" It's queer,' I said 'the ways things go on, I mean. Like a seed - it looks all shriveled and finished, you'd think it was dead, but it isn't. And now a new life is starting, coming into all this . . .'

Josella put her face in her hands.

'Oh God! Does it have to go on being like this? On - and on - and on - ? "

― John Wyndham , The Day of the Triffids