Quotes & Sayings About Monsters Inside Us

We stopped looking for monsters under our bed when we realized that they were inside us. — Charles Darwin

People can be ... well, they can be wonderful. And sometimes, unfortunately, they can be monsters we hide from inside our homes. We worry that those monsters will find their way inside. We're not supposed to fear that they already are inside. Your mom and dad are supposed to protect you from that. They're not supposed to be the monster. — Samantha Young

It didn't seem the right time to tell him where the worst monsters hide. They conceal themselves cleverly inside our heads and wait for the moments we're at our most vulnerable - bedtime, or when we're sick or anxious. — Helen Brown

Monsters will always exist. There's one inside each of us. But an angel lives there, too. There is no more important agenda than figuring out how to slay one and nurture the other. — Jacqueline Novogratz

We all have monsters inside of us, and we all have an inner child in us. You always think about your inner child as being the sweet and innocent part of yourself, but it's also the part that's all ego with the mentality of, "If the world isn't pleasing me, it isn't doing its job." — Finn Wittrock

He's a gentle giant, harmless and soft, like a teddy bear.

Except deep down, I know he's not.

And when his eyes cut my way, and I see the darkness on the surface, I'm reminded that this man hangs out with monsters.

And one might even exist inside of him. — J.M. Darhower

To teach her that not all monsters are monsters in the beginning, and not all monsters look like monsters. Some carry their monstrosity inside. — Fredrik Backman

Serafina, Ava, Ling, and Becca swam inside. Neela followed them, but at the very last second, shield. "I can't," she said. "Once I go in, there's no way out again. This is real. You're real. All this time, a part of me was hoping you were only a dream."

The witch cocked her head. "Only a dream?" she said mockingly. "Long ago, a great mage dreamed of stealing the gods' powers. Abbadon was born of that dream. Atlantis died because of it. Now, because of a new dreamer, all the waters of the world may fall. There is nothing more real than a dream." She nodded at the waters behind Neela. Silt was rising in the distance, a great deal of it. "The merman Traho knows this. He's coming. If you do not believe me, perhaps he can convince you. — Jennifer Donnelly

We stop looking for monsters under our beds when we realize they are inside us. — Charles Darwin

It was the fear others felt, much more than hatred or some other emotion, that had made a victim of me. It was because fear had seized some of them by the throat that I was handed over to torturers and executioners, and it was also fear that had turned those same torturers, formerly men like me, into monsters; fear that had caused the seeds of evil, which we all carry, to germinate inside them. — Philippe Claudel

Monsters are real. Ghosts are too. They live inside of us, and sometimes, they win. — Stephen King

But before I left," Rider continued, "I learned enough to know that most often sexual abuse of children comes from inside the family, relatives or close friends. The boogey monsters who climb through the window and abduct are few and far between. — Michael Connelly

Monsters can live inside a person. Sometimes they know about it. More often they don't. — Nikki Rae

All the horror and blood and monsters and fear crystallized to a fine thin shard inside her, harder than diamonds. What was one more monster in the face of so many? — Christina Henry

Men who have not been violated don't understand what it is like to have the edges of your body blurred - to feel that every inch of your skin is a place where fingers can press, that every hole and orifice is a place where others can put parts of their bodies. When your body stops being corporeal, your soul has no place to go, so it finds the next window to escape.
My soul left me when I was six. It flew away past a flapping curtain over a window. I ran after it, but it never came back. It left me alone on wet stinking mattresses. It left me alone in the choking dark. It took my tongue, my heart, and my mind.
When you don't have a soul, the ideas inside you become terrible things. They grow unchecked, like malignant monsters. You cry in the night because you know the ideas are wrong - you know because people have told you that - and yet none of it does any good. The ideas are free to grow. There is no soul inside you to stop them. — Rene Denfeld

The monsters were never
under my bed.
Because the monsters
were inside my head.


