Blake Crouch Quotes & Sayings

There was simply nothing in his experience that even compared with the thrill of killing to protect his family. In this moment, it was the purpose of his existence. He felt, possibly for the first time in his life, like a fucking man. — Blake Crouch

You think man can destroy the planet? What intoxicating vanity. Earth has survived everything in its time. It will certainly survive us. To the earth ... a million years is nothing. This planet lives and breathes on a much vaster scale. We can't imagine its slow and powerful rhythms, and we haven't got the humility to try. We've been residents here for the blink of an eye. If we're gone tomorrow, the earth will not miss us. Michael Crichton — Blake Crouch

On my own, the ordinariness of the moment is almost too much to stand. I glance around the restaurant, taking in the faces of the waiters, the customers. Two dozen noisy conversations mixing into a kind of meaningless roar. I think, What if you people knew what I knew? - — Blake Crouch

Better to start off with the glad hand than a middle finger. — Blake Crouch

She studied the document. "Looks like a bunch of legalese." "Pretty much." "You wanna give me the CliffsNotes since I didn't go to law school? — Blake Crouch

They say all art - whether books, music, or visual - is a reaction to other art, — Blake Crouch

My life is great. It's just not exceptional. And there was a time when it could have been." "You killed your ambition, didn't you?" "It died of natural causes. Of neglect. — Blake Crouch

There is a part of me that never left that room in Fallujah that smelled like rancid blood. — Blake Crouch

That prick's still your copyeditor?" "Yep. He's such a dick. He was giving me — Blake Crouch

Day'll come, when he's grown and it's too late, that you'd give a kingdom to go back and spend a single hour with your son as a boy. To hold him. Read a book to him. Throw a ball with a person in whose eyes you can do no wrong. He doesn't see your failings yet. He looks at you with pure love and it won't last, so you revel in it while it's here. — Blake Crouch

Never assume you know where someone else is coming from. — Blake Crouch

He'd been filling up his Suburban - a feat that required a small business loan at current prices - and had missed Shanna's call. — Blake Crouch

I think I finally understand why God went away and left the world to destroy itself. — Blake Crouch

Which is all to say maybe it's just being alive at a baseball game on a fall day in the heart of her city. — Blake Crouch

Children's laughter - carefree, giddy, maniacal - filled the woods. A nightmare version of some game from his youth. — Blake Crouch

The worst moments of your life you never see coming, — Blake Crouch

He curled up, twitching and spasming, the pain stormtrooping through his entire body in agonizing, dizzying, pounding waves. He vomited, but it wasn't the contents of his stomach. It was his stomach, hanging inside-out from a slimy loop of esophagus, spilling out the precious blood he'd been digesting.
Even with everything going on, the smell of blood activated his biting reflex, and he chomped down on his own regurgitated organs, screaming as he chewed. — Blake Crouch

Even as those five words cross my mind, I'm not exactly certain what they mean, or how to begin to consider their full weight. So I say it again. I try it on. See how it fits. This is not my world. - — Blake Crouch

I have everything I need here," he said. "Warmth. Drink. Food. Books. — Blake Crouch

Will I keep fighting to be the man I think I am? Or will I disown him and everything he loves, and step into the skin of the person this world would like for me to be? — Blake Crouch

I would rather die today than live in that sick illusion of a town for one more hour. Like prisoners. Like slaves. — Blake Crouch

You've killed a hundred and thirty people, and you're getting squeamish at sticking your finger up a girl's ass? Some people pay to do it. — Blake Crouch

What do you think Nate the Nose is going to do to us when he finds out we lost his shit? We're both going to be eating San Francisco Hot Dogs, Willie." Willie's eyes got wide. Apparently the idea of having his dick cut off, boiled, and fed to him on a bun with a side of fries was several times worse than a whack to the hernia. — Blake Crouch

Inside, the air-conditioning was set to blizzard. — Blake Crouch

I have good intentions, but ... But what? But all the time I fail. I hurt the ones I love. — Blake Crouch

What's the demographic?" "Men. Women. Children." "High-velocity GSWs? — Blake Crouch

How did one carry on in the face of such knowledge? — Blake Crouch

What about the abbies?" Ethan asked. "As a food source?" "Yeah." "First off, gross. — Blake Crouch

I assumed that in this moment I'd be terrified of walking into a new world, but I'm not afraid at all.

