Earthquake Quotes

“It may be expedient to take stock of all the affecting pieces that might shatter in the wake of an emotional earthquake, once red flags come up in a committed relationship and an overarching scene has to be fashioned for a recast life experience. ("Waiting for the pieces to fall into place")”
― Erik Pevernagie

“A tornado of thought is unleashed after each new insight. This in turn results in an earthquake of assumptions. These are natural disasters that re-shape the spirit.”
― Vera Nazarian, The Perpetual Calendar of Inspiration

“I was awakened by a tremendous earthquake, and though I hadn ever before enjoyed a storm of this sort, the strange thrilling motion could not be mistaken, and I ran out of my cabin, both glad and frightened, shouting, "A noble earthquake! A noble earthquake" feeling sure I was going to learn something.”
― John Muir, The Wild Muir: Twenty-Two of John Muir's Greatest Adventures

“Once you have been in an earthquake you know, even if you survive without a scratch, that like a stroke in the heart, it remains in the earth's breast, horribly potential, always promising to return, to hit you again, with an even more devastating force. ”
― Salman Rushdie, The Ground Beneath Her Feet

“It never ceases to amaze me that in times of amazing human suffering somebody says something that can be so utterly stupid.”
― Robert Gibbs

“The streets were full of destruction and rubble, and this town I'd never liked, with its stupid people, stupid streets, and stupid houses, was now unrecognisable, now it had a truly unique beauty, and scantily-clad women traversed it like ghosts. A twelve-storey building in the city centre had totally collapsed. Caught up in her bed sheets, a woman who had fallen from the top floor found herself alive and alone on the pavement. Her husband had been thrown out of bed. From now on she would sleep forever, since reality was now as extraordinary as dreams.”
― Ghérasim Luca, The Passive Vampire

“It is the nature of the earth to shift. It is the nature of fragile things to break. It is the nature of fire to burn.”
― Susan Meissner, The Nature of Fragile Things

“Thinking! Thinking! The process should no longer be merely this feeble flurry of hailstones that raises a little dust. It should be something quite different. Thinking should be a terrifying process. When the earth thinks, whole towns crumble to the ground and thousands of people die.
Thinking: raising boulders, hollowing out valleys, preparing tidal waves at sea. Thinking like a town: that's to say: eight million inhabitants, twelve million rats, nine million pints of carbon dioxide, two billion tons. Grey light. Cathedral of light. Din. Sudden flashes. Low-lying blanket of black cloud. Flat roofs. Fire alarms. Elevators. Streets. Eighteen thousand miles of streets. 145 million electric light bulbs.”
― J.M.G. Le Clézio, The Book of Flights

“But whenever tragedy strikes, one is left either to die or with a plethora of ifs and buts to ponder over.”
― Kudrat Dutta Chaudhary, Laiza- Sometimes the end is only a Beginning

“I remember sensing a jolt. I thought it was either a dream or a nightmare. Then, I woke up. The bedroom was shaking and the chair beside the bed, with the alarm clock on it, was jumping up and down. There was a strange combination of sounds - a roaring that was suddenly overwhelmed by a thunderous creaking. 'Jesus Christ.' I didn't realise it was an earthquake until I reached for the door knob and it was moving. I rushed out into the corridor and started running around in circles. The hotel was bucking and rearing like a fairground ride. I ran down the staircase and suddenly realised I was in the building's most vulnerable spot: the stairwell. So I raced back up the stairs and started screaming, 'Get out, get out. We're all going to die.' I'm not very good in emergencies.”
― David McPhail, The Years Before My Death

“Love opens us, as an earthquake opens the earth.”
― Caroline Lea, The Glass Woman

“The thing about marriages, bad ones especially, is the utter disregard with which the couple and those around them treat the cracks when they first emerge. Like tectonic plates that crush and grind against each other under the surface of the earth, the damage does not happen on one sunny morning when the earthquake hits. When a couple splits, it is the result of an inevitable break that has been brewing for years without respite.”
― Ranjani Rao, Rewriting My Happily Ever After - A Memoir of Divorce and Discovery

“The quake experience stays in our hearts, ready to strike again with greater force. Memory looms with the potential to return.”
― Santosh Kalwar

“Tokyo, Los Angeles, and Santiago de Chile sit on the ring of fire. Tehran, far away from the ring still suffers the same fate. Earthquake-prone, the city has learned to adapt. The city, stacked with apartments on top of one another, looks like a box of Lego. Tight alleyways, covered with buildings, stretch all the way to the foot of the mountains. The folks in Tehran don’t want to even imagine what chaos will ensue if a major earthquake strikes. The most frightening phenomenon though isn’t the rubble and building blocks crumbling down. None of that scares the people. What concerns them is if the mother of all earthquakes pays a visit, the biggest threat will be rats. Tehran’s underground has a burgeoning “ratopolis.” To every living human being in the city, there are three rats to match every living soul. And if the city collapses, three rats are enough to ravage through human flesh in a matter of days. So the urban myth goes. Even if bodies can be rescued from the rubble there’ll likely be carcasses left behind.”
― Soroosh Shahrivar, Tajrish

