Rick Yancey Quotes

It's an alien apocalypse! Quick, grab the beer!

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

Ten thousand years to build civilization, ten months to tear it down, and each day lasted ten times longer than the one before, and the nights lasted ten times as long as the days. The only thing more excruciating than the boredom of those hours was the terror of knowing that any minute they could end.

Rick Yancey

In the early days, it was nearly omnipresent, a constant background noise, like the hum of traffic on a busy highway: the sound of a human being in pain.

Rick Yancey

When I cry - when I let myself cry - that's who I cry for. I don't cry for myself. I cry for the Cassie that's gone.And I wonder what that Cassie would think of me.The Cassie who kills.

Rick Yancey

Yes, my dear child, monsters are real. I happen to have one hanging in my basement.

Rick Yancey

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

Rick Yancey

But the most wonderful thing of all, our highest achievement and the one thing for which I pray we will always be remembered, is stuffing wads of polyester into an anatomically incorrect, cartoonish ideal of one of nature's most fearsome predators for no other reason than to soothe a child.

Rick Yancey

I give her my best smile. Before the alien Armageddon happened, I was known for my smile. Not bragging too much, but I had to be careful never to smile while I drove. It had the capacity to blind oncoming traffic. But it has absolutely no effect on Ringer. She doesn't squint in its overwhelming luminescence. She doesn't even blink.

Rick Yancey

Zombie!” Sammy calls. “I knew it was you.”Zombie?“Where are you taking him?” Ben says to me in a deep voice. I don’t remember it being that deep. Is my memory bad or is he lowering it on purpose, to sound older?“Zombie, that’s Cassie,” Sam chides him. “You know—Cassie.”“Cassie?” Like he’s never heard the name before.“Zombie?” I say, because I really haven’t heard that name before.I pull off the cap, thinking it might help him recognize me, then immediately regret it. I know what my hair must look like.“We go to the same high school,” I say, drawing my fingers hastily through my chopped-off locks. “I sit in front of you in Honors Chemistry.”Ben shakes his head like he’s clearing out the cobwebs.Sammy goes, “I told you she was coming.”“Quiet, Sam,” I scold him.“Sam?” Ben asks.“My name is Nugget now, Cassie,” Sam informs me.“Well, sure it is.” I turn to Ben. “You know my brother.

Rick Yancey

You're mortal, and only a mortal can afford to be romantic. When we conquered death, we murdered love.

Rick Yancey

The world will burn for a hundred years. Fire will consume the things we made from wood and plastic and rubber and cloth, then water and wind and time will chew the stone and steel into dust. How baffling it is that we imagined cities incinerated by alien bombs and death rays when all they needed was Mother Nature and time.

Rick Yancey

The spring rains woke the dormant tillers, and bright green shoots sprang from the moist earth and rose like sleepers stretching after a long nap. As spring gave way to summer, the bright green stalks darkened, became tan, turned golden brown. The days grew long and hot. Thick towers of swirling black clouds brought rain, and the brown stems glistened in the perpetual twilight that dwelled beneath the canopy. The wheat rose and the ripening heads bent in the prairie wind, a rippling curtain, an endless, undulating sea that stretched to the horizon.

Rick Yancey

He barely knew I existed. I knew some of the same people he knew, but I was a girl in the background, several degrees of seperation removed.

Rick Yancey

I walked until the water lapped against my chest, and then I kept walking until it kissed the underside of my jaw. I was surprised how cold it was. I closed my eyes and ducked beneath the surface. Thee was the wind and the clouds and the pure pool and the boy beneath its unsettled surface, and the blood, the boy's and monster's, defiling the pool.

Rick Yancey

For a being more advanced than I am, he sure has a hard time answering a simple question

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

I, um, I thought you might want this back.”I pull out the battered old teddy bear and hold it toward him. He frowns and shakes his head and doesn’t reach for it, and I feel like he’s punched me in the gut.Then my baby brother slaps that damned bear out of my hand and crushes his face against my chest, and beneath the odors of sweat and strong soap I can smell it, his smell, Sammy’s, my brother’s.

Rick Yancey

You’re the mayfly,' he murmurs.tAnd then Evan Walker kisses me.tHolding 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 am a shark. A shark who dreamed he was a man.

Rick Yancey

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

Rick Yancey

Self-pity is egotism undiluted, after all—self-centeredness in its purest form.

Rick Yancey

You're safe here. Perfectly safe. That phrase still haunts me. Haunts me because it's always been a lie. It was a lie before they came and it's still a lie. You're never perfectly safe. No human being on Earth ever is or ever was. To live is to risk your life, your heart, everything. Otherwise, you're just a walking corpse. You're a zombie.

