Justin Cronin Quotes & Sayings

Kittridge closed his eyes. So, the end. It would happen instantaneously, a painless departure, quicker than thought. he felt the presence of his body one last time: the taste of air in his lungs, the blood surging in his veins, the drumlike beating of his heart. The bomb was dropping toward them.
"I've got you," he said, hugging Tim fiercely; and again, over and over, so that the boy would be hearing these words. "I've got you, I've got you, I've got you, I've got you. — Justin Cronin

And how am I to face the odds Of man's bedevilment and God's? — Justin Cronin

It was possible, he understood, for a person's life to become just a long series of mistakes, and that the end, when it came, was just one more mistake in a chain of bad choices. The thing was, most of these mistakes were actually borrowed from other people. You took their bad ideas, and for whatever reason, made them your own. — Justin Cronin

I came to Houston for a job, the reason most people move halfway across the country with a first grader and a five-week-old. I came here to teach at Rice. — Justin Cronin

When you write, you take the ball and you hold it up to the light and you turn it slowly, and let people draw their own conclusions. And try to bring empathy to all sides of the equation. — Justin Cronin

I have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons, I have measured out my life with coffee spoons.' That's T.S. Eliot, in case you were wondering. An oldie but a goodie. When it came to existential exhaustion, the man was one smart cookie. — Justin Cronin

What strange places our lives can carry us to, what dark passages. — Justin Cronin

They say that the moment your life appears before your eyes will be your last, but I'm here to say that it's not so very different when you kiss a woman like Kate, whoever your Kate may be. — Justin Cronin

It was a debt that Peter could never fully repay: the debt of borrowed courage. — Justin Cronin

She was Amy, and she was forever. She was one of Twelve and also the other, the one above and behind, the Zero. She was the Girl from Nowhere, the One Who Walked In, who lived a thousand years; Amy of Multitudes, the Girl with the Souls Inside Her. She was Amy. She was Amy. She was Amy. — Justin Cronin

And I had always liked vampire stories because they are great material that can be refashioned in lots of ways. — Justin Cronin

My theory of characterization is basically this: Put some dirt on a hero, and put some sunshine on the villain, one brush stroke of beauty on the villain. — Justin Cronin

You are Entering the Red Zone.
Proceed at Own Risk.
When in Doubt Run. — Justin Cronin

The lie had worked so far, but Lacey felt its softness, like a floor of rotten boards beneath her feet. — Justin Cronin

There's an outline for each of the books that I adhere to pretty closely, but I'm not averse to taking it in a new direction, as long as I can get it back to where I need it to go. — Justin Cronin

There was something about him, a kind of warm light from inside that you wanted to be near. It reminded her of those little plastic sticks that you snapped so the liquid inside made them glow. — Justin Cronin

Writers who pretend that everything they're doing is completely new are full of it. — Justin Cronin

There was one world, of flesh and blood and bone, but also another - a deeper reality that ordinary people could glimpse only fleetingly, if at all. A world of souls, both the living and the dead, in which time and space, memory and desire, existed in a purely fluid state, the way they did in dreams. — Justin Cronin

I would not say I was a nonbeliever; rather, that I gave little if any thought to celestial concerns. It did not seem to me that God, whoever he was, would be the sort of god to take an interest in the minutiae of human affairs, or that this fact released us from the duty to go about our lives in a spirit of decency to others. — Justin Cronin

Below lies the dark core, that great iron ball beneath all things. Its compressed weight is fantastic; it is older than time itself. It is a vestige of the blackness that predates all existence, when a formless universe existed in a state of chaotic un-creation, lacking awareness even of itself. — Justin Cronin

There were times when you couldn't fix what was broken with words, and this looked like one of those times. — Justin Cronin

All those years, waiting for the Army, and it turns out the Army is us. — Justin Cronin

They always come home. — Justin Cronin

Never a good sign, he thought, when the crows showed up. — Justin Cronin

How wonderful to be read to. To be carried from this world and into another, born away on words. — Justin Cronin

little-known fact, though not unacknowledged by my scientist's eye, is that the ceiling of Grand Central is actually backward. It is a mirror image of the night sky; lore holds that the artist was working from a medieval manuscript that showed the heavens not from within but from without - not mankind's view but God's. I — Justin Cronin

Every book has got its challenges. You run into a plot point that you can't figure out, or a scene that you struggle to write and have to write 50 times. — Justin Cronin

