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Famous John Payton Foden Quotes

“Nothing remains.  The destruction is complete: love, lives, families, friends, cities, homes – all gone now.  All our efforts to be good, to do the right thing, to act well, to be just and generous are now for naught.  Because juxtaposed against any hope for fairness is wickedness, pure and simple.  In some abstract formulation these things may exist in equal measure, which is to say that the scales balance when taking all things into consideration. But that is fantasy, the stuff of religion, hope beyond all reason. Because for those caught in the whirlwind, in the chaos of manifest evil, despair is all there is. Civilization falls away: everything is pointless now.  Survival requires reciprocity. What then if there is none?”

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“I want you to write like Alice Munro.  Stir the world.  Make people see the horror; show them their suffering relatives; show them that they’re not safe.  Let them know that they can’t even begin to imagine what’s happening here.  By making my reality more compelling than reality television is the only way you’ll get their attention. Psychotic and cynical. Who can tell the difference anymore between a severed head and a special effect?  Can you?  I doubt it, and I know you’ve been in the middle of it all and seen the damage first-hand.”

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“What was once a home she had taken apart one piece at a time, one day...She sold her belongings for money to buy food.  First the luxuries: a small statue, a picture.  Then the items with more utility: a lamp, a kettle.  Clothes left the closet at a rate of a garment a day…she burned everything in the basement first; then everything in the attic.  It lasted weeks, not months.  Though tempted, she left the roof alone.  She stripped the second floor, and the stairs.  She extracted every possible calorie from the kitchen.  she wasn’t working alone, because neighbourhood pirates simultaneously stole anything of value outside: door and window frames, fencing, stucco.  They pillaged her yard.  Breaking in was a boundary her neigbours had not yet crossed.  But the animals had.  Rats and mice and other vermin found the cracks without much effort.  Like her, they sought warmth and scraps of food.  With great reluctance, she roasted the ones she could catch.  She spent her nights fighting off the ones that escaped.”

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“And now insane men adrift in a world without order formed a line at the door.  They rendered unto her every evil act brought into this world by God.  They fell upon her with brutality that none of them at any other time would have thought possible.  There was once no scenario that would lead them to behave this way.  At any other time in their life there were no words or arguments that could convince them to treat a woman with such wanton disregard.  No one now asked, “What brought me to this?” Not one of them asked, “Who are these men?  How did we end up here, doing these things? Who am I now?”

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“Then Drago began the deliberate, precise, business-like process of killing.  A knee-buckling burst of fire and flash laid waste to men and material within seconds.  A Panhard vehicle to Silva’s left simply disappeared in an explosion that spraying metal parts willy-nilly in every direction in a spread so thorough that Drago thought they were under fire, and he yelled at his men to respond.  Another blast destroyed a six-wheeled reconnaissance vehicle, but it didn’t break it apart; it simply expanded as if swollen or bloated, like an air mattress or inflatable toy, though it still had weight and quickly collapsed over its own suspension.  Some trucks were overturned; a Jeep flipped end-over-end.  None were left unscathed.  In short order, what had been ten or twelve vehicles were reduced to a single steaming and smoking pile of metal.”

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