days after Josh and Luis meet Ramola and Natalie a massive pre-exposure vaccination campaign will finally begin in New England for both humans and animals. In concurrence with the quarantine, the vaccination program will be wildly successful and will return the region from the brink of collapse. In the final tally of what will be considered the end of the epidemic (but not, to be clear, the end of the virus; it will burrow, digging in like a nasty tick; it will migrate; and it will return all but encouraged and welcomed in a country where science and forethought are allowed to be dirty words, where humanity’s greatest invention—the vaccine—is smeared and vilified by narcissistic, purposeful fools [the most dangerous kind], where fear is harvested for fame, profit, and self-esteem), almost ten thousand people will have died.”
― Paul Tremblay, Survivor Song

“By then Ramola had begun to see herself as asexual but would not admit this to her mum. She said she was impressed by Mum's vocabulary choice, and added she enjoyed the idea of sex like she enjoyed the idea of riding a bike, but both involved too much prep work, or leg work, as it were, and she was alright forgoing both for the forseeable.”
― Paul Tremblay, Survivor Song

“[but not, to be clear, the end of the virus; it will burrow, digging in like a nasty tick; it will migrate; and it will return all but encouraged and welcomed in a country where science and forethought are allowed to be dirty words, where humanity’s greatest invention—the vaccine—is smeared and vilified by narcissistic, purposeful fools [the most dangerous kind, where fear is harvested for fame, profit, and self-esteem], almost ten thousand people will have died. * * *”
― Paul Tremblay, Survivor Song

“Sassafras and lullabies It- it’s an old saying. Means everything is bollocks.”
― Paul Tremblay, Survivor Song

“In the final tally of what will be considered the end of the epidemic (but not, to be clear, the end of the virus; it will burrow, digging in like a nasty tick; it will migrate; and it will return all but encouraged and welcomed in a country where science and forethought are allowed to be dirty words, where humanity’s greatest invention—the vaccine—is smeared and vilified by narcissistic, purposeful fools [the most dangerous kind], where fear is harvested for fame, profit, and self-esteem), almost ten thousand people will have died.”
― Paul Tremblay, Survivor Song

“Promises are like wishes. Yeah. They’re great as long as
you know they won’t always help and won’t always come true.”
― Paul Tremblay, Survivor Song

“No one makes all good decisions, and it’s
often difficult to know if your decision was good or bad or likely somewhere in between, and you might never know. I mean, don’t sniff glue, right? Doing so would be an obviously bad decision. Don’t microwave a hardboiled egg. Don’t drink milk past its expiration date. The sniff test isn’t reliable enough on milk.”
― Paul Tremblay, Survivor Song

“Never leave me and I will never leave you. Neither now, nor ever.”
― Paul Tremblay, Survivor Song

“there never was and never will be a sweeter time, a greater moment. If not an apotheosis, this is them at their best, and they laugh and they boast and they shout and they live and they know there is no future.”
― Paul Tremblay, Survivor Song

“Everyone has the worst inside of them but some of us try to make something beautiful out of it anyway.”
― Paul Tremblay, Survivor Song

“Happiness held no nuance or compromise, did not allow for examination, did not allow the hopeful, hungry will that fills the vacuum of failure and what-might’ve-beens, nor did it allow for the sweetness of surprise.”
― Paul Tremblay, Survivor Song

“It sucks, but promises get broken all the time. Promises are like wishes. Yeah. They’re great as long as you know they won’t always help and won’t always come true.”
― Paul Tremblay, Survivor Song

“Time is too heavy. It really does have weight you can feel but you can’t measure.”
― Paul Tremblay, Survivor Song

“When one says one is not trying to be a dick, it generally implies the opposite”
― Paul Tremblay, Survivor Song

“next. There’s no apparent strategy or reason or order to the violence beyond the existence and the instance of the acts themselves.”
― Paul Tremblay, Survivor Song

“Wild-eyed and as twitchy as a short-circuiting electrical panel, the boy snaps and growls, atavistic in his new animalness. He does not turn around or walk down the stairs. He holds his ground. His legs are spring-loaded. His fists are rocks, his teeth bared in deimatic display, broadcasting the threat of our most primitive weapons.”
― Paul Tremblay, Survivor Song

“Lily groans and whacks his shoulder. Lily-shoulder-whacks hurt the most too. Robert doesn’t let on how much it smarts by not rubbing his arm. She says, “We’re not in America,” out of the side of her mouth, as though she’s embarrassed to be saying so.”
― Paul Tremblay, Survivor Song

“The number of people infected with Covid-19 in Massachusetts was skyrocketing”
― Paul Tremblay, Survivor Song