The Wastelands Quotes & Sayings

I spent centuries wandering the world, from empires to kingdoms to wastelands, nver settling, never stopping-not for one moment. I was always looking toward the horizon, always wondering what waited across the next ocean, over the next mountain. But I think ... I think that whole time, all those centuries, I was looking for you — Sarah J. Maas

In the end, all things, even the Beams, serve the Dark Tower. Did you think you would be any different? — Stephen King

I picked up The Hobbit. And I began to read. I was swept off to a green, green Shire in a far, far land, and my soul has never returned. I suppose it never will. Yes, my soul at the time wandered more in the smoking wastelands of Mordor or the Dead Marshes than Hobbiton, but wandering in Middle Earth, was superior to my own world in every way. — Steve Bivans

A great Tamil poet, given to decadence and debauchery, once said that the story of his life could serve as an example to the youth on how one should
not live. Having lived, or rather, having sleepwalked for ten years through the desolate wastelands of depression, I survived to reach the other side. I believe that this validates my claim to write this book for you. — Indu Muralidharan

For the 'Rai-kirah' books, I began with the image of Aleksander riding the great wastelands, and that quickly morphed into the desert. Because I wanted my slave market cold and miserable, I chose to set the opening scene in the empire's summer capital in the mountains. — Carol Berg

Out of abysses of Illiteracy, Through labyrinths of Lies, Across wastelands of Disease ... We advance Out of dead-ends of Poverty, Through wilderness of Superstition, Across barricades of Jim Crowism ... We advance. — Melvin B. Tolson

At home I used to walk through emotional wastelands where the lines on craggy faces were so deep that the wind whistled through them. People fell in and out of my life, but it was the places that really mattered. Even now I can feel them tugging at my sleeve and spinning around in my head. All the old stories have it wrong, because it's not the ghost that haunts the house; it's the house that haunts the ghost. I feel lost out here, and everything reminds me that I'm not quite real. In the end it's always home that damns us. — Damien Echols

They say no land remains to be discovered, no continent is left unexplored. But the whole world is out there, waiting, just waiting for me. I want to do things
I want to walk the rain-soaked streets of London, and drink mint tea in Casablanca. I want to wander the wastelands of the Gobi desert and see a yak. I think my life's ambition is to see a yak. I want to bargain for trinkets in an Arab market in some distant, dusty land. There's so much. But, most of all, I want to do things that will mean something. — Lisa Ann Sandell

The 'futures' and 'careers' for which American students now prepare are for the most part intellectual and moral wastelands. This chrome-plated consumers' paradise would have us grow up to be well-behaved children. But an important minority of men and women coming to the front today have shown they will die rather than be standardized, replaceable, and irrelevant. — Mario Savio

What do you do there, moon, in the sky? Tell me what you do, silent moon. When evening comes you rise and go contemplating wastelands; then you set. — Giacomo Leopardi

The mind left to itself creates monstrosities, and not only in art galleries. Look at our urban landscapes and industrial wastelands. No civilization has ever produced so much ugliness. — Eckhart Tolle

There are no wastelands in our landscape quite like those we've created ourselves. — Tim Winton

In its quest for prosperity, the Party of the People declared itself wholeheartedly in favor of a social theory that forthrightly exalted the rich - the all-powerful creative class. For many cities and states, this was the economic strategy; this was what our leaders came up with to revive the urban wastelands and restore the de-industrialized zones. The Democratic idea was no longer to confront privilege but to flatter privilege, to sing the praises of our tasteful new master class. True, this was all done with an eye toward rebuilding the crumbling cities where the rest of us lived and worked, but the consequences of all this "creative class" bootlicking will take a long time to wear off. — Thomas Frank

Now her path led down into the darkening valley, but first she had been allowed to see that in the solitude of the cloister and in the doorway of death someone was waiting for her who had always seen the lives of people the way villages look from a mountain crest. He had seen sin and sorrow, love and hatred in their hearts, the way the wealthy estates and poor hovels, the bountiful acres and the abandoned wastelands are all borne by the same earth. And he had come down among them, his feet had wandered among the lands, stood in castles and in huts, gathering the sorrows and sins of the rich and the poor, and lifting them high up with him on the cross. Not my happiness or my pride, but my sin and my sorrow, oh sweet Lord of mine. She looked up at the crucifix, where it hung high overhead, above the triumphal arch. — Sigrid Undset

It's a natural law (or supernatural, if you're so inclined) that weird things appear where people tend to disappear. African jungles, Pacific islands, Himalayan wastelands - wherever expeditionary parties go missing, that's where lost species, Stonehengey stone idols, the flitting shadows of yetis, and ancient, unsurrendering Japanese soldiers are sure to pop up. The — Christopher McDougall