All things found their ends. — Justin Cronin

One of the great themes in American literature is the individual's confrontation with the vast open spaces of the continent. — Justin Cronin

But then night would fall, revealing the sky's hidden treasure - the stars, after all, weren't gone during the day, merely obscured - and his loneliness would recede, supplanted by the sense that the universe, for all its inscrutable vastness, was not a hard, indifferent place in which some things were alive and others not and all that happened was a kind of accident, governed by the cold hand of physical law, but a web of invisible threads in which everything was connected to everything else, including him. — Justin Cronin

It happened fast. Thirty-two minutes for one world to die, another to be born. — Justin Cronin

He had always believed himself to be a flimsy man, a chip in the current of life. But since the birth of his son, and the burst of love this had produced, he had discovered within himself a solidity of character he had never thought possible, an expanding sense of life's importance and his place within its web. He wanted to be a man of whom it could be said that he had put others before himself and died in their defense. Thus the newly inducted and personally transformed Private Jock Alvado shoved his terror aside, stepped over the rail, and turned his back on the maw of space below him; Peter and Apgar did the same. They jumped. — Justin Cronin

Everything got blended together. A sensation like pain
only worse, because it wasn't a pain in your body; the pain was in your mind and your mind was you. You were pain itself. — Justin Cronin

One day you have Einstein, puzzling over the theory of relativity, the next you've got the Manhattan Project and a big hole in the ground. — Justin Cronin

God invented Iowa, he always said, so people could leave it and never come back. — Justin Cronin

A baby was a fact. It was a being with a mind and a nature, and you could feel about it any way you liked, but a baby wouldn't care. Just by existing, it demanded that you believe in a future: the future it would crawl in, walk in, live in. A baby was a piece of time; it was a promise you made that the world made back to you. — Justin Cronin

Michael lifted a menu from a stack on the counter and opened it. 'What's meatloaf?' I get the meat part, but a loaf of it? — Justin Cronin

If you write a good action sequence well in a novel, you're already writing it for film, because the only way to do it well is to use some of the same tricks. They're rhetorical, not visual, but it's the same move. — Justin Cronin

He still had the young person's predisposition to regard the world as a series of vaguely irritating problems created by people less cool and smart than he was. — Justin Cronin

My inventing time is all done under the influence of aerobic exercise. Basically, I do all my thinking while I run. — Justin Cronin

We search for ourselves in our surroundings, and everything I saw was either brand-new or falling apart. Most — Justin Cronin

The world was a world of dreaming souls who could not die. — Justin Cronin

The war - the real war, the one that had been going on for a thousand years and would go on for a thousand thousand more - the war between Us and Them, between the Haves and the Have-Nots, between my gods and your gods, whoever you are - would be fought by men like Richards: men with faces you didn't notice — Justin Cronin

This girl from nowhere. This Amy NLN. Who was alpha, who omega? Who the beginning and who the end? — Justin Cronin

What is left when there is no love? A rope and rock. — Justin Cronin

This ravishing world. This achingly bittersweet, ravishing world. — Justin Cronin

We live, we die. Somewhere along the way, if we're lucky, we may find someone to help lighten the load. — Justin Cronin

The restraints were nothing, like paper. The rivets popped from the table and shot across the room. First his arms and then his legs. The room was dark but hid nothing from his eyes, because the darkness was part of him now. And inside him, far down, a great devouring hunger uncoiled itself. To eat the very world. To take it all inside him and be filled by it, made whole. To make the world eternal, as he was. — Justin Cronin

Wolgast leaned back in his chair and realized how exhausted he was. It always came upon him like this, like the sudden unclenching of a fist. — Justin Cronin

SIXTY-NINE She was Amy, and she was forever. She was one of Twelve and also the other, the one above and behind, the Zero. She was the Girl from Nowhere, the One Who Walked In, who lived a thousand years; Amy of Multitudes, the Girl with the Souls Inside Her. She was Amy. She was Amy. She was Amy. She — Justin Cronin

She remembered no one at all. She remembered one day thinking: I am alone. There is no I but I. She lived in the dark. She taught herself to walk in the light, though it was not easy. — Justin Cronin