I'm filled with a childlike excitement to see what comes next.

As long as my people are with me, I'm ready for anything. — Blake Crouch

The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven. - JOHN MILTON, PARADISE LOST — Blake Crouch

I'm running a battery of tests, but everything appears to have come through fully preserved. — Blake Crouch

Randall inwardly raged about the stupidity of the building designers to not have included another way out of the office, then immediately decided that architects did not typically have "homicidal monster infestation" on their list of situations that required safety precautions. — Blake Crouch

His experience, there was darkness everywhere human beings gathered. — Blake Crouch

Sure, I flip people off in traffic on occasion, but that's just Chicago. My — Blake Crouch

It begins to go so fast," Fitch said. "What?" "Time. You cling to every second. Savor everything. Wish you'd lived all your days like this. Excuse me. — Blake Crouch

The hurdler hit the sidewalk midstride and accelerated, dressed all in black, boots pounding the street. He carried a machete whose wet blade glimmered under the glancing beam of his headlamp, running hard, breathing hard, — Blake Crouch

A question repeated in the back of Theresa's mind as she washed the purple stains from her hands. How did they finally break you? — Blake Crouch

It was the continuance of things that crushed her already broken heart. The gears of the world turning on while she lived with his absence like a black tumor in her chest, the grief so potent she could barely bring herself to breathe. — Blake Crouch

I cannot separate the man you are now from the boy you were then, and it's killing me.
I wanted everything for you, son.
I still do. — Blake Crouch

A tenet of stoicism advises to live according to your nature. If you try to be something you aren't, you'll self-destruct. — Blake Crouch

Are you with them?" he whispered again. "With who?" Abigail asked. "The men in masks. There were - Get back!" he yelled and Abigail saw the machine pistol shift to her father. — Blake Crouch

The most dangerous adversary you'll ever face is an opponent who's skilled with a knife. Avoid these confrontations at all costs. — Blake Crouch

Thudding racket of the rock crushers pulverizing ore. The sound of the stamps in operation is the sound of money being made, and only two things will stop them - Christmas and tragedy. — Blake Crouch

Is this the night sky I've always seen? — Blake Crouch

Do you know how a gun works?" "They hurt you." "They can. I shot a bullet into the back of Molly's head so she wouldn't be sick or sad anymore." "Did it hurt her? — Blake Crouch

YOU ARE THE ONLY FLOWER OF MEDITATION IN THE WILDERNESS. — Blake Crouch

He watched its heart beating. He watched it blinking. "You are one ugly motherfucker. — Blake Crouch

It's a strange thing, being the parent of a teenager. One thing to raise a little boy, another entirely when a person on the brink of adulthood looks to you for wisdom. I feel like I have little to give. I know there are fathers who see the world a certain way, with clarity and confidence, who know just what to say to their sons and daughters. But I'm not one of them. The older I get, the less I understand. I love my son. He means everything to me. And yet, I can't escape the feeling that I'm failing him. Sending him off to the wolves with nothing but the crumbs of my uncertain perspective. I — Blake Crouch

Like people would ever want to read books on an electronic screen. — Blake Crouch

Wind rips through the crags a thousand feet above, nothing moving in this godforsaken town, and the mule skinner knows that something is wrong. Two miles south stands Bartholomew Packer's mine, the Godsend, a twenty-stamp mill that should be filling this box canyon with the thudding racket of the rock crushers pulverizing ore. The sound of the stamps in operation is the sound of money being made, and only two things will stop them - Christmas and tragedy. He dismounts — Blake Crouch

instability of the world long — Blake Crouch

She took him by the hand and led him over — Blake Crouch

What a strange, amazing life. — Blake Crouch

Imagine you're a fish, swimming in a pond. You can move forward and back, side to side, but never up out of the water. If someone were standing beside the pond, watching you, you'd have no idea they were there. To you, that little pond is an entire universe. Now imagine that someone reaches down and lifts you out of the pond. You see that what you thought was the entire world is only a small pool. You see other ponds. Trees. The sky above. You realize you're a part of a much larger and more mysterious reality than you had ever dreamed of. — Blake Crouch

