Charlie Huston Quotes & Sayings

I feel like I'm forgetting something. Vyrus. Clans. Zombies. Stay out of the sun. Don't get shot. Abandon your life. Drink blood to survive. No, guess that pretty much covers it. — Charlie Huston

If I saw something once that I can't explain, that doesn't make them real. And if a trick of the dark gave me a chill, that doesn't make them real. And if a madman says what's at the core of us all is a senseless, flapping quiver of black shade, that's just one more reason not to believe. — Charlie Huston

Yeah, good to see you too.
Her hand stays on the gun.
"Did I say it was good to see you, Joe?
"No, but I always try to read between the lines. Figured you going for your gun was how you express affection these days. — Charlie Huston

It's not that fact of him telling me he's not going to kill me that assures me I've got some time to breathe. Predo could look me in the eye and tell me whiskey's good and cigarettes are better and I'd still need a drink and a Lucky to believe he's not lying. The man breeds lies. He spawns them asexually, with no need for any assistance. He exhales and lies fill the air. Alone in a room, he mutters lies to himself to keep from falling into the trap of truth-telling. In the day, sleeping in his bed, deep in the safest heart of Coalition headquarters, he dreams in lies. The better to keep his left hand from knowing what betrayals his right has planned.
Stretched on the rack and burned with hot irons, Dexter Predo will be in no danger of revealing the truth. Living so far beyond its borders. — Charlie Huston

Money makes people stupid. They don't have to work as hard as people who don't have money. That's why the smart people who do have money mostly use it for one thing ...
They use it to make sure the people without it don't get any more. — Charlie Huston

Tell them to drop their guns and fuck off out of my way.
Allow him to
I clamp my arm tight.
That's not what I said.
She gets it right this time.
Drop your guns and fuck off out of his way.
They drop their guns and fuck off out of my way. — Charlie Huston

The violence for me is never meant to be entertaining. It's meant to hurt the characters and I'm trying to show the impact it is having on the people involved with it. If there is cathartic violence at the end, then it costs the protagonist something. It's not just a blaze-of-glory moment. — Charlie Huston

The world doesn't just jump out of its axis on its own. — Charlie Huston

For there is nothing quite so terror-inducing as the loss of sleep. It creates phantoms and doubts, causes one to questions one's own abilities and judgement, and, over time, dismantles, from within, the body. — Charlie Huston

Like I was ever normal. Like I was ever any different from how I am now. A cure won't make me better. It'll just make me more like a regular son of a bitch. Like the Vyrus makes you into something else. It doesn't. If you get it, if you survive, it's because you were already the kind of person who will drink blood. — Charlie Huston

Writing is an art but also a craft, which means it's a job. I don't teach. This is how the groceries get on the table. You sometimes make creative sacrifices to get the job done. All that said, I'm looking forward to getting out of the two-book-a-year schedule I'm on and to getting some self-indulgence going. — Charlie Huston

You are going to die in front of dozens of witnesses, and none of them will do a thing to help you or avenge you. Because they know exactly what you know: The world is ending. — Charlie Huston

I might be at a point where I don't want to go with a genre convention but I have to produce some pages. It's hard work. And it requires you learn certain skills. — Charlie Huston

The man breeds lies. He spawns them asexually, with no need for any assistance. He exhales and lies fill the air. Alone in a room, he mutters lies to himself to keep from falling into the trap of truth-telling. In the day, sleeping in his bed, deep in the safest heart of Coalition headquarters, he dreams in lies. The better to keep his left hand from knowing what betrayals his right has planned. — Charlie Huston

There is very little sense that anybody really knows what works or why. But that's not a shock. And I don't think market research would solve that. — Charlie Huston

She reaches up and ties the strip of black cloth so that it covers my dead eye.
"Now, go Arrghh.
"Arrghh.
She nods.
"There. You're a pirate. — Charlie Huston

Or maybe this is the true order. To bring together the need with the thind that is needed. — Charlie Huston

That's what happens when you get a regular job, other people's shit becomes your problem. 'Course, by the time you got that figured, it's up around your ears and you're just trying to keep your [expletive]ing mouth shut. — Charlie Huston

The act of reading is so intimate that readers are unpredictable. — Charlie Huston

It's a puzzler, and I don't want to sound full of myself, but I may just be the Vyrus messiah."
He shakes his head.
"I don't know for sure. Have to meditate on that shit some more. Anyhoo. — Charlie Huston

She makes a stone-face, drops her voice an octave.
-No. No. No. My name is Joe Pitt and I don't do nuthin' I don't want to do and I won't even listen because I don't know a good thing when I have it and I'd rather be all fucked up and tragic and go hurt people. — Charlie Huston

