Quotes from Ashfall

“A librarian can’t live by books alone, and I wouldn’t eat them if I could. Feel too much like cannibalism.”
― Mike Mullin, quote from Ashfall

“For the first time ever, I felt ashamed of my species. The volcano had taken our homes, our food, our automobiles, and our airplanes, but it hadn't taken our humanity. No, we'd given that up on our own.”
― Mike Mullin, quote from Ashfall

“Hunger of choice is a painful luxury; hunger of necessity is terrifying torture.”
― Mike Mullin, quote from Ashfall

“The few trees still upright were stripped of their branches, lonely flagpoles without a nation to claim them.”
― Mike Mullin, quote from Ashfall

“Condoms instantly shot to the number-one position on my mental list of must-find survival supplies, far ahead of food, water, and a way across the Mississippi River.”
― Mike Mullin, quote from Ashfall

“I used to think that teachers who gave homework on weekends should be forced to grade papers for an eternity in hell.”
― Mike Mullin, quote from Ashfall

“I didn't care much for being called stupid and softhearted. But the boyfriend bit I could live with.”
― Mike Mullin, quote from Ashfall

“So I thought I’d feel different afterward, after the visible neon sign proclaiming 'virgin' had blinked out on my forehead. I’d spent years obessessing about it, so it seemed like somthing should have changed. Maybe it would have if I’d still been at Ceder Falls High School surrounded by the gossip and the braggadocio of teenage boys. But on my uncle's farm, nobody noticed, or at least nobody said anything. The next day, like every day, we dug corn, chopped wood, and carried water. And it didn’t really change much between Darla and me, either. Yes, making love was fun, but it wasn’t really any more fun than anything we’d already been doing together. Just different.”
― Mike Mullin, quote from Ashfall

“I wanted, needed to see her so badly that it woke me up at night.”
― Mike Mullin, quote from Ashfall

“The next few hours were, well, how to describe it? Ask someone to lock you in a box with no light, nobody to talk to, and then have them beat on it with a tree limb to make a hideous sound. Do that for hours, and if you're still not bat-shit crazy, you'll know how we felt.”
― Mike Mullin, quote from Ashfall

“But even more than I wanted to check out and give my emotional wounds time to scab over, I wanted to live.”
― Mike Mullin, quote from Ashfall

“The most important part of seeing Darla every night wasn’t the fooling around. It was the few minutes we talked while holding each other, the feeling of security I got with her, the feeling of being understood and loved. Before the eruption, I wouldn’t have believed that I could cuddle up every night with the girl who starred in my dreams and not be totally preoccupied with sex. But the trek across Iowa had changed something. I wanted, needed to see her so badly that it woke me up at night. But making out was incidental to my need – nice when it happened, but secondary to the simple pleasure of sleeping beside her.”
― Mike Mullin, quote from Ashfall

“But unlike thunder, this didn’t stop. It went on and on, machine-gun style, as if Zeus had loaded his bolts into an M60 with an inexhaustible ammo crate.”
― Mike Mullin, quote from Ashfall

“I didn't say anything - just held up my hands and shuffled backward toward the door. Antagonizing a little old lady holding a shotgun seemed like a very bad idea.”
― Mike Mullin, quote from Ashfall

“I felt bad about dirtying their comforter with my nasty clothes, but who knew what might happen later. If something else bizarre went down and I had to run, I sure didn’t want to do it butt naked.”
― Mike Mullin, quote from Ashfall

“Maybe we were ghosts of a sort, spirits from the world that had died when the volcano erupted.”
― Mike Mullin, quote from Ashfall

“the pre-friday world of school, cell phones, and refrigerators dissolved into this post-friday world of ash, darkness, and hunger.”
― Mike Mullin, quote from Ashfall

“Then, we waited. Waited for the noise to end. Waited for the house to fall on our heads. Waited for something, anything to change.”
― Mike Mullin, quote from Ashfall

“I hate to disappoint, but I just lay there, curled in a ball, shaking in pure terror.”
― Mike Mullin, quote from Ashfall

“That whiff of smoke was enough to transform my sithere-trembling terror into get-the-hell-out-of-here terror.”
― Mike Mullin, quote from Ashfall

“I was glad nobody had noticed.I might have been offended if my uncle had punched me in the shoulder and said something inane like, "so you`re a man now.”
― Mike Mullin, quote from Ashfall

“I'd never heard any noise quite so welcome as the click that a shotgun made when it wasn't killing me.”
― Mike Mullin, quote from Ashfall

“A librarian can’t live by books alone, and I wouldn’t eat them if I could. Feel too much like cannibalism.”
― Mike Mullin, quote from Ashfall

“The bookcase was filled with computer games, history books, and sci-fi novels in about equal proportions. Odd reading choices, maybe, but I just thought of it as past and future history.”
― Mike Mullin, quote from Ashfall

“I'd spent almost every minute with Darla for the last five weeks; being separated was … uncomfortable. It felt a bit like being naked in a room full of clothed people.”
― Mike Mullin, quote from Ashfall

“Darla had been doing something by the fire. Now she returned and began stripping the blanket off me. I grabbed it before she could pull it away from my groin, to preserve my modesty.

"Let go. There's nothing there I haven't seen. Who do you think undressed you, anyway? And honestly, I've seen better equipment on goats.”
― Mike Mullin, quote from Ashfall

“When I first saw you in your barn, I thought you were an angel.”
― Mike Mullin, quote from Ashfall

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