The notion of evil for its own sake strikes me as boring
all these Dark Lords intent on creating wastelands packed with enslaved victims ... for what? — Steven Erikson

She had finally come so far that she seemed to be seeing her own life from the uppermost summit of a mountain pass. Now her path led down into the darkening valley, but first she had been allowed to see that in the solitude of the cloister and in the doorway of death someone was waiting for her who had always seen the lives of people the way villages look from a mountain crest. He had seen sin and sorrow, love and hatred in their hearts, the way the wealthy estates and poor hovels, the bountiful acres and the abandoned wastelands are all borne by the same earth. And he had come down among them, his feet had wandered among the lands, stood in the castles and in huts, gathering the sorrows and sins of the rich and the poor, and lifting them high up with him on the cross. (1081) — Sigrid Undset

KIDS IN DISTRESSED FAMILIES ARE GREAT repositories of silence and carry in their bodies whole arctic wastelands of words not to be uttered, stories not to be told. — Mary Karr

Without optimism & self-belief among teachers, classrooms become wastelands of boredom & routine and schools deserts of lost opportunity. — Andy Hargreaves

It is not right that everyone should read the pages which follow; only a few will be able to savour this bitter fruit with impunity. Consequently, shrinking soul, turn on your heels and go back before penetrating further into such uncharted, perilous wastelands. Listen well to what I say: turn on your heels and go back, not forward,[ ... ] — Comte De Lautreamont

you sit across from me in the garden,
pretending that you have to leave shortly,

I know, as always, you want me to play the fool,
and ask, Am I keeping you?

Yes.

Well, if so, then
can I keep you?

This is the paradigm of us. We are civilization and paradise, but
We are Armageddon, and wastelands. — Terrence Alonzo Craft

I don't think we yet know - because it's probably not big enough - what exactly Amazon does to our cities, but whatever it is, I don't anticipate retail wastelands. If anything, it's maybe a wake-up call to retailers that they just have to offer something meaningful to customers. — Brad Stone

It quickly became a tracking operation, though. My chariot could not keep up with his truck. By the time I caught up with him, his truck was parked in one of those asphalt wastelands. What are they called again"?
The Tuatha De Danann have no problem asking Druids for information. That's what we're for, after all. The secret to becoming an Old Druid instead of a dead Druid is to betray nary a hint of condescension when answering even the simplest questions.
"They are called parking lots," I replied.
"Ah, yes, thank you. He came out of a building called 'Crussh', holding one of these potions. Are you familar with the building, Druid?"
"I belive that is a smoothie bar in England."
"Quite right. So after I killed him and stowed his body next to the doe, I sampled his smooth concoction in the parking lot and found it to be quite delicious".
See, sentences like that are why I nurture a healthy fear of the Tuatha De Danann. — Kevin Hearne

He shifted his arm so he could brush her hair back. His fingers lingered along her jaw. "You make me want to live, too, Aelin Galathynius," he said. "Not exist - but live." He cupped her cheek, and took a steadying breath - as if he'd thought about every word these past three days, over and over again. "I spent centuries wandering the world, from empires to kingdoms to wastelands, never settling, never stopping - not for one moment. I was always looking toward the horizon, always wondering what waited across the next ocean, over the next mountain. But I think ... I think that whole time, all those centuries, I was just looking for you. — Sarah J. Maas

Looking closer at human beings, it becomes clear that each of us is a world of our own. Our forehead is a breezy meadow, our elbows are arid wastelands, our eyes are salty lakes, and our gut is the most amazing giant forest ever, populated by the weirdest of creatures. — Giulia Enders

The information superhighways will have the same effect as our present superhighways or motorways. They will cancel out the landscape, lay waste to the territory and abolish real distances. What is merely physical and geographical in the case of our motorways will assume its full dimensions in the electronic field with the abolition of mental distances and the absolute shrinkage of time. All short circuits (and the establishment of this planetary hyper-space is tantamount to one immense short circuit) produce electric shocks. What we see emerging here is no longer merely territorial desert, but social desert, employment desert, the body itself being laid waste by the very concentration of information. A kind of Big Crunch, contemporaneous with the Big Bang of the financial markets and the information networks. We are merely at the dawning of the process, but the waste and the wastelands are already growing much faster than the computerization process itself. — Jean Baudrillard

Modern racetracks were consigned to industrial wastelands. One hundred and fifty years ago, Saratoga decided to make it the centerpiece of their town. — Natalie Keller Reinert