Rick Yancey Quotes & Sayings

Death had brought an end to their misery. Would nothing but a visitation from that same dark angel bring and end to mine? — Rick Yancey

He looks like Darth Vader sounds like him too
Right and he member what happens he turns into a good guy at the end.
Only after he blows up a whole planet and kills a lot of people. — Rick Yancey

If you can't trust anyone, then you can trust no one. — Rick Yancey

Who wants to read a book when you can blow something up? — Rick Yancey

We have just discovered our dear colleague butchered in a hotel room, and you wish to discuss literature? — Rick Yancey

His heart, the war.

Her face, the battlefield. — Rick Yancey

Even the most open person has a private, sacred place where no one else may go. — Rick Yancey

It will be a seminal moment in the history of science, Will Henry, the finding of the magnificum, and not without some ancillary benefit to me personally. If I succeed, it will bring nothing short of immortality
well, the only concept of immortality that I'm prepared to accept. But if I do succeed, the space between us and the ineffable will shrink a little more. It is what we strive for as scientists, and what we dread as human beings. There is something in us that longs for the indescribable, the unattainable, the thing that cannot be seen. — Rick Yancey

It kills me. The way he trusted. LIke the way we trusted before they came and blue the whole goddamned world apart. Trusted that when it got dark there would be light. Trusted that when you wanted a fucking strawberry Frappuccino you could plop your ass in the car, drive down the streed, and get yourself a fucking strawberry Frappuccino! — Rick Yancey

A flawless, self-sustaining loop, an immaculate system in which trust and cooperation can never take root. Progress becomes impossible, for all strangers are potential enemies, the 'other' who must be hunted down until the last bullet is spent. You — Rick Yancey

Something weird," Ben said. "You would think, with ninety-nine percent of us gone, the two percent would get along better."
Um, that would be one percent, Parish. — Rick Yancey

Well, I tell myself, it could be worse. You could have been rescued by some fifty-year-old perv sporting a spare tire the size of a monster truck's who keeps his dead mother in the attic. — Rick Yancey

He doesn't want to know; he has to know. — Rick Yancey

Well, what do we have here? What have they sent us from central casting - is this a hobbit? Are you a magical creature from a storybook realm come to enchant me with your dark magic? — Rick Yancey

You belong to them now. Vosch the sculptor, my body the clay, but not my spirit, never my soul. Unconquered. Uncrushed. Uncontained. — Rick Yancey

Stay calm. It's like chess. Move and countermove. — Rick Yancey

There are times when fear is not our enemy. There are times when fear is our truest, sometimes only, friend. — Rick Yancey

It's her eyes that get to me. The deep dark of them. Is nothing there - or nearly everything? — Rick Yancey

Afterward I told his widow, "Your husband is dead, but at least he died laughing.' I think she took some comfort in that. It is the second-best way to die, Will Henry." He did not say what the best way was. — Rick Yancey

I'm here because they've killed almost all of us, but not all of us. And that's their mistake, son. That's the flaw in their plan. Because if you don't kill all of us at once, whoever's left are not going to be the weak ones. The strong ones- and only the strong ones- will survive. The bent but unbroken, if you know what I mean. People like me. And people like you. — Rick Yancey

It's why a kid army makes sense. Adults don't waste their time on magical thinking. They dwell on the same inconvenient truths that — Rick Yancey

My mind didn't register the sounds at first. The woods echoed with the staccato bursts of automatic weapons and people screaming, but it wasn't computing, like Crisco's head snapping back and the way he flopped into the gray dust like every bone in his body had suddenly turned into Jell-O, the way his killer had swung around in a perfectly executed pirouette with the barrel of the gun flashing in the sunlight. — Rick Yancey

That's a stupid question,' said Malachi. 'Because he didn't warn him. He didn't warn anyone.'
'No, it's a philosophical question,' Kearns corrected him. 'Which makes it useless, not stupid. — Rick Yancey

On the table beside me is a book entitled Love's Desperate Desire. Based on the cover, I would have called it My Spectacular Washboard Abs. — Rick Yancey

Hello, Earth.
So this is how God sees you, sparkling blue against the dullest black. No wonder he made you. No wonder he made the sun and the stars so he could see you. — Rick Yancey

What doesn't kill us sharpens us. Hardens us. Schools us. You're beating plowshares into swords, Vosch. You are remaking us. We are the clay, and you are Michelangelo. And we will be your masterpiece. — Rick Yancey

The future of humanity belongs to the hardcore. — Rick Yancey

Memories can bring comfort to the old and infirm, but memories can also be implacable foes, a malicious army of temporal ghosts forever pillaging the long-sought-after peace of our twilight years. — Rick Yancey

