“I will leave out of all this the petty consideration that we’re talkin’ about the life of a teenage girl. I realize that’s a matter beneath your contempt. I will just take the opportunity t’ tell you, since I don’t believe I’ve ever done it before at one of our family gatherin’s—not precisely, I mean—just how brainless you are, Deborah. Truly brainless. Not simply stupid. Bar-ain-less. As in: brains of a carrot.”
“I’m different,” said the Kid. “My gran always said I was half clever, half stupid, and half crazy.”
“You could go on the air with it and scare everybody half to death. You could create the damnedest panic this slightly slugnutty country has ever seen. No, thank you. I, for one, would rather have us all take the chance of being quietly killed than bring on a mass psychosis that would destroy the culture we are building up. I think one taste of the Crazy Years is enough.”
“Hysteria is impossible without an audience. Panicking by yourself is the same as laughing alone in an empty room. You feel really silly.”
Panic surged suddenly, rising into her throat like vomit, and she swallowed hard. For a moment, she knew exactly what it had felt like for countless malcontents and troublemakers when her gendarmes’ pulser butts hammered on their doors. But then she forced herself to push the panic aside and glared at Terekhov’s image.
“I’m not panicking. I’m watching you panic. It’s more entertaining.”
“You can’t take highways during the apocalypse, because they’ll be packed with panicky people.”
Centuries old, but recently widened, the highway was the same road used by pagan armies, pilgrims, peasants, donkey carts, nomads, wild horsemen out of the east, artillery, tanks, and ten-ton trucks. Its traffic gushed or trickled or dripped, according to the age and season.
Mike sighed. “I know, Alex.” He took a deep, slow breath. “There’s too much of a tendency, for us, to think we can handle everything with our modern weapons. Or new ones we could design, if we devoted enough resources to it. But you’re right. That road leads to folly.”
And remember the Great Mother’s words: Be ruthless toward all folly.
“The folly of humankind is that it believes it is impervious to decay.”
History shows again and again
How nature points out the folly of man
Godzilla!
(I’m not sure songs based on movies are allowable, but hey, it’s Godzilla!)
if you’ve never heard it: Blue Oyster Cult Godzilla - YouTube
I started this thread, and I say they’re allowable. 
When those fleeting lives destined to die, become arrogant and sing praises of their own narcissistic glory, such will shake the very heavens and split the earth. And they shall come to know the wrath of the divine. The incarnation of destruction… you’ve shown yourself at last. For you, it’s been twenty thousand years. It’s been a while, o King of the Monsters.
“Even monsters are beautiful.”
This is Maple Street on a late Saturday afternoon. Maple Street in the last calm and reflective moment - before the monsters came.
For truly to pursue monsters, we must understand them. We must venture into their minds. Only in doing so: do we risk letting them venture into ours?
“Whatever you know in here, your other self knows out there.”
" I’m not a monster, you…"
" We’re ALL part monsters in our subconscious."
“Gravity is not a trivial monster.”
“And his heart shouted, his lungs almost gone now, as his legs fought, fought and failed, as his feet gripped and skidded and held and slid, as he pitched, flailed, pushed, strove in the gale of timerush across space, across time, at the end of the longest path ever; the path of John Delgano, coming home.”