Rick Yancey

I do not mean to mock or ridicule your life's work, for in one way at least it mimics my own: We have dedicated our lives to the pursuit of phantoms. The difference is the nature of those phantoms. Mine exist between other men's ears; yours live solely between your own.

Rick Yancey

I prefer not to call them demons. It demeans their nature. "But isn't that what they are?""We should pity them more than fear them Alfred. They were angels once.""Yea, but didn't you say they rebelled against God? They got what they deserved.""Perhaps." He sighed. "Yet do we not all hope and pray that we ourselves escape that we truly deserve? None have fallen as far or as irrevocably as the outcasts of heaven. Did you not find them beautiful." "...They have gazed upon the very face of God, the face they will see no more for all eternity-and so I pity them. Even as I envy them for having seen it.

Rick Yancey

Understand their hatred is beyond human comprehension. They abhor the Creator and so also the creation. Whatever brings joy, whatever brings peace, whatever redeems the dark deed or relieves the terrors of the night and their enemies.

Rick Yancey

People change spouses more often than they clean out closets. And every time they say, 'This is the one. This is the person I'm going to spend eternity with.' Then forty or fifty years go by and you're just sick of each other, utterly sick, and it's on to the next 'true love.' My question is what good is eternity if you are eternally falling in and out of love?

Rick Yancey

If you leave without me, I’ll just follow you. You can’t stop me, Cassie. How are you going to stop me?”I shrug helplessly, fighting back tears. “Shoot you, I guess.”“Like you shot the Crucifix Soldier?”The words hit me like a bullet between the shoulder blades. I whirl around and fling open the door. He flinches, but stands his ground.“How do you know about him?” Of course, there’s only one way he could know. “You read my diary.”“I didn’t think you were going to live.”“Sorry to disappoint you.”“I guess I wanted to know what happened—”“You’re lucky I left the gun downstairs or I would shoot you right now. Do you know how creepy that makes me feel, knowing you read that? How much did you read?”He lowers his eyes. A warm red blush spreads across his cheeks.“You read all of it, didn’t you?” I’m totally embarrassed. I feel violated and ashamed. It’s ten times worse than when I first woke up in Val’s bed and realized he had seen me naked. That was just my body. This was my soul.I punch him in the stomach. There’s no give at all; it’s like I hit a slab of concrete.“I can’t believe you,” I shout. “You sat there—just sat there—while I lied about Ben Parish. You knew the truth and you just sat there and let me lie!

Rick Yancey

The beautiful wooden board on a stand in my father’s study. The gleaming ivory pieces. The stern king. The haughty queen. The noble knight. The pious bishop. And the game itself, the way each piece contributed its individual power to the whole. It was simple. It was complex. It was savage; it was elegant. It was a dance; it was a war. It was finite and eternal. It was life.

Rick Yancey

I would just have to find a hog, slaughter it, butcher it, cure the meat, then fry it up. Thinking about the bacon—the potential of bacon—gives me hope. Not all is lost if bacon isn't. Seriously.

Rick Yancey

They say no one knows the Bible better than the devil.

Rick Yancey

Cassie?”It’s Sammy, holding on to Ben, because he’s feeling the Ben thing a little more than he is the Cassie one at the moment. Who’s this guy falling from the ductwork, and what’s he doing with my sister?“This must be Sammy,” Evan says.“This is Sammy,” I say. “Oh! And this is—”“Ben Parish,” Ben says.“Ben Parish?” Evan looks at me. That Ben Parish?“Ben,” I say, my face on fire. I want to laugh and crawl under the counter at the same time. “This is Evan Walker.”“Is he your boyfriend?” Sammy asks.I don’t know what to say. Ben looks totally lost, Evan completely amused, and Sammy just damned curious. It’s my first truly awkward moment in the alien lair, and I’d been through my share of moments.“He’s a friend from high school,” I mutter.And Evan corrects me, since it’s clear I’ve lost my mind. “Actually, Sam, Ben is Cassie’s friend from high school.”“She’s not my friend,” Ben says. “I mean, I guess I kind of remember her…” Then Evan’s words sink in. “How do you know who I am?”“He doesn’t!” I fairly

Rick Yancey

And it occurs to me that there’s no real difference between us, the living and the dead; it’s just a matter of tense: past-dead and future-dead.

Rick Yancey

We're all dead...Some of us are just a little further along than others.

Rick Yancey

I should have asked, I guess,” he says. “I shouldn’t have assumed.”“What?”He rotates around on his butt to face me. Me on the sofa, him on the floor, looking up. “That I was going with you.”“What? We weren’t even talking about that! And why would you want to go with me, Evan? Since you think he’s dead?”“I just don’t want you to be dead, Cassie.

