David Wong Quotes & Sayings

Tip: if you ever feel a puke coming on, do not, do not put your hand over your mouth to try to catch it. It's reflex but it doesn't work at all. Vomit kind of sprays everywhere. — David Wong

He whipped the chair around and actually split one of the things in half with the impact, spilling the spray of blood that was reflective, like mercury.
John bellowed, "Anyone else want to donate blood to chair-ity?"
He ducked into the the door and bashed one monster right in the wig, screaming, "There's some dessert! With a chair-y on top! — David Wong

Okay. When he comes, you can see him?"
"Yes. I can hear him, too. And he, uh ... "
She brushed the bandage on the side of her skull. I looked at her in bewilderment. Was she serious?
"He hits you?"
"Yes."
"With his fist?"
"Yes."
John looked up from his coffee indignantly. "Man, what a dick!"
I did roll my eyes this time and glared at John once they stopped. I don't know if you've ever seen a ghost, but I'm guessing that if you did, the thing didn't run over and punch you in the face. I'm guessing that's never happened to any of your friends, either. — David Wong

John. I would ask you what you are doing, but I fear you would actually tell me. — David Wong

SHUT UP. Both of you. You're coming with me." To me he said, "Put some pants on."
"Fuck you. This is my house. I make the rules. You take your clothes off. John, get the Twister mat. — David Wong

You know what the scariest part is about people like him? Everything he's doing makes perfect sense in his own mind. — David Wong

Sound filled the room, a crystal melody that could lift any human heart and turn away any devil.
It was "Here I Go Again" by Whitesnake. — David Wong

I tried to say something cool, wound up stammering something like, "WANNA YOU WANNA WEENIE ME?" The end kind of trailed off in a shrill, choking warble. — David Wong

We got back to my house to find it ransacked. It was difficult to tell because I'm not the world's greatest housekeeper myself, but by the time I was in the kitchen I knew they had been here: I don't normally keep the oven open. I whipped out the gun and prowled around the house, finding it empty. Amy asked what they were looking for. I dodged the question by pointing out what a pity it was they tossed the place because it was immaculate before they got here and that it was too bad she didn't get to see it when it was clean. I went to the kitchen and ran water over my bleeding knuckles.
"Look," Amy said, from behind me. "They threw laundry all over your floor in there."
"Yeah. And they wore the clothes first, the bastards. — David Wong

Cynicism does not cause inaction.. — David Wong

You want to walk into that funeral and have every dude in that room whip their head around and say, 'God-damn them is some fine-ass titties. I got to find me a divorce lawyer in the next five minutes. — David Wong

When TJ and I got to the bottom, we found Hope staring terrified at Molly. The dog had something long and horrible and meaty in her jaws. It took me a moment to register that it was a very fresh-looking human spine. Damn, she was hungry. — David Wong

We rode in silence, I think all of us wondering what was behind the flowery wallpaper our perceptions had always pasted on the unknown. All the things the mind won't allow us to see, to protect our sanity, or our soul, or maybe just to keep the shit out of our pants. — David Wong

Some would have doubted their sanity at this point, but by now the part of my mind that issued doubts about my sanity had melted from overuse. — David Wong

Velvet Jesus faced a shadow man to my left. Laser beams fired from his eyes. — David Wong

A ghost sighting is usually nothing more than your brain trying to put a familiar face on something that does not have a face at all. — David Wong

For those of us who aren't great with people, we figure that silence is always the safest bet. If you're an introvert, you spend so much of your time wishing that other people would just shut the hell up that you figure you're doing everyone a favor. — David Wong

Amy put her hand on mine, her other hand balled up in a fist on the table. — David Wong

She thanked the toilet, but it did not respond. That was good - if she started to think of it as a sentient being, it would probably be much harder to poop in its mouth. — David Wong

I had gotten hungry for bratwurst and had been walking toward the entrance of one of the four McDonald's franchises in Undisclosed (if you think it's weird getting a bratwurst from a McDonald's, then you're not from the Midwest). I glanced at the cartoon clown logo in the window and let out a scream.
Just a little scream, and a manly one. But I still frightened one little girl on the sidewalk so badly that she screamed, too. — David Wong

Are the most dangerous creatures the ones that use doors or the ones that don't? — David Wong