Next morning, Letty cabbed out to an IHOP in the xeriscaped burbs, several miles west of the glitz of the Strip. The emotion of the previous night still clung. — Blake Crouch

We leave this life the same way that we enter it, totally alone, bereft. — Blake Crouch

grew up reading books where vampires were scary. This novel is an attempt to make them scary again. When I thought of the premise that became DRACULAS, I knew it needed to be a group project. Take four well-known horror authors, let them each create their own unique characters, and have them fight for their lives during a vampire outbreak at a secluded, rural hospital. This is NOT a collection of short stories. It's a single, complete novel. And it's going to freak you out. If you're easily disturbed, have a weak stomach, or are prone to nightmares, stop reading right now. There are no sexy teen heartthrobs herein. You have been warned. — Blake Crouch

Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't after you. — Blake Crouch

The older I get, the less I understand. — Blake Crouch

Nature doesn't see things through the prism of good or bad. It rewards efficiency. That's the beautiful simplicity of evolution. It matches design to environment. — Blake Crouch

For every perfect little town, there's something ugly underneath. No dream without the nightmare. — Blake Crouch

Why would I seek out a world like that?" "Why do people marry versions of their controlling mothers? Or absent fathers? To have a shot at righting old wrongs. Fixing things as an adult that hurt you as a child. Maybe it doesn't make sense at a surface level, but the subconscious marches to its own beat. I happen to think that world taught us a lot about how the box works." Passing — Blake Crouch

YESTERDAY IS HISTORY. TOMORROW IS A MYSTERY. TODAY IS A GIFT. THAT'S WHY IT'S CALLED THE PRESENT. WORK HARD, BE HAPPY, AND ENJOY YOUR LIFE IN WAYWARD PINES! — Blake Crouch

Sometimes he feels like he can't breathe.
Sometimes his thoughts come so fast he has to find one perfect memory.
Cling to it.
A life raft. — Blake Crouch

Abby," Lawrence said, "do exactly what I say, right when I say, no matter how crazy it sounds. — Blake Crouch

That he could play the piano. And — Blake Crouch

The idea of Wayward Pines was always more important to him than the people who called that town home, and I'm sorry to say, it was more important than any of you. — Blake Crouch

But after absolute loss, it still continues." "What?" "You. Consciousness. There is life after hope, you know. — Blake Crouch

In some environments, safety and truth are natural born enemies. I would think a former employee of the federal government could grasp that concept. — Blake Crouch

People leave. They die. Their dwellings crumble. That's the storyline, the only plot there will ever be. — Blake Crouch

A sword and a shotgun lay across brackets in the wall, the rhinestones that covered them glittering under the overhanging lightbulb. Ethan startled — Blake Crouch

The man behind the divan stood up, the machine pistol quivering in his grasp. There was a flash, Abigail thinking he'd pulled the trigger, the walls of the sitting area lighting up, the snow glinting. It went dark again. Muffled thunder rolled through the basin, shook the chandelier, the weakened floor trembling beneath her feet. — Blake Crouch

There's an energy to these autumn nights that touches something primal inside of me. Something from long ago. From my childhood in Western Iowa. I think of high school football games and the stadium lights blazing down on the players. I smell ripening apples, and the sour reek of beer from keg parties in the cornfields. I feel the wind in my face as I ride in the bed of an old pickup truck down a country road at night, dust swirling red in the taillights and the entire span of my life yawning out ahead of me.

It's the beautiful thing about youth.