One of the great things about being involved with comics is that those people are devoted to their characters, writers and artists. The average comic reader isn't casual about their habit. — Charlie Huston

Once we understand how they think, we can predict their behaviour. And once we predict it well, we can manipulate it. That is diplomacy. — Charlie Huston

At Marcy I spot what I am looking for and shimmy up a lampost and untangle the pair of sneakers that some kid has tossed up there that dangle in testement to some shit that I have never figured out as long as I have lived in this city. I sit on the curb and stuff my feet inside leaving the laces undone. There too small but the right one fits a little better than the left. Not having a big toe is already paying off. — Charlie Huston

Not that I have any little kids running around I need to keep away from the guns. I had any kids I'd get rid of the guns. Nothing more dangerous to the life of a child than a house full of firearms. Nothing more dangerous except maybe a parent. — Charlie Huston

Women. You tell me they're not all witches, and I'll tell you you haven't been paying attention. — Charlie Huston

Think about a night like that often enough, you'll ask yourself a lot of questions. Most of them about yourself. The kind of person you are. What you'll do and why and when you'll do it. What you believe in. What you really believe in. — Charlie Huston

Things are as bad as you fear they are. People are as bad as you think they are. The Universe does not care. — Charlie Huston

Course you can't fucking see, buddy, it's darker than a nun's virgin anus down here. — Charlie Huston

... and look down the glowing store front of a 24 hr bodega. I am not overly concerned about going in there with one bare foot and a considerable amount of dried blood on my clothing. This is the Bronx after all. But best to minimize the visual impact I might make. — Charlie Huston

I'm on page 65 of 368 of Sleepless: I would never dream of killing an excellent tailor, not even to keep a secret that could endanger my life. — Charlie Huston

When you learn economy. It strips away self-indulgence. Just in the act itself it requires a certain amount of humility. You have to accept the fact that you might feel you can do better but in the moment you have to make a choice. — Charlie Huston

I could flay you and wear your skin as a cloak, and caper in the streets in the moonlight. But some might consider that crass treatment of a guest."
I nod.
"Well, some people got no sense of humor, do they?"
"I am one of those people. — Charlie Huston

You can't change the world if your motive is revenge. Vibes like that just aren't productive. — Charlie Huston

And a realization for Skinner, she still has his scarf, inside her mountaineering jacket, red wool at her neck. Some meaning there related to the kiss, but in a code he cannot unscramble. A tether is what it feels like, his scarf around her neck, preventing either of them from falling off the mountain alone. — Charlie Huston

Pain cannot be ignored. However, it can be endured. When necessary, a great deal of pain can be endured. Just ask my mother. — Charlie Huston

We had long passed the stage where the consequences of tactical armed response were weighed in advance. — Charlie Huston

One day, when I am a braver man, I will tell her these things, and then I will look her in the eye tell her I love her and ask her to be only mine. But until that day, we're just friends. — Charlie Huston

I wish that the act of publishing a book was less of a nerve-wracking experience. — Charlie Huston

The general air of insecurity and affection made it too easy for him to imagine these once-a-year fabulous creatures as the cubicle dwellers most of them were in everyday life. — Charlie Huston

Don't make me come out there and spray you, blanco.
I point at my one eye.
Better have some sharpshooter fucking aim you want that shit to do any good. — Charlie Huston

Most undercover cops are vastly skilled at compartmentalization. It is a talent as valued as lying. They seal off their real feelings and create imitation emotions. Easily torn down when it's time to show the badge, drag someone downtown, and sit across from him in an interrogation cell and tell him how fucked he is now. — Charlie Huston

Morality he found amusing, in the obscure way that only a man with a Ph.D. in philosophy could find such things amusing, but justice and ethics were inflexible measures, applicable to all, and not to be joked about. — Charlie Huston

He has one of those heads people think about cutting off."
"Yes. He does. — Charlie Huston

There something I can do to get this over with quick? Like, can I just run in front of a cab and take my lumps and we call it even? As opposed to you cutting off my nose and all, I mean. — Charlie Huston

I size him up. A pasty jumble of limbs in latex-tight sharkskin slacks with three inches of white socks showing at the ankles above two-tone patent leather, a jacket matching the slacks stretched over narrow shoulders and an embroidered cowboy shirt with silver caps on the points of the collar, a bolo tie featuring a cockroach frozen in amber snug around his throat. — Charlie Huston

Parker Haas, crying Omaha, and his sleepless Rose. — Charlie Huston

What's inside is inside for a reason.
What's hidden is hidden for a reason.
What's buried is buried for a reason. — Charlie Huston