The bathroom door burst open, and Molly came trotting out. The left half of her body had been shaved almost down to the skin. The right half was as shaggy as before. John emerged after her, brushing a layer of dog hair off his clothes.
John said, Well, that's done ... It was Molly's idea. She wants to look like two different dogs when she's coming and going. She thinks it will make it easier for her to steal food ... That's one complicated dog, Dave. Have you started on the bomb? — David Wong

One more victim sucked in by John. You get into the room with him and you just fall into a warm pool of beer and video games and penis jokes, staring at the universe with him and saying, Do you believe this shit? — David Wong

The English language needs a word for that feeling you get when you badly need help, but there is no one you can call because you're not popular enough to have friends, not rich enough to have employees, and not powerful enough to have lackeys. It is a very distinct cocktail of impotence, loneliness and a sudden stark assessment of your non-worth to society? Enturdment? — David Wong

If you had to choose, and if you were not allowed to see either ahead of time and had no other information to go on, would you rather fight Mindcrow or Gonadulus? — David Wong

And - holy shit was this song bad. It was like the singer was stabbing my ear with a dagger made of dried turds. — David Wong

Oh, hey, he'd figured out how to work the stupid ramp mechanism. It'd have been nice to have done that before he was forced to steal some guy's tow truck, but that was how every single possible thing had gone so far in this situation. Just a little bit behind the curve, a little slow to figure out the right thing. Story of his fucking life. — David Wong

I noticed John had brought along a thermos of his coffee, this "favor" already qualifying as an all-nighter. I admit, the horrific burning sensation really did keep you awake. — David Wong

The floor was littered with paper cups and candy wrappers and cigarette butts and other teenager droppings. I saw a used condom under my shoe. — David Wong

Well, you'd better hope I am because the world was built by sociopaths, men willing to send a million innocent boys into battle to be chopped to screaming giblets, all so a banner can be raised over another piece of land with houses and markets and roads soon after. — David Wong

Fred nodded and said, "So what you're saying is, if we all die, that's not even the worst-case scenario."
John replied, "I'd still like to shoot a little higher than that, Freddy. — David Wong

I was about to warn the girl about John's coffee, which tasted like a cup of battery acid someone had pissed in and then cursed at for several hours, but John turned to her and in a lawyerly voice said, Shelly, tell us your story. — David Wong

Fred whispered, "Okay. If I don't come back, and say they don't got my body, like if Justin eats me or somethin', tell everybody you don't know what happened. Make it mysterious. And then a year later spread rumors that you've seen me wanderin' around town. That way I'll be like fuckin' Bigfoot, everybody claiming to have seen me here and there. Legend of Fred Chu." John nodded, as if he were committing this to memory. He lit his own firebombs, glanced up at me and asked,"You got any final requests, in case this don't end well?" "Yeah. Avenge my death. — David Wong

Got it. Look, the way I see it, two people walk in the restaurant, a Methodist and an atheist. The Methodist says, I'm not going to tip because I just came from church and I've already done my good deed for the day. The atheist says, I'm not tipping because life is meaningless and we're all just animals. To me, they're both members of the same religion, because they're doing the same thing. Whatever little story they tell themselves to justify it is irrelevant. It goes the other way, too - if a Muslim and a Scientologist come in and both leave a tip, they're on the same team. It doesn't matter to me if one did it because of Allah and the other was obeying the ghost of Tom Cruise, what matters is it resulted in doing the right thing. — David Wong

Guys like him, the ones who grip the Bible so tight they leave fingernail grooves, they're the ones who are the most scared of their dark side. Always going too far the other way, fighting for the Lord, often just because it gives them an excuse to fight. — David Wong

Well, they never know they're ill, do they? You can't diagnose yourself with the same organ that has the disease, just like you can't see your own eyeball. So, I suppose you just feel normal and the rest of the world seems to go crazy around you. — David Wong

This is the breaking point in a human life, right here. This is waking up on an operating table to find aliens peering down at you, this is hearing the audible voice of God telling you the date the world will end. This is seeing a family of bigfoots in the forest and being without a camera.
Welcome to freakdom, Dave. It'll be time to start a website soon. — David Wong

I am not the star of a zombie movie. I am the guy in the background who gets eaten in the first montage. — David Wong