It was more than physical attraction; it was the broken thing inside him she loved most of all, the unreachable place where he kept his sadness. Because that was the thing about Peter Jaxon that nobody knew but her, because she loved him like she did: how terribly sad he was. And not just in the day-to-day, the ordinary sadness everyone carried for the things and people they had lost; his was something more. If she could find this sadness, Sara believed, and take it from him, then he would love her in return. — Justin Cronin

It's children, he thought, that give us our lives; without them we are nothing, we are here and then gone, like the dust. A — Justin Cronin

What is home but a place where you are truly known? — Justin Cronin

Real courage is doing the right thing when nobody's looking. Doing the unpopular thing because it's what you believe, and the heck with everybody. — Justin Cronin

City of memories, city of mirrors. — Justin Cronin

He knew what he'd see; one more slack face, one more pair of eyes that had barely learned to read, one more soul that had stared into itself too long. — Justin Cronin

It's all well and good to save the human race. You could say I'm in favor. But you might want to pay a little more attention to what's right in front of you. — Justin Cronin

She did not believe in fate; the world seemed far chancier than that, a series of mishaps and narrow escapes you somehow managed to survive until, one day, you didn't. — Justin Cronin

The sadness you feel is not your own. It's his sadness you feel in your heart, Amy, for missing you. — Justin Cronin

Eustace remembered a day like this one: spring on the cusp of summer, the earth unclenching its fist, thick green leaves, rich with fragrance, fattening the trees. A — Justin Cronin

I grew up during the Cold War, when everything seemed very tenuous. For many years, right up until the fall of the Berlin Wall, I had vivid nightmares of nuclear apocalypse. — Justin Cronin

It's love that enslaves us. — Justin Cronin

I was a 'Planet of the Apes'-obsessed kid. — Justin Cronin

It had never occurred to her that God would cry, but of course that was wrong. God would be crying all the time. He would cry and cry and never stop. — Justin Cronin

I felt, driving home, that for the first time in many years, maybe ever, I was coming truly alive, and here's the thing: the problem of being alive is that it makes you frightened. — Justin Cronin

- I miss you, Daddy. I know you do. I miss you, too, sweetheart, more than you'll ever know. I don't think I've ever been happier than I was with you. I wish I could have saved you, Amy. - But you did. You saved me. You were just a little girl, alone in the world. I never should have let them take you. I tried, but not hard enough. That's the real test, you know. That's the true measure of a man's life. I was always too afraid. I hope you can forgive me. A — Justin Cronin

They had hoped, hated, loved, suffered, sung, and wept. They had known loss. They had surrounded and comforted themselves with objects. They had driven automobiles. They had walked dogs and pushed children on swing sets and waited in line at the grocery store. They had said stupid things. They had kept secrets, nurtured grudges, blown upon the embers of regret. They had worshipped a variety of gods or no god at all. They had awakened in the night to the sound of rain. They had apologized. They had attended various ceremonies. They had explained the history of themselves to psychologists, priests, lovers, and strangers in bars. They had, at unexpected moments, experienced bolts of joy so unalloyed, so untethered to events, that they seemed to come from above; they had longed to be known and, sometimes, almost were. Heirs — Justin Cronin

Because that's what heaven is ... it's opening the door of a house in twilight and everyone you love is there. — Justin Cronin

The world had a way of speaking to you if you let it; the trick was learning to hear. — Justin Cronin

A baby wasn't an idea, as love was an idea. A baby was a fact. It was a being with a mind and a nature, and you could feel about it any way you liked, but a baby wouldn't care. Just by existing, it demanded that you believe in a future: the future it would crawl in, walk in, live in. A baby was a piece of time; it was a promise you made that the world made back to you. A baby was the oldest deal there was, to go on living. — Justin Cronin

There exists for each of us a geographical fulcrum, a place so saturated with memory that within its precinct the past is always present. — Justin Cronin

He had entered sleep's antechamber, the place where dreams and memories mingled, telling their strange stories; yet part of him was still in the car, listening to the rain. — Justin Cronin

Because the game was the world's natural state. Because the game was war, it always was, and when wasn't there a war on, somewhere, to keep a man like Richards in good employ? — Justin Cronin

I'm an ecumenical reader, grew up with all sorts of fiction, teach writing, went to the Iowa Writers' Workshop, so my tastes and interests are broad. — Justin Cronin

We have mortgaged the planet and spent the cash on trifles. — Justin Cronin

Since our first, furry ancestor scraped flint on stone and banished night with fire, we have climbed heavenward on a ladder made of our own arrogance. — Justin Cronin