I fear no monsters,
for no monsters I see.
Because all this time
the monster has been me. — Nikita Gill

The outside world, the world of free time in the yard or the garden or on the street, is only a distant murmur in the sickroom. Inside, a whole world of characters and stories proliferate out of the books you read. The fever that weakens your perception as it sharpens your imagination turns the sickroom into something new, both familiar and strange; monsters come grinning out of the patterns on the curtains and the carpet, and chairs, tables, bookcases and wardrobes burst out of their normal shapes and become mountains and buildings and ships you can almost touch although they're far away — Bernhard Schlink

Sometimes, there are monsters inside of us all, even in the ones we think are the most good." ~Zara White — Carrie Jones

She is afraid, and yet she wants the priest to see inside her and accept the monsters that wrap around the secret, pure part of her--the part she managed to save, miraculously, that so many of us have lost. she knows the monsters are there and yet wants to be seen. — Rene Denfeld

Real monsters eat you from the inside out. — Dia Reeves

We made connections between the monsters created by war and the monsters he created, the typical outcast that Whale was attracted to, and the monster in himself, that's inside all of us. — Bill Condon

We're all monsters," he says. "Everyone of us. No matter what you want to believe, believe this. We will all fight. We will all kill. Every person you've ever met, the monster lives inside them all. — M. Arthur

We've forgotten what it's like not to be able to reach the light switch. We've forgotten a lot of the monsters that seemed to livein our room at night. Nevertheless, those memories are still there, somewhere inside us, and can sometimes be brought to the surface by events, sights, sounds, or smells. Children, though, can never have grown-up feelings until they've been allowed to do the growing. — Fred Rogers

Some imagine game development as a path that we follow toward our
destination. I disagree with this image. I think it's more like a dark forest
full of stinging monsters, waiting to inject you with anesthetic poison.
Each time you bump into one, it stings you and the poison makes you
feel warm and content. But under the surface, the stings are stealing your
vigor, dissolving you from the inside. It's only later, as your strength runs
low and the moon clouds over, that you might realize that the pleasant
feeling you've enjoyed all this time wasn't progress. It was death. — Tynan Sylvester

I write about the scariest monsters: The ones inside us all. And the ones that want to eat what is inside us all. — Aaron Marcusson

Like calls to like. I'd sense it when the Hummingbird entered the Unsea, but I'd been too afraid to embrace it. This time, I didn't fight. I let go of my fear, my guilt, my shame. There was darkness inside me. He had put it there, and I would no longer deny it. The volcra, the nichevo'ya, they were my monsters, all of them. And he was my monster too.
"My power is yours", I repeated. His arms tightened around me. "And yours is mine," I whispered against his lips. — Leigh Bardugo

Monsters don't sleep under your bed, they scream inside of your head — Unknown

I was a weird little kid. I was very irritable, bored, frustrated. I felt my imagination bubbling inside my head without having any way to express itself. Given a crayon and paper, I would not draw a train or a house. I would draw these monsters, beasts and demons. — Clive Barker

I have begged and she hasn't answered. The whales are swimming deep inside me and she doesn't help. I need help. All the monsters in the world are inside me instead of outside me. I've been tricked and trapped and they are inside my walls not outside my walls inside with me and she won't help me. When I stop thinking about a muscle it shakes. When I stop thinking about a fear it leaps at me. I'm drowning but the lake keeps getting deeper and deeper and deeper and I don't know how to get out the walls go up forever and I can't climb over and I can't break through and she won't talk to me. — Orson Scott Card

The living always think that monsters roar and gnash their teeth. But I've seen that real monsters can be friendly; they can smile, and they can say please and thank you like everyone else. Real monsters can appear to be kind. Sometimes they can be inside us. — Jodi Lynn Anderson

Sometimes you can lock the doors and close the blinds, but the monsters are still there inside your house, sleeping and breathing and just waiting to wake up and terrorize you all over again. — Travis Thrasher

Jack sprung to his feet out of reach. "I'd prefer to finish this intact. "

"My apologies," Cabal said, grinning viciously. "l keep forgetting, you're only human." His smile softened to full amusement as Jack raised his sword in challenge.


"Human or not," Jack said as he slowly approached him. "I carry the advantage of unworldly knowledge. "

" Is that what you're doing?" Cabal laughed; "Something unworldly?"

"I have a vast library of knowledge inside my head from my homeland."

"What knowledge could your world offer that would be useful here?"

"How about a toilet?" Jack winked at Nicole.

"Perhaps you should build one and leave us all in awe." Cabal declared.