Here's the only thing you need to know about John: The reason I was surprised by your hand was because he never once described you as the girl with only one hand. — David Wong

I stopped at a red light, feeling foolish as always for stopping at an intersection at an hour when the streets are deserted, just because a colored lightbulb told me to. Society has got me so fucking trained. I rubbed my eyes and groaned and felt utterly alone in the world. — David Wong

Well, I'm going to tell you the best and the worst thing you've ever heard. Heroes aren't born. You just go out there and grind it out. You fail and you look foolish and you just keep grinding. There is nothing else. There is no 'chosen one,' there is no destiny, nobody wakes up one day and finds out they're amazing at something. There's just slamming your head into the wall, refusing to take no for an answer. Being relentless, until either the wall or your head breaks. You want to be a hero? You don't have to make some grand decision. There's no inspirational music, there's no montage. You just don't quit. — David Wong

There was a faded brown stain on the carpet and I wondered if a patient had once taken a shit in here in the middle of a session. I — David Wong

When a man plans, a woman laughs. — David Wong

Children die every day because millions of us tell ourselves that caring is just as good as doing. — David Wong

No, I don't, like, play an instrument or anything.I'm just ... well, you saw me at the beginning there. I was the guy that fell down and died. — David Wong

Damn it! I knew she was a monster! John! Amy! Listen! Guard your buttholes. — David Wong

When they write the sequel to the Bible, that shit is definitely gonna be in there. — David Wong

Around us, the disembodied human limbs were piling up, forming a circle around the fountain, fusing themselves to each other like Satan's LEGO set. — David Wong

I then reached out, put my hands under his armpits and lifted him into the air. He was about as heavy as a department store mannequin. I doubt you've ever lifted one of those but you can probably guess that they're not very heavy. — David Wong

We fixed him just by telling him that he wasn't crazy, that the horrors he was seeing were real. He seemed oddly comforted by that. He was a lawyer. — David Wong

Start working on whatever you hesitate Because there is an ending to every beginning. When you make it to the end, You will realize the hesitation was a waste of time. — David Wong

John flung himself into a pseudo-karate stance, one hand poised behind him and one in front, posed like a cartoon cactus. I thought for an odd moment he had moved his limbs so fast they had made that whoosh sound through air but then I realized John was making that sound with his mouth. — David Wong

John snatched the rebound, spun, jumped, slammed. He pumped his fist in victory. "Ring it up! Two hundred seventy-four to one thirty-seven!" In John's game, each shot is worth one hundred and thirty-seven points. — David Wong

Life is a flickering candle we all carry around. A gust of wind, a meaningless accident, a microsecond of carelessness, and it's out. Forever. — David Wong

My mind didn't clear. It had been clear before. Instead it muddled, suddenly ablaze with rioting factions of insecurities and dreams, a cacophonous battleground of conflicting moral codes and dogma. I was, therefore, back to normal. — David Wong

Welcome to Undisclosed. Dreams
Interpreted for Beer. — David Wong

The heavy monkey of sleep rested its warm, furry ass on my eyelids. — David Wong

New technology is not good or evil in and of itself. It's all about how people choose to use it. — David Wong

Another bite victim lay nearby, a young man writhing as if in a seizure. Eventually his legs kicked themselves free from the rest of his body. The limbs thumped along the floor on their own like two giant polyester snakes with shoes for heads. Right behind them was a loose head stuck to a single arm, furiously biting and clawing the carpet. I felt like we might not be in control of this situation any longer. — David Wong

I reached out and, with a small move of my body, did something that would change my life forever. I gently moved Amy aside and stepped down ahead of her, putting myself between her and the shadows. — David Wong

The human eye has to be one of the cruelest tricks nature ever pulled. We can see a tiny, cone-shaped area of light right in front of our faces, restricted to a very narrow band of the electromagnetic spectrum. We can't see around walls, we can't see heat or cold, we can't see electricity or radio signals, we can't see at a distance. It is a sense so limited that we might as well not have it, yet we have evolved to depend so heavily on it as a species that all other perception has atrophied. We have wound up with the utterly mad and often fatal delusion that if we can't see something, it doesn't exist. Virtually all of civilization's failures can be traced back to that one ominous sentence: 'I'll believe it when I see it.' We can't even convince the public that global warming is dangerous. Why? Because carbon dioxide happens to be invisible. — David Wong