There's a weightlessness that permeates everything because no damning choices have been made, no paths committed to, and the road forking out ahead is pure, unlimited potential. — Blake Crouch

I'm sure that's just what Mr. Worthington was thinking as Luther Kite butchered him. 'Boy, I'm glad I have this faith.'" — Blake Crouch

When Daniela drinks, three things happen: her native accent begins to bleed through, she becomes belligerently kind, and she tends toward hyperbole. — Blake Crouch

Your sensitivity is overwhelming," Ethan said. "Someday remind me to explain to you what empathy is. — Blake Crouch

We're a part of something here, Mr. Burke. Something that matters. All of us." "Here's the thing, Marcus, and I don't want you to ever forget it. Nobody fucking asked me or anyone in that valley if we wanted to be a part of this. — Blake Crouch

Actually, they're just as real as the one you and I are experiencing at this moment. — Blake Crouch

The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious.' Albert Einstein — Blake Crouch

never saw our friends or family. We were forced to marry." "That didn't turn out so bad," she said. Bob held his tongue as he drove through the heart of the curve. — Blake Crouch

Ethan didn't miss those things. Didn't wish that his son was growing up in a world where people stared at screens all day. Where communication had devolved into the tapping of tiny letters and humanity lived by and large for the endorphin kick from the ping of a received text or a new e-mail. — Blake Crouch

Pope smiled. "You're thinking all wrong, boy. There's no such thing as law or government inside this room. It's just you and me. I am the one and only authority in your little world, whose borders are these walls. I could kill you right now if I wanted to. — Blake Crouch

I feel the wind in my face as I ride in the bed of an old pickup truck down a country road at night, dust swirling red in the taillights and the entire span of my life yawning out ahead of me. It's the beautiful thing about youth. There's a weightlessness that permeates everything because no damning choices have been made, no paths committed to, and the road forking out ahead is pure, unlimited potential. I — Blake Crouch

Almost fifteen months he's been gone, and every day I wake up, I still don't believe this is really happening. — Blake Crouch

He dismounts his albino steed, the horse's pinked nostrils flaring, dirty mane matted with ice. — Blake Crouch

I feel like I have little to give. — Blake Crouch

And maybe I can let go of the sting and resentment of the path not taken, because the path not taken isn't just the inverse of who I am. It's an infinitely branching system that represents all the permutations of my life... — Blake Crouch

We all live day to day completely oblivious to the fact that we're a part of a much larger and stranger reality than we can possibly imagine. She — Blake Crouch

which does not kill you makes you — Blake Crouch

It had been over fives years since they'd last been together. They talked and held one another and cried, all knowing in the back of their minds that they could sit on this bed for twenty years, for fifty, but it wouldn't matter. There would be no real catching up, no recovery of lost time, no understanding of the damage the separation had caused. They were different people now
haunted, ridden with scars and nightmares. There was no going back to that stormy July night in Ajo, Arizona. That Innis family was gone, and they would have to find themselves and one another again, start over, and pray that somehow the pieces fit back together. — Blake Crouch

name on the side of it. His pulse beginning to accelerate, — Blake Crouch

But sometimes, like tonight, she feels plugged in to the raw emotion of it all, a closed circuit, and if she doesn't keep it at arm's length, it still has the power to break her. — Blake Crouch

She took me in when I was lost. When the world stopped making sense. — Blake Crouch

Something niggled her. A seemingly small fact she was overlooking. A rodent scurried through some leaves nearby. A mosquito whined in her ear. What was it? No flashlight. That was it. Fitch hadn't brought a flashlight outside with him. When she'd glimpsed him walking down the steps, she'd expected to see a light wink on. But it never did. And then he'd just strolled up that path in the dark like - Her breath caught in her chest. - like he could see. She sat up. That wasn't a strange-looking hat he'd been wearing. Those were night-vision goggles. — Blake Crouch

She loved at light-speed. No hesitation. No regrets. No conditions. No reservations. While he hoarded his chips and held a part of himself back, she went all in. Every time. — Blake Crouch

He also carried that whiff of unearned arrogance that seems to cling to those who crave authority for the sheer sake of power. — Blake Crouch

Like the first day of any new thing, it has been a long one, and he's glad to see it end. — Blake Crouch

Several seconds of purchase. — Blake Crouch

A soldier shoved him forward, said, "Stand right there and don't fucking move." "Why?" "We have to inspect you." "For what?" "Shut the fuck up. — Blake Crouch

at least there was another human being to share the weight of this crushing knowledge. — Blake Crouch