the whistle of the old steam trains ... could conjure up…

We are both disturbed and fascinated by visions of bleak futures, predictions of what might come if we as a society aren't careful.

— Marie Lu

“Killing the poorest third is good genetics.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

A cold and searching wind drives away all contagion, and nothing can withstand it but what has a virtue in it, and accordingly, whatever…

— Henry David Thoreau

“Life, on Hardcore mode, she thought with a twinge of bleak humor. No do-overs. No save files. Harper”

— Annie Bellet

Gay life in 1970 was very bleak, compartmentalized. You didn't take it to work. You had to really lead a double life. There were…

— Larry Kramer

In his bleak mercy, Death forever strips The soul of light and memory, rendering blind Our vision, lest surmounted deeps appal, As when on…

— Clark Ashton Smith

I think because the show ["Grant MacLaren"] is essentially a hopeful show. The show says that as bleak as the future is, the one…

— Eric McCormack

Nothing that's ever happened has taken away the optimist in me. It's always, "Whatever-let's go to Disneyland." Yes, I have my bleak, tortured-artist moments,…

— Mariah Carey

The future looks a bit bleak to me.

— Paolo Bacigalupi

T is liberty crowns Britannia's Isle, And makes her barren rocks and her bleak mountains smile.

— Joseph Addison

“During the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the…

— Edgar Allan Poe

No wonder of it: sheer plod makes plough down sillion Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear, Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermilion.

— Gerard Manley Hopkins

I felt cheated by the way grown-ups told me that the future of the world was bleak when I became a teenager in the…

— Matt Ridley

I wonder whether my bleak-o-meter is set differently from other people's.

— Andrea Arnold

Single-sex private schools, especially in the middle of nowhere on a bleak hill in County Durham - I don't think they make sense.

— Giles Deacon