“Earthquakes, I point out, have always made men eager to placate the gods. After the great Lisbon earthquake of November 1, 1755—that catastrophe which Voltaire saw as an irrefutable argument for the tragic view of life and against Leibnizian optimism—the locals decided on a propitiatory auto-da-fé.”
― Salman Rushdie, The Ground Beneath Her Feet

“This is us, making love. She always made love as if it were for the last time, that was how she did everything, how she led her life; but for us, though neither of us knows it, this in fact is the last time. The last time for these breasts. The breasts of Helen of Troy were so astonishing that when she bared them to her husband at the fall of Troy, Menelaus was unable to do her harm. The sword fell from his nerveless hand. This is the woman I love and these are her breasts. I run this tape over and over in my head. Did you show the earthquake your breasts, Vina, did you bare them to the god of storms, why didn’t you, if you did you might, you surely would, have survived.”
― Salman Rushdie, The Ground Beneath Her Feet

“A spirit of practicality had come to her aid. It was only human. When the earthquake stops, when the flood recedes, when the volcanic dust settles or the guns fall silent, the survivors pick their way through the rubble and debris and wreckage. A chair leg here, a first communion certificate or a bundle of love letters there. The flotsam and jetsam of the old ways―the ways that will never return.”
― Adrian Mathews, The Apothecary’s House

“We prefer the temporary, which, when renewed, points to the eternal. If the castle is rebuilt out of wood after every earthquake, then it's as if it were a living being, you understand?”
― Catherine Meurisse, La jeune femme et la mer

“The cobblestones are a bad match for the wagon, making it feel like she’s sitting atop her own personal earthquake.”
― Shawn P. McCarthy

“A tidal wave is caused by the snapping of tension that has built for a long time,’ said Nondany. “An earthquake under the sea. To be caught in a tidal wave is not to be its cause.”
― Betsy James, Listening at the Gate

“If people do not die when measures are taken against a natural disaster, the name of natural disaster deaths when measures are not taken is nothing but murder!”
― Mehmet Murat ildan

“When will humanity, which has experienced countless natural disasters, realize that the universe we live in is a formidable battlefield? The universe is the most interesting friend of every living creature, because it is both our greatest friend and our worst enemy! The greatest weapon against the enmity of the universe is science. The technical shields that science offers us are the most effective weapons we can use against storms, earthquakes, fires and cosmic disasters!”
― Mehmet Murat ildan

“We Are Turkiye (The Sonnet)

Earthquake may shatter our houses,
But it can never shatter our hearts.
We shall rise from the rubble once again,
We shall build back against nature's curse.

But this time let us build back better,
By putting our faith in science not politics.
We could've averted such cataclysmic terror,
Had we heeded the warnings of scientists.

A scientist works to preserve life,
Politician plays publicity with death.
Given the choice between the two,
Listen to the scientist without wait.

Why do people have to die
for us to open our eyes!
If we still fail to heed reason,
nothing will stop the funeral cries.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Vande Vasudhaivam: 100 Sonnets for Our Planetary Pueblo

“A scientist works to preserve life, Politician plays publicity with death.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Vande Vasudhaivam: 100 Sonnets for Our Planetary Pueblo

“Mountains should be seen, not heard”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness

“Emily was still so saturated in earthquake as to be dumb. She ate earthquake and slept earthquake: her fingers and legs were earthquake. With John it was ponies. The earthquake had been fun: but it was the ponies that mattered.”
― Richard Hughes, A High Wind in Jamaica

“The cracks in diplomacy are like fault lines - when they give way, it's seismic!”
― Dipti Dhakul

“Living in a portion of Tesland that was prone to earthquakes, there was mass fear surrounding the possibility of being crushed by the upper floor of a house. Supposedly, one couldn't waste time – or be wasted by time – if clocks weren't present on the base story of a home.”
― Nikki Elizabeth, Poor Vinnie's Valor

“Genie understood that everyone would be trapped together inside this crippled city for the foreseeable future--in the snow, in the dark, with no electricity, in below-freezing temperatures. Under those circumstances, she felt 'mass hysteria would have meant total destruction.' (pg. 79)”
― Jon Mooallem, This Is Chance!: The Shaking of an All-American City, a Voice That Held It Together

“All we do between earthquakes and plastic surgery is surf with Mickey Mouse.”
― GLEN NESBITT, SUS: Short Unpredictable Stories