None of it had prepared him, however, for this naked confrontation with gross injustice, this horrific reminder that despite all the honors with which we shower ourselves, we are, ultimately, fodder, mere meat for the inferior, soulless things of which I dreamt the night before, no less than us the Creator's children." - The Monstrumologist — Rick Yancey

The next thing you do when the plug's pulled, after panicking, is run to the nearest window. You don't know why exactly. It's that better-see-what's-going-on feeling. The world works from the outside in. So if the lights go off, you look outside. — Rick Yancey

If I had faced it then, I wouldn't be facing it now, but sooner or later you have to choose between running and facing the thing you thought you could not face. — Rick Yancey

You can't be who you say you are because who you say you are could not have done what you did! — Rick Yancey

Not Cassie for Cassandra. Or Cassie for Cassidy. Cassie for Cassiopeia, the constellation, the queen tied to her chair in the northern sky, who was beautiful but vain, placed in the heavens by the sea god Poseidon as a punishment for her boasting. In Greek, her name means she whose words excel. — Rick Yancey

Perhaps God waits for us to be empty, so he may fill us with himself. — Rick Yancey

After another hour in the dark and stuffy gym, I saw my dad appear in the doorway. He gave a little wave, like he showed up at my school every day to take me home after alien attacks. — Rick Yancey

To truly pass, you must overcome what cannot be overcome. — Rick Yancey

the look we give back to death when death looks at us. — Rick Yancey

His body is pressed against my back, his arm is wrapped protectively around my waist, his breath a delicious tickle against my neck. The room is very cold; it would be nice to climb under the covers, but I don't want to move. I don't want him to move. I run my fingers along his bare forearm, remembering the warmth of his lips, the silkiness of his hair between my fingers. The boy who never sleeps, sleeping. Coming to rest upon the Cassiopeian shore, an island in the middle of a sea of blood. You have your promise, and I have you.
I can't trust him. I have to trust him.
I can't stay with him. I can't leave him behind. — Rick Yancey

Bitterness finds pleasure in the spot from which bitterness springs. — Rick Yancey

We got it all wrong, there was no alien swarm descending from the sky in their flying saucers or big metal walkers like something out of Star Wars or cute little wrinkly E.T.s who just wanted to pluck a couple of leaves, eat some Reese's Pieces, and go home. That's not how it ends. — Rick Yancey

Empty the vessel of hope and faith and trust and you can fill it with anything you like. They — Rick Yancey

This takes me a couple minutes to absorb. He lets me have them. He picks up one of the computer printouts and holds it in front of me. There's a lot of numbers and squiggly lines and strange symbols that mean absolutely nothing to me. "I don't expect you to be able to read it," he says. "But would you like to guess what this is?" "That's all it would be, sir," I answer. "A guess. — Rick Yancey

One lesson I learned from 'The Monstrumologist' was never to get too attached to your own characters. That's harder in practice than in theory. At the end of the third book - which coincided with the end of my contract - I was an emotional wreck. I mourned Will Henry and Warthrop. — Rick Yancey

Life is full of little ironies, but it's also pockmarked with some the size of that big rock in Australia. — Rick Yancey

He didn't like to see animals in captivity. When he looked into their eyes, something in their eyes looked back at him. — Rick Yancey

Remember me...When all else has been forgotten. — Rick Yancey

We'd stared into Death's eyes and Death blinked first. — Rick Yancey

Look, I probably shouldn't tell someone holding a high-powered semiautomatic rifle this, but you're really starting to get on my nerves. — Rick Yancey

We are hunters all. We are, all of us, monstrumologists. And Pellinore Warthrop was the best of us, for he had found the courage to turn and face the most terrifying monster of all. — Rick Yancey

You know you've reached a very sad place when the only person who can make you laugh is yourself. — Rick Yancey

This was it, the thing between us, the thing neither of us could put our fingers on, the unbreakable bond between love and fear. Evan's the love. I am the fear. — Rick Yancey

Everything's broken?" he asked Cassie. "Everything?"
"No, not everything, Sams," she answered. "Not this."
She took his hand and put it against his chest, and his pounding heart pushed fiercely against his open palm.
"Unbroken," she said. — Rick Yancey

I assure you, Constable Morgan, I am quite sane, as I understand the word, perhaps the sanest person in this room, for I suffer from no illusions. I have freed myself, you see, from the pretense that burdens most men. Much like our prey, I do not impose order where there is none; I do not pretend there is any more than what there is, or that you and I are anything more than what we are. That is the essence of their beauty, Morgan, the aboriginal purity of their being, and why I admire them. — Rick Yancey

You make your whole existence dependant on another human being you're asking for a world of trouble. Think of every tragic love story ever written. And I didn't want to play Juliet to anybody's Romeo, not if I could help it. Even if the only candidate available was willing to die for me and sitting right beside me holding my hand and looking deeply into my eyes with the not-so-gah-now eyes the colour of melted chocolate. Plus being practically naked under those covers and possession the body of a Hollister dude ... but I'm not getting into all that. — Rick Yancey