Rick Yancey

It's almost dawn. You can feel it coming. The world holds its breath, because there's really no guarantee that the sun will rise. That there was a yesterday doesn't mean there will be a tomorrow.

Rick Yancey

So cold your tears freeze against your cheeks.'It's not my fault,' I told Bear. 'I don't make the weather. You got a beef, take it up with God.' That's what I've been doing a lot lately: taking it up with

Rick Yancey

Tears welled in his eyes. It was like watching chocolate melt.

Rick Yancey

Even the most sensitive person can get used to even the most insensitive things.

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

If the enemy looks just like you, how do you fight him?

Rick Yancey

Sullivan had her Crucifix Soldier and now I have mine. No. I am the soldier. Teacup is the cross.

Rick Yancey

I always assumed it owed more to the fact that he didn't like me.

Rick Yancey

His other hand finds my cheek, and he wipes away my tears with his thumb. The chocolate scent overwhelms me as he bends over and whispers in my ear, “No, Cassie. No, no, no.”I throw my arm around his neck and press his dry cheek against my wet one. I’m shaking like an epileptic, and for the first time I can feel the weight of the quilts on the top of my toes because the blinding dark sharpens your other senses.I’m a bubbling stew of random thoughts and feelings. I’m worried my hair might smell. I want some chocolate. This guy holding me—well, it’s more like I was holding him—has seen me in all my naked glory. What did he think about my body? What did I think about my body? Does God really care about promises? Do I really care about God? Are miracles something like the Red Sea parting or more like Evan Walker finding me locked in a block of ice in a wilderness of white?“Cassie, it’s going to be okay,” he whispers into my ear, chocolate breath.

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

It's been a long time since humans were prey animals. A hundred thousand years or so. But buried deep in our genes the memory remains: the awareness of the gazelle, the instinct of the antelope. The wind whispers through the grass. A shadow flits between the trees. And up speaks the little voice that goes. Shhhh, it's close now. Close.

Rick Yancey

I should have bailed. That little voice had my back. That little voice is older than I am. It's older than the oldest person who ever lived. I should have listened to that voice.

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

The nights did not come gently but seemed to slam down angrily upon the Earth.

Rick Yancey

Ah. And then you kill him.""No," Arkwright replied patiently. "We are British. We avoid murder if we can help it.{...}

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

Despair is a wholly selfish response to fortune’s slings and arrows.

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

Beside me the monstrumologist murmured, "I believe I am in hell, therefore I am there.

Rick Yancey

Promises are priceless, and a kiss is a kind of promise, too.

Rick Yancey

He lays me on the bed. I say, right before he kisses me again, “If you kiss me again, I’m going to knee you in the balls.”His hands are incredibly soft, like a cloud touching me.“I won’t let you just…” He searches for the right word. “…fly away from me, Cassie Sullivan.”He blows out the candle beside the bed.I feel his kiss more intensely now, in the darkness of the room where his sister died. In the quiet of the house where his family died. In the stillness of the world where the life we knew before the Arrival died. He tastes my tears before I can feel them. Where there would be tears, his kiss.“I didn’t save you,” he whispers, lips tickling my eyelashes. “You saved me.”He repeats it over and over, until we fall asleep pressed against each other, his voice in my ear, my tears in his mouth.“You saved me.

Rick Yancey

Aren’t you coming with us?”I feel his hand on my cheek. I know what this means and I slap his hand away.“You’re coming with us, Evan,” I say.“There’s something I have to do.”“That’s right.” My hand flails for his in the dark. I find it and pull hard. “You have to come with us.”“I’ll find you, Cassie. Don’t I always find you? I—”“Don’t, Evan. You don’t know you’ll be able to find me.”“Cassie.” I don’t like the way he says my name. His voice is too soft, too sad, too much like a good-bye voice. “I was wrong when I said I was both and neither. I can’t be; I know that now. I have to choose.”“Wait a minute,” Ben says. “Cassie, this guy is one of them?”“It’s complicated,” I answer. “We’ll go over it later.” I grab Evan’s hand in both of mine and press it against my chest. “Don’t leave me aga

Rick Yancey

We have survived the death of our childhood. We are soldiers now, maybe the last soldiers who will ever fight, the Earth’s final and only hope, united as one in the spirit of vengeance.

Rick Yancey

It's always been this way, I wanted to tell him. We bear the unbearable. We endure the unendurable. We do what must be done until we ourselves are undone.

Rick Yancey

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