"People could call them 'Jacks' for short." Nicole added to the conversation. — Alaina Stanford

Some people wore their ugly deep inside where nobody could see it. Those were the most dangerous monsters of all. — Jaden Wilkes

There are hundreds of thousands of kids walking around with a sleeping monster inside them. — Mackenzie Phillips

Mankind is not a race of noble savages - but primitive monsters hide inside us, elusive as Sasquatch ... — John Geddes

She was tired of being told how it was by this generation, who'd botched things so badly. They'd sold their children a pack of lies: God and country. Love your parents. All is fair. And then they'd sent those boys, her brother, off to fight a great monster of a war that maimed and killed and destroyed whatever was inside them. Still they lied, expecting her to mouth the words and play along. Well, she wouldn't. She knew now that the world was a long way from fair. She knew the monsters were real. — Libba Bray

He was drawn to the edge of things. To the places old mariners knew, and warned, "Beyond here be monsters." ... He stepped into the beyond, and found the monsters hidden deep inside all the reasonable, gentle, laughing people. He went where even they were afraid to go. — Louise Penny

The demon blood inside me burned my soul to ashes long ago.
I am a monster who once dreamed he was a man. Never mistake
me again. — Carol Oates

*For eleven years, I've been worked over and abused in ways you can't imagine by things you don't want to know about. I've killed every kind of vile, black-souled, dead-eyed nightmare that ever made you piss your pjs and cry for mommy in the middle of the night. I kill monsters and, if I wanted, I could say a word and burn you to powder from the inside out. I can tear any human you ever met to rages with my bare hands. Give me one good reason why I could possibly need you?
*She looks straight at me, not blinking. No fear in her eyes.
*Because you might be the Tasmanian Devil and the Angel of Death all rolled into one, but you don't even know how to get a phone.
*I hate to admit it, but she has a point. — Richard Kadrey

It was a sunrise, a kid's sight of snowfall on a school morning. Hope. That all this can turn out okay, that somehow a tide this big and black can be turned back. Hope like a wildfire, thoughts of presents under a Christmas tree and a smell of cookies coming from a kitchen and a certain look in a girl's eyes that lights you up inside. That beautiful border between nightmare and morning when you realize that all of the monsters menacing you have evaporated like smoke, leaving behind only the warm blanket and the pale sunlight of a Saturday dawn. — David Wong

One human life is deeper than the ocean. Strange fishes and sea-monsters and mighty plants live in the rock-bed of our spirits. The whole of human history is an undiscovered continent deep in our souls. There are dolphins, plants that dream, magic birds inside us. The sky is inside us. The earth is in us. — Ben Okri

You gotta show kids YOU'RE not scared (even if inside at times you are) and when you show you're not afraid of the "monsters" then they too will stand up even when the lights are off. — Jill Telford

All my work will explode inside my body, each fragment of my anatomy will acquire a life of its own, outside mine, Humberto won't exist, only these monsters, the despot who imprisoned me at La Rinconada to force me to invent him, Ines's honey complexion, Brigida's death, Iris Mateluna's hysterical pregnancy, the saintly girl who was never beatified, Humberto Penaloza's father pointing out Don Jeronimo dressed up to go to the Jockey Club, and your benign, kind hand, Mother Benita, that does not and will not let go of mine, and your attention fixed on these words of a mute, and your rosaries, the Casa's La Rinconada as it once was, as it is now, as it was afterwards, the escape, the crime, all of it alive in my brain, Peta Ponce's prism refracting and confusing everything and creating simultaneous and contradictory planes, everything without ever reaching paper, because I always hear voices and laughter enveloping and tying me up. — Jose Donoso

He gave me the brochure. It was about the Hunters of Artemis. The front read, A WISE CHOICE FOR YOUR FUTURE! Inside were pictures of young maidens doing hunter stuff, chasing monsters, shooting bows. There were captions like: HEALTH BENEFITS: IMMORTALITY AND WHAT IT MEANS FOR YOU! and A BOY-FREE TOMORROW!
"I found that in Annabeth's backpack," Grover said.
I stared at him. "I don't understand."
"Well, it seems to me ... maybe Annabeth was thinking about joining."
I'd like to say I took the news well.
The truth was, I wanted to strangle the Hunters of Artemis one eternal maiden at a time. — Rick Riordan