Let's establish a code for when you want to go all creeper on me. One knock means you'd like to come in. Two means you're just stopping by to spy on me while I sleep." His eyes travel from my face to my shirt (which happens to be his shirt) to my bare legs, lingering a breath too long before returning to my face. His gaze is warm. My legs are cold.
Then he knocks once on the jamb. But it's the smile that gets him in. — Rick Yancey

The world is a clock and the clock winds down, and their coming had nothing to do with that. The world has always been a clock. Even the stars will wink out one by one and there will be no light or heat, and this is the war, the endless, futile war against the lightless, heatless void rushing toward us. — Rick Yancey

The intervening years are sucked down these acheronian halls like light into a black hole while you helplessly teeter upon the event horizon, where time is measured by the beating of a fly's wing in the stagnant air. — Rick Yancey

The most delightful thing he's discovered about shooting someone is how ridiculously easy it is. Tying your shoes is harder. — Rick Yancey

Tampons. I'm constantly worrying about my stash and if I'll be able to find more. — Rick Yancey

Because here's the thing: seeing yourself through another's eyes shifts your center of gravity. It doesn't change the way you look at yourself. It changes the way you look at the world. Not the you. The everything-but-you. — Rick Yancey

He drops into the room, landing on the balls of his feet like a cat. I'm in his arms in the time it takes to say 'I love you,' which he does, stroking my hair, whispering my name and the words, 'My mayfly. — Rick Yancey

I'd hate to see the look on my face when that mask came down and I saw the face behind it. Thinner than I remember. Paler. The eyes sunk deep into their sockets, kind of glazed over, like he's sick or hurt, but I recognize it, I know whose face was hidden behind that mask. I just can't process it.
Here, in this place. A thousand years later and a million miles from the halls of George Barnard High School. Here, in the belly of the beast at the bottom of the world, standing right in front of me.
Benjamin Thomas Parish.
And Cassiopeia Marie Sullivan, having a full-bore out-of-body experience, seeing herself seeing him. The last time she saw him was in their high school gymnasium after the lights went out, and then only the back of his head, and the only times that she's seen him since happened in her mind, the rational part of which always knew Ben Parish was dead like everyone else. — Rick Yancey

Madness is a wholly human malady borne in a brain too evolved - or not quite evolved enough - to bear the awful burden of its own existence. — Rick Yancey

Snap to, Will Henry! — Rick Yancey

Poets never die, I thought. They just fail in the end. — Rick Yancey

Breathe, Cassie, breathe. He has a good face. Not the face of someone who wants to hurt you. If he wanted to hurt you, he wouldn't have brought you here and stuck an IV in you to keep you hydrated, and the sheets feel nice and clean, and so what took your clothes and dressed you in this cotton nightie, what did you expect him to do? Your clothes were filthy, like you, only you're not anymore, and your skin smells a little like lilacs, which means holy Christ he BATHED you. — Rick Yancey

He really was training me to be a soldier - by trying to kill me. — Rick Yancey

Coexistence." Talking to me, but addressing the stars above us. "There aren't that many of us, Cassie. Only a few hundred thousand. We could have inserted ourselves in you, lived out our new lives without anyone ever knowing we were here. Not many of my people agreed with me. They saw pretending to be human as beneath them. They were afraid the longer we pretended to be human, the more human we would become. — Rick Yancey

There is beauty that soothes like the warm kiss of the spring sun upon the cheek, and then there is beauty that terrifies, like the cry of Ozymandias, inviting despair. — Rick Yancey

In the end it wouldn't be the lucky ones left standing. — Rick Yancey

We'd stared into the face of Death, and Death blinked first. You'd think that would make us feel brave and invincible. It didn't. — Rick Yancey

They sat on the back porch and looked at the stars while Zombie told the story of a queen named Cassiopeia who lived forever on a throne in the sky.
"But her throne's tilted down," Sam said, looking at the constellation. "Won't she fall out?"
Zombie cleared his throat. "She won't fall. Her throne is turned that way so she can keep watch over her realm."
"What's a realm?"
Zombie pressed his hand against Sam's chest.
"This is." Zombie's hand to Sam's heart. "Here. — Rick Yancey

Do you know how to tell who the enemy is, Cassie? — Rick Yancey

We often take vengeance long after the fact upon blameless surrogates, reprising the same sins of the ones who trespassed against us, and so perpetuate ad infinitum the pain we suffered at their hands. — Rick Yancey

Indifference is the ultimate evolutionary achievement. — Rick Yancey

Do you know what happened to Teacup?"
"Ran away with the spoon, what I heard. — Rick Yancey