You know if you walked around the world, your hat would travel thirty-one feet farther than your shoes? — David Wong

The reason why Hollywood cranks out so many sequels and adaptations is because the audience is so overwhelmed with choices, the only way to get them in the theater is to give them something familiar. — David Wong

The zombie looks like a man, walks like a man, eats and otherwise functions fully, yet is devoid of the spark. It represents the nagging doubt that lays deep in the heart of even the most zealous believer: behind all of your pretty songs and stained glass, this is what you really are. Shambling meat. Our true fear of the zombie was never that its bite would turn us into one of them. Our fear is that we are already zombies. — David Wong

Gullibility is a knife at the throat of civilization. — David Wong

That whole bit was something John had come up with, the man having a terrible habit of carrying out his drunken 3:00 A.M. ideas even after daylight and sobriety came. It was always 3:00 A.M. for John. — David Wong

I keep the gun in a hollowed out copy of the Koran. And there the big book was, tossed on the bed, open and gunless. Nothing else disturbed. I mean, they actually checked my Koran to see if there was a gun inside. I knew I was dealing with a sick son of a bitch. — David Wong

Son, the greatest trick the Devil pulled was convincing the world there was only one of him. — David Wong

You know how sometimes when you're drifting off to sleep you feel that jolt, like you were falling and caught yourself at the last second? It's nothing to be concerned about, it's usually just the parasite adjusting its grip. — David Wong

And you know what happens when a ship gets too many rats on board? It sinks. That's what.
I wondered if a ship had ever really sunk that way. — David Wong

I'm a productive citizen. Well, not productive, I mean if you add up what I bring to society and what I take out, society probably breaks even. And I'm not crazy. I mean, I know anybody can say that. But a crazy person can't fake sane, right? — David Wong

Marconi said, "I see you have your instruments. Can any of you sing? The old spirituals work best."
John said, "I can sing."
I said, "No, you can't, John."
"Well, I play the guitar."
"So can I," said Big Jim. "We have two guitars."
I said, "This could not be any stupider."
John said, "Dave, you remember the words to 'Camel Holocaust'?"
"Ah, once again, you prove me wrong, John. — David Wong

John trotted up, carrying his satchel. "Yes. Wexler's gone. We need your car."
"What? Why?"
John circled around to the passenger-side door and said, "Car chase. — David Wong

Tried to escape, to block out the fact that I was being eaten alive by arachnids. For some reason the only thing I could replace it with was the image of being eaten by tiny clowns. — David Wong

Somebody said my name, asked if I was okay. I didn't answer, the sound of the commotion dying around me as the heavy monkey of sleep rested its warm, hairy ass on my eyelids. — David Wong

I just realized he was phrasing all of his questions as statements. Wasn't there a character in Alice in Wonderland who did that? Did Alice punch him in the face? — David Wong

A clean conscience is expensive, it's the reason most men have to live paycheck to paycheck. — David Wong

Even if someone decided that the infection rate down there was something less than one hundred percent, and if they could go to a mountaintop and shout it to the world, it wouldn't matter. Because the people want this. They want their neighbors to be monsters. It's why we lust over news stories of mothers murdering their children, and run after conspiracy theories about a government full of greedy sociopaths. If the monsters didn't come, we would have willed them into existence. — David Wong

You can't focus on death, or failure. Otherwise you're surrendering greatness to all the people too dumb to contemplate it. — David Wong

It was the pink elephant in the room, the thunderous fart in the elevator. — David Wong

If Zoey Ashe had known she was being stalked by a man who intended to kill her and then slowly eat her bones, she would have worried more about that and less about getting her cat off the roof. — David Wong

What's up. This is Dave, the one you saw in your hallway. He's not a psychotic killer or anything," he lied — David Wong

You have to talk through the bratwurst from now on. — David Wong

seriously, listen up because this is important and this is where we'll leave it. Your boy, my guess is he never stopped thinkin' you were beautiful. The only thing that changed was he started worrying that other people didn't think you were. So now he's gonna spend his life with a gorgeous, boring woman who'll make him miserable, all so that he can wear her on his arm to parties, thinkin' that'll show other people how great he is. He'll pick the career and car and mansion that he thinks other people expect him to have, put all his energy into building up that front. Then one day he'll find out his life is all wrapping paper and no gift. — David Wong