The reason Armand Gamache could go there was because it wasn't totally foreign to him. He knew it because he'd seen his own burned terrain, he'd walked off the familiar and comfortable path inside his own head and heart and seen what festered in the dark. And one day Jean Guy Beauvoir would look at his own monsters, and then be able to recognize others. And maybe this was the day and this was the case. He hoped so. — Louise Penny

It's the shape of the stories that matters, the way belief forms around it. The story has real weight', He pointed at himself. 'Patupaiarehe look like monsters in some stories, but they're beautiful in a lot. I guess people believed more in the beautiful version. And the ideal of beauty changes. If I'd been born two hundred years ago, I bet I wouldn't look like this. The stories shaped me. They shape everyone, inside and out, but me more than most, because I'm magic. — Karen Healey

We both believe in monsters. But all the ghosts and demons are you. And all the angels and genies are you. All the kings, queens, Buddhas, beautiful boys. Inside you. No one can take them away. (Missing Angel Juan.) — Francesca Lia Block

From here on," Kanin said, "you will have to decide what kind of demon you will be. Not all meals will come to you so easily, ignorant and seeking to do you harm. What will you do if your prey invites you inside, offers you a place at the table? What will you do if they flee, or cower down, begging you not to hurt them? How you stalk your prey is something you must come to terms with, or you will quickly drive yourself mad. And once you cross that threshold, there is no coming back from it. — Julie Kagawa

The monsters don't live in the belly of the world like they all say. The monsters live inside of us. We make the monsters. — Kameron Hurley

Aren't we all monsters inside? — Lucy

But why do we keep all that crap inside?' Mack asked.
'Because we believe it's safer there. And, sometimes, when you;re a kid trying to survive, it really is safer there. Then you grow up on the outside, but on the inside you're still that kid in the dark cave surrounded by monsters, and out of habit you keep adding to your collection. We all collect things we value, you know? — Wm. Paul Young

I don't fool you, do I? Those others" - he waved a vague hand to indicate their
missing comrades - "they think I'm all that - but you know better, don't you."
"Know what?" she'd asked.
He leaned forward, smelling of beer and cigarettes. "You know I'm a fraud. I can
feel the beast inside me, screaming to get out. And if I loose it, it will pull me up to greatness despite myself."
"So why not let it free?" She hadn't been a werewolf then. The world had been a gentler place, the monsters safely in their closets, and she had been brave in her ignorance.
His eyes were old and weary, his voice slurring a bit. "Because then everyone would
see," he told her.
"See what?"
"Me. — Patricia Briggs

Monsters are real, and ghosts are real too. They live inside us, and sometimes, they win. — Stephen King

Not all monsters look like monsters. There are some that carry their monstrosity inside. — Fredrik Backman

Mental illness

People assume you aren't sick
unless they see the sickness on your skin
like scars forming a map of all the ways you're hurting.

My heart is a prison of Have you tried?s
Have you tried exercising? Have you tried eating better?
Have you tried not being sad, not being sick?
Have you tried being more like me?
Have you tried shutting up?

Yes, I have tried. Yes, I am still trying,
and yes, I am still sick.

Sometimes monsters are invisible, and
sometimes demons attack you from the inside.
Just because you cannot see the claws and the teeth
does not mean they aren't ripping through me.
Pain does not need to be seen to be felt.

Telling me there is no problem
won't solve the problem.

This is not how miracles are born.
This is not how sickness works. — Emm Roy

During the bus ride, our only sustenance was stuff we'd scored from vending machines - a bag of chips, a sleeve of cookies, a bottle of soda. I ate the food. Sam wolfed down the wrappers and the plastic bottle. "Do you always eat trash?" I'd asked, more curious than disgusted. "You think what's inside the packaging is any better?" He had a point. Some of those ingredients sounded as deadly as the monsters. The — Rick Riordan

But a voice inside her whispered, There are no heroes, and she remembered what Lord Petyr had said to her, here in this very hall. 'Life is not a song, sweetling,' he'd told her, 'You may learn that one day to your sorrow.' In life, the monsters win, she told herself. — George R R Martin