There's the bullshit you know that you know; the bullshit you don't know and know you don't know; and the bullshit you just think you know but really don't. — Rick Yancey

How do you rid the Earth of humans? You rid the humans of their humanity. — Rick Yancey

And you need help with that? Feeling human? — Rick Yancey

More than the sum of our experiences, our memories are the ultimate proof of reality. — Rick Yancey

It doesn't begin inside my head like I expected. Instead a delicious warmth spreads through my body, expanding from my heart outward, and my bones and muscles and skin dissolve in the warmth that spreads out from me, until the warmth overcomes the Earth and the boundaries of the universe. The warmth is everywhere and everything. My body and everything outside my body belongs to it. Then I feel him; he is in the warmth, too, and there's no separation between us, no spot where I end and he begins, and I open up like a flower to the rain, achingly slow and dizzyingly fast, dissolving in the warmth, dissolving in him and there's nothing to see, that's just the convenient word he used because there is no word to describe him, he just is.
And I open to him, a flower to the rain. — Rick Yancey

What?" I ask the back of his head. "Now you're giving me the silent treatment?" His shoulders jiggle up and down. You know, one of those wry, silent chuckles, accompanied by a rueful shake of the head. Girls! So silly. — Rick Yancey

the bear says. Thanks, God. It doesn't really matter, I'm thinking. I was all over Dad for getting so fangirly about the Others, and for spinning the facts to make things seem less bleak, but I wasn't actually much better than he was. It was just as hard for me to swallow the idea that I had gone to bed a human being and woken up a cockroach. — Rick Yancey

The wheat had survived the hail and lightning of the summer storms, but luck could not deliver it from the cold. By the time the refugees took shelter in the old house, the wheat was dead, killed by the hard fist of a deep frost. — Rick Yancey

Dad would fix this. Because that's what dads do. They fix things. — Rick Yancey

Love is forever. If it wasn't, it wouldn't be love. The world is beautiful. If it wasn't, it wouldn't be the world. — Rick Yancey

When you take the humanity out of humans, you are left with humans with no humanity. In other words, you get what you paid for ... — Rick Yancey

You are the nest. You are the hatchling. You are the chrysalis. You are the progeny. You are the rot that falls from stars. You may not understand what I mean.
You will. — Rick Yancey

My foray into young adult lit was by no means planned. I wrote the first 'Alfred Kropp' book as an adult novel, which everyone loved but no one would publish - until I changed my protagonist from a thirty-something P.I. into a 15-year-old kid. After that, it was off to the races, and I am so glad. — Rick Yancey

I am a shark, Cassie," he says slowly, drawing the words out, as if he might be speaking to me for the last time. Looking into my eyes with tears in his, as if he's seeing me for the last time. "A shark who dreamed he was a man. — Rick Yancey

I POINT OUT the embankment leading down to the water's edge. "All the way down to that walking trail," I say to Ringer. "And don't wait for me." She shakes her head, frowning. I lean in, keeping my expression as serious as I can. "I thought I had you with the zombie remark. One of these days, I'm going to get a smile out of you, Private." Very much not smiling. "I don't think so, sir." "You have something against smiling?" "It was the first thing to go." Then the snow and the dark swallow her. The rest of the squad follows. I can hear Teacup whimpering beneath her breath as Dumbo leads her off, going, "Run hard when it goes, Cup, okay? — Rick Yancey

Because, in the end, without love all our effort is wasted, all we do is in vain. — Rick Yancey

We are mere part of a grand whoe, in no way superior, not at all the angels in mortal attire we pretend to be. — Rick Yancey

I know what you're thinking," he says.
"No. You don't."
"You're wondering if you should kiss me good-bye. — Rick Yancey

You're the mayfly,' he murmurs.
And then Evan Walker kisses me.
Holding my hand across his chest, his other hand sliding across my neck, his touch feathery soft, sending a shiver that travels down my spine into my legs, which are having a hard time keeping me upright. I can feel his heart slamming against my palm and I can smell his breath and feel the stubble on his upper lip, a sandpapery contrast to the softness of his lips, and Evan is looking at me and I'm looking back at him. — Rick Yancey

For the gazelle, fear of being eaten. For the lion, fear of starvation. Fear is the chain that binds them together. — Rick Yancey

Those few seconds when you're awake but empty. You forget where you are. What you are now, what you were before. It's all breath and heartbeat and blood moving. Like being in your mother's womb again. The peace of the void. — Rick Yancey

I push the thought away. Promises are priceless, and a kiss is a kind of promise, too. — Rick Yancey

He lied the way a parent lies to you, the good lie that helps you go to sleep. — Rick Yancey

What is life without death, Beneficent? You of all people can answer that question. A never-ending orgy of emptiness that you stuff with meaningless activity. Everything is disposable, including your relationships
especially your your relationships. — Rick Yancey