I said, "And then, when those all-American Joes get out and some of them fucking turn into monsters? What happens then?"
Amy said, "Then we will once again err on the side of not letting people be murdered. You take the choice in front of you, and then you keep picking the non-murder choices as long as you can. — David Wong

No matter where you go, management is always a bunch of cheap bastards. — David Wong

I shoved the monster into the water, held it under, screamed "Die!" or something to that effect. After a few seconds it stopped moving and black sauce oozed out of it like an oil slick. Dr. Marconi got close enough so I could finally hear him. He said, "They're trying to get into the water! Don't let them! — David Wong

SOCIETY IS DOOMED for one very simple reason: it takes dozens of men working months with millions of dollars in materials to build a building, but only one dumb-ass with a bomb to bring it down. — David Wong

Welcome to freakdom, Dave. It'll be time to start a Web site soon, where you'll type out everything in one huge paragraph. — David Wong

Let's just say it's magic." "Let's just say that I need a little more explanation than that if I'm going to go along with this." John sighed. "Okay, have you heard of nanotechnology?" "Yeah. Microscopic robots, right?" "Right, and imagine they can make millions of these robots and embed them in a liquid, so that you now have a liquid infused with the power of all these machines. Got it?" "All right." "Now imagine if, instead of tiny robots, it's magic. — David Wong

Deadworld? Is that where you're from?" "No, dude. That's where you're from. It's where we are now. This place, it's a horror show. If the guy next to you decides to knock you out of this world forever, he can do it with just a piece of metal or, hell, even his bare hand. You blobs, you sit there, chillin' in this room and I can smell the rot of dead animals soaking in the acid of your guts. You suck the life from the innocent creatures of this world just so you can clock another day. You're machines that run on the terror and pain and mutilation of other lives. You'll scrape the world clean of every green and living thing until starvation goes one-eight-seven on every one of your sorry asses, your desperation to put off death leadin' to the ultimate death of everybody and everything. Dude, I can't believe you ain't all paralyzed by the pure, naked horror of this place. — David Wong

Let's say you have an ax. Just a cheap one, from Home Depot. On one bitter winter day, you use said ax to behead a man. Don't worry, the man was already dead. Or maybe you should worry, because you're the one who shot him. — David Wong

But in those first hours after you take it, your brain is tuned in like nothing you can imagine. Eyes like the Hubble telescope, sensing light that's not even on the spectrum. You might be able to read minds, make time stop, cook pasta that's exactly right every time. — David Wong

My shame circuits burned out from overuse years ago. — David Wong

What, then, is the soul but a prisoner of your flesh? An undying yet constrained energy, bound and enslaved within a shuffling, steadily rotting suit of tissue and savage needs? — David Wong

I AM KORROK. In the mountains of Uruguay, a goat gets its hoof caught in a posthole and the bone snaps like a twig. The splinter juts from its skin, blood spraying onto white fur. It is stuck like that for three days. Finally, a wolf mother comes along, carrying her pup in her jaws. She lets the pup feed off the goat, gnawing bits of fur and skin and tearing at muscle. The goat feels it and screams and there is pain and pain and neither the goat nor the wolf nor the pup understand their place in the machine. I stand above all, and call them fags. I AM KORROK. — David Wong

Which would prove I'm a monster, Arnie? Sacrificing the people I love for the fight? Or walking away from the fight to save the people i love? — David Wong

You know, I observed a man who masturbated until he bled. Did he want to do that? — David Wong

If I knew me as somebody else, I would hate me just as much. Why have a double standard? — David Wong

There are two types of people on planet Earth, Batman and Iron Man. Batman has a secret identity, right? So Bruce Wayne has to walk around every second of every day knowing that if somebody finds out his secret, his family is dead, his friends are dead, everyone he loves gets tortured to death by costumed supervillains. And he has to live with the weight of that secret every day. But not Tony Stark, he's open about who he is. He tells the world he's Iron Man, he doesn't give a shit. He doesn't have that shadow hanging over him, he doesn't have to spend energy building up those walls of lies around himself. You're one or the other - either you're one of those people who has to hide your real self because it would ruin you if it came out, because of your secret fetishes or addictions or crimes, or you're not one of those people. And the two groups aren't even living in the same universe. — David Wong