That was always the hardest part, missing you. — Justin Cronin

Would somebody please tell him whose idea it had been to kill the entire state of Colorado? — Justin Cronin

For the first time in my life, I felt the pain of missing people I had not yet left. — Justin Cronin

My rule has always been, write the next part of the book that you seem to know well. So I won't necessarily write chapter two after chapter one. — Justin Cronin

Peter gazed at the destruction. It was the cities that always turned his thoughts to what the world had once been. The buildings and houses, the cars and streets: all had once teemed with people who had gone about their lives knowing nothing of the future, that one day history would stop. — Justin Cronin

But she wasn't a little girl, she was a beautiful woman, tall and lovely, with tresses of black hair that curved like cupped hands around her face. — Justin Cronin

From small mistakes come great catastrophes; — Justin Cronin

But I did what I thought was right in the moment. In the end, that's all a man has to measure his life, and it's plenty. — Justin Cronin

Behind every great hatred is a love story. For I am a man who has known and tasted love. I say "a man" because that is how I know myself. Look at me, and what do you see? Do I not take the form of a man? Do I not feel as you do, suffer as you do, love as you do, mourn as you do? What is the essence of a man, if not these things? — Justin Cronin

The field was carpeted with the most lustrous show of wildflowers she had ever seen - flowers by the hundreds, the thousands, the millions. Purple irises. White lilies. Pink daisies. Yellow buttercups and red columbines and many others she knew no names for. A breeze had arisen; the sun had broken through the clouds. She shrugged off her pack and walked slowly forward. It was as if she were wading into a sea of pure color. The tips of her fingers brushed the petals of the flowers as she passed. They seemed to bow their heads in salutation, welcoming her into their embrace. In a trance of beauty, Amy moved among them. Corridors of golden sunshine fell over the field; far away, across the sea, a new age had begun.
Here she would make her garden. She would make her garden, and wait. — Justin Cronin

He had a family in Lincoln, all the way clean over in Nebraska. He'd even showed her the pictures in his wallet of his kids, two little boys in baseball uniforms, — Justin Cronin

His father had always said, Son, the most important thing in life is to make a contribution. Who would have thought Kittridge's contribution would be video-blogging from the front lines of the apocalypse? — Justin Cronin

There were people who were like this, the ones who could not be ruffled or else didn't show it, who possessed great internal reservoirs of calm. — Justin Cronin

All of his life he had feared the darkness and what it could bring; no one, not even his father, had told him how beautiful the night sky was, how it made you feel both small and large at the same time, while also a part of something vast and eternal. — Justin Cronin

I think many years ago I got on a bus in L.A. and drove around to see the stars' homes, but that's the extent of my direct experience in Hollywood. — Justin Cronin

The progress of her aging seemed to occur in fits and starts, not so much a matter of physical growth as a deepening self-possession, as if she were coming into ownership of her life. — Justin Cronin

Yet, to yield, to accept death: the mind forbade it. The mind demanded, against all sense, to go on. Fanning — Justin Cronin

For the first time he considers the full emotional dimensions of the day. His life is changing but his parent's lives are changing too. Like a habitat, abruptly deprived of a major species, the household will be wrenched into realignment by his departure. Like all young people, he has no idea who his parents really are. For 18 years he has experienced their existence only in so far as it is related to his own needs. Suddenly his mind is full of questions. What do they talk about when he's not around? What secrets do they hold from each other? What aspirations have been left to languish? What private grievances held in check by the shared project of child rearing will now in his absence, lurch into the light? — Justin Cronin

Too many what-ifs are just a way to keep yourself up at night, and there's not enough decent sleep to go around. — Justin Cronin

Don't be afraid to ask if you're on the right train. — Justin Cronin

A thousand recollected lives were passing through her, a thousand stories - of love and work, of parents and children, of duty and joy and grief. Beds slept in and meals eaten, and the bliss and pain of the body, and a view of summer leaves from a window on a morning it had rained; the nights of loneliness and the nights of love, the soul in it's body keeping always longing to be known. — Justin Cronin

All stories end when they have returned to their beginnings. — Justin Cronin

Kittredge had obviously misjudged her, but he had learned that was the way with most people. The story was never the story, and it surprised you, how much another person could carry. — Justin Cronin