quotations about zombies
Zombies are what the anthropologist Victor Turner calls 'threshold people', those anomalies that straddle crucial cultural boundaries, 'necessarily ambiguous, since this condition and these persons elude or slip through the network of classifications that normally locate states and positions in cultural space.' The most obvious boundary breach of the zombie is between the seemingly definitive states of life and death. Nearly every culture on the planet elaborates stories about the undead as a means of negotiating the perilous biological, cultural and symbolic passage between these two states. Like the North African ghoul or the Eastern European vampyre, zombies are also marginal folkloric creatures, clinging on in the uncertain zone between ancient belief and modern knowledge systems, who prey on those loved ones who hang around cemeteries too long.
ROGER LOCKHURST
Zombies: A Cultural History
Zombies are real! The Haitian government knows it so well that article 249 of the penal code prohibits anyone from turning others into zombies; it is considered premeditated murder and punishable by law.
FRANTZ MICHEL
From the Fear of Voodoo to the Fear of God
A zombie film is not fun without a bunch of stupid people running around and observing how they fail to handle the situation.
GEORGE A. ROMERO
"A visit with zombie-film king Romero", The Washington Times, Aug. 26, 2010
The zombies were like Canadians, in that they looked enough like real people at first, to fool you.
KELLY LINK
Magic for Beginners
Some of the zombies are guilty of hideous crimes before their transformation. If zombies possess a minimal self and their zombified identity is continuous with their prior identity, and the zombie in the pre-zombie state is guilty of a heinous crime, we might think that we are still justified in punishing him or her on the grounds of retribution. But what if the zombie before zombification was an innocent child, a girlfriend, a boyfriend, a fiance, or your mother.
HAMISH THOMPSON
"She's Not Your Mother Anymore, She's a Zombie!: Zombies, Value, and Personal Identity", Zombies, Vampires, and Philosophy: New Life for the Undead
I know as a woman I'm supposed to have this innate love of babies, but the truth is, they kind of remind me of zombies. They stumble around, arms out, moaning. And if they get a hold of you, they suck the energy out of you.
CINDI MADSEN
Cinderella Screwed Me Over
The pinnacle of zombie cool came when the game Humans vs. Zombies (HvZ for those in the know) began taking over college campuses. I still don't understand the rules, but it involves Nerf guns and throwing rolled up socks at your friends. So I'm in.
TEAMEPICREADS
"Creature Feature: Zombies", Epic Reads, August 14, 2012
Zombies are the most widely understood metaphor of our time.
KIM MCLENDON
"The Walking Dead with Norman Reedus VS. Z Nation and Brad Pitt's WWZ Lore", Inquisitr, March 8, 2017
In their paper "When Zombies Attack: Mathematical Modeling of an Outbreak of Zombie Infection," a University of Ottawa research team concluded that a large-scale zombie outbreak would lead to societal collapse unless dealt with quickly and aggressively. The New York Times included the work among its top ideas of 2009.
MATT MOGK
Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Zombies
There's no fly-fishing movie in the works, but I've got an idea. Zombies are real popular. How about, "A River Runs Through Zombieland?"
CATCH CORMIER
"Ask the Fly Fishing Answer Man", Louisiana Sportsman, March 9, 2017
Many of the earliest zombies to appear in comics follow this lead, especially those that use misrepresentations of Vodou practices as the cause of the zombification and show the zombies as the sympathetic victims of nefarious foes. Even though these early zombies are difficult to classify -- they were "caught between the mildly influential voodoo slave shufflers of the '30s and the wildly redefining insatiable Romero gut-munchers of the late 60s," after all -- they share the status of walking dead, be they avenging revenants of feckless slaves.
KYLE WILLIAM BISHOP
How Zombies Conquered Popular Culture: The Multifarious Walking Dead in the 21st Century
Everything's better with zombies -- NOT.
LILY HERNE
Deadlands
The zombies are a convenient plot point to get us to the real meaning of the show: that the living are way more dangerous than the dead.
NADA STAFF
"Best of 2016: 16 Television Programs We Very Much Enjoyed", Nada Mucho, January 7, 2017
There's no slavering horde of zombies. No actinic flash of thermonuclear war. No Earth-shuddering asteroid. The end comes in unforeseen ways; the stock market collapses, and then the banks, and then there is no food in the supermarkets, or the communications system goes down completely and inevitably, and previously amiable co-workers find themselves wrestling over the last remaining cookie that someone brought in before all the madness began.
MARK A. RAYNER
The Fridgularity
Some of these highest-functioning zombies are even lucky enough to remember a word or two of human speech. (Usually these will be simple words and phrases like "hello," "yes," "no," and "I am, in fact, a neurosurgeon. Now please let me closer to that succulent frontal lobe.") These zombies are the millionaires, the professional athletes, the rock stars of the zombie world. But as long as they remain appropriately humble, we have little reason to begrudge them their success.
SCOTT KENEMORE
The Ultimate Book of Zombie Warfare and Survival: A Combat Guide to the Walking Dead
The average undergraduate knows a lot more about zombies than about world politics.
DANIEL W. DREZNER
"How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Zombies", Chronicle of Higher Education, February 13, 2011
Zombies are ... a contagion, driven by an empty but insatiable hunger to devour the last of the living and extend their domain until we reach the End of Days. Zombies are the Rapture with rot.
ROGER LOCKHURST
Zombies: A Cultural History
For all our zombie apocalypse anxiety in popular culture ... there's a zombie for literally every occasion. All that's left to be seen is what actually happens when the zombie virus takes over the world.
KAT GEORGE
"100 Years Of Zombie Evolution Is Perhaps The Grossest Thing You'll Feast Your Eyes On Today", Bustle
What Hamlet suffers from is a lack of zombies. Let us say Rosencrantz and Guildenstern show up--Ho-HO! Now you've got something that stirs the, um, something that stirs things that are stirrable. BOOM! A pack of ravenous flesh-eaters breaks open their heads and sucks out their eyeballs. No need for iambic pentameter because they are grunting, groaning annihilators of humanity with no time for meter. You're not asleep in the back of English class anymore, are you? This is what I'm talking about. Zombies.
LIBBA BRAY
attributed, "Zombie Apocalypse Survival Training"
When you're dead, everything in the world is like a song that makes you cry.
ADAM SELZER
I Kissed a Zombie, and I Liked It