Rick Yancey The 5th Wave Quotes & Sayings

We are one, you and I. Brothers in hate, brothers in cunning, brothers in the spirit of vengeance. — Rick Yancey

I really kill myself on titles, although 'The 5th Wave' seems like an obvious title, doesn't it? You don't know how long that took me. — Rick Yancey

I'm determined, when the time comes, to at least go out with clean teeth. — Rick Yancey

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

Sci-Fi is the genre that explored both possibilities: the end of our existential crisis and the end of our existence. My novel, 'The 5th Wave,' explores the latter scenario, because, frankly, I believe it represents the likeliest outcome of an extraterrestrial encounter. In short, if they're out there, we better hope they never find us. — Rick Yancey

Until we've killed everyone who isn't tagged." Another step. Right in front of me now. The end of the gun pressing lightly against her chest. "It's the 5th Wave, Ben. — Rick Yancey

'The 5th Wave' is sci-fi, but I tried very hard to ground the story in very human terms and in those universal themes that transcend genre. How do we define ourselves? What, exactly, does it mean to be human? What remains after everything we trust, everything we believe in and rely upon, has been stripped away? — Rick Yancey

How would you rather die?" she snapped. "Hiding under your bed or riding Thunder Mountain? — Rick Yancey

I would kill for a cheeseburger. Honestly. If I stumbled across someone eating a cheeseburger, I would kill them for it. — Rick Yancey

I've decided to trust him, but like somebody once said, you can't force yourself to trust. So you put all your doubts in a little box and bury it deep and then try to forget where you buried it. My problem is that buried box is like a scab I can't stop picking at. — Rick Yancey

Floods, fires, earthquakes, disease, starvation, betrayal, isolation, murder.
What doesn't kill us sharpens us. Hardens us. Schools us. — Rick Yancey

Too many people say something when they really have nothing to say. — Rick Yancey

Are pervs only pervs if you don't find them attractive? — Rick Yancey

If you don't kill all of us all at once, those who remain will not be the weak.
It's the strong who remain, the bent but unbroken, like the iron rods that used to give this concrete its strength. — Rick Yancey

It wasn't aliens that first made us gear up for war; it was our fellow humans. — Rick Yancey

That's my big problem. That's it! Before the Arrival,guys like Evan Walker never looked twice at me, much less shot wild game for me and washed my hair. They never grabbed me by the back of the neck like the airbrushed model on his mother's paperback,abs a-clenching, pecs a-popping. My eyes have never been looked into, or my chin raised to bring my lips within an inch of theirs. I was the girl in the background, the just-friend,or -worse- the friend of a just-friend, the you-sit-next-to-her-in-geometry-but-can't-remember-her-name girl. — Rick Yancey

The world is a clock winding down.
I hear it in the wind's icy fingers scratching against the window. I smell it in the mildewed carpeting and the rotting wallpaper of the old hotel. And I feel it in Teacup's chest as she sleeps. The hammering of her heart, the rhythm of her breath, warm in the freezing air, the clock winding down. — Rick Yancey

And no answer when we sent our message. Something like, Hello, welcome to Earth. Hope you enjoy your stay. Please don't kill us. — Rick Yancey

The girl sleeping and the finisher, willing himself to finish her.
Why didn't he finish her?
Why couldn't he finish her? — Rick Yancey

The aliens of 'The 5th Wave' are not the aliens we've imagined. Not the aliens we'd like to attack us. — Rick Yancey

Why did they come billions of miles just to stare at us? It's rude. — 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

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

Five men and two women, strangers to one another on the eve of that final growing season, now bound by the unspoken promise that the least of them was greater than the sum of all of them. — 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

I give her back an honest-to-goodness smile, the old Ben Parish smile, the one that got me practically everything I wanted. Well, not practically; I'm being modest. — Rick Yancey

Then the door flew open and Mr. Faulks told us to head over to the gym. I thought that was really smart. Get all of us in one place so the aliens didn't have to waste a lot of ammunition. — Rick Yancey

Cruelty isn't a personality trait. Cruelty is a habit. — Rick Yancey

We are humanity, the banner read. Wrong. We're pale reflections of it, weak shadows, distant echoes. — Rick Yancey