Rick Yancey Quotes - Page 2

And, for one– ten thousandth of a second, all of it fell away, the despair and grief and anger and pain and hunger, and the old Ben Parish rose from the dead. The eyes that impaled. The smile that slayed. In another moment, he would fade, slide back into the new Ben, the one called Zombie, and I understood something I hadn’t before: He was dead, the object of my schoolgirl desires, just as the schoolgirl who desired him was dead.

But if I'm it, the last of my kind, the last page of human history, like hell I'm going to let the story end this way. I may be the last one, but I am the one still standing. I am the one turning to face the faceless hunter in the woods on an abandoned highway. I am the one not running but facing. Because if I am the last one, then I am humanity. And if this is humanity's last war, then I am the battlefield.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

...there are more terrifying monstrosities in the world than Anthropophagi. Monstrosities who, with a smile and a comforting pat on the head, are willing to sacrifice a child upon the altar of their own overweening ambition and pride.

That’s the cost. That’s the price. Get ready, because when you crush the humanity out of humans, you’re left with humans with no humanity.In other words, you get what you pay for, motherfucker.

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

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!

I brought Sammy inside and put him to bed. Said his prayer with him. “‘Now I lay me down to sleep…’” To me, just random noise. Gibberish. I wasn’t sure exactly what it was, but I felt that, when it came to God, there was a broken promise in there somewhere.

Do you believe in God, Evan?”“Sure I do.”“I don’t. I mean, I don’t know. I did before the Others came. Or thought I did, when I thought about it at all. And then they came and…” I have to stop for a second to collect myself. “Maybe there’s a God. Sammy thinks there is. But he also thinks there’s a Santa Claus. Still, every night I said his prayer with him, and it didn’t have anything to do with me. It was about Sammy and what he believed, and if you could have seen him take that fake soldier’s hand and follow him onto that bus…”I’m losing it, and it doesn’t matter to me much. Crying is always easier in the dark. Suddenly my cold hand is blanketed by Evan’s warmer one, and his palm is as soft and smooth as the pillowcase beneath my cheek.“It kills me,” I sob. “The way he trusted. Like the way we trusted before they came and blew 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 street, and get yourself a fucking strawberry Frappuccino! Trusted…

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.

This place can't be heaven, it doesn't have the right vibe.

We’re here, and then we’re gone, and it’s not about the time we’re here, but what we do with the time.

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.

And John Kearns whispered into my ear: "Do you see it now? *You* are the nest. *You* are the hatchling. *You* are the chrysalis. *You* are the progeny. *You* are the rot that falls from the stars. All of us--you and I and poor, dear Pellinore. Behold the face of the magnificum, child. And despair."Though I was sickened by the sight, I looked. In the bower of the beast at the top of the world, I beheld the face of the magnificum, and I did not turn away.

There are some we cannot help but take an instant dislike to.

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

I am a shark. A shark who dreamed he was a man.

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

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.

It's hopeless. And it's stupid. It's suicidal. But love is a weapon they have no answer for. They know how you think, but they can't know what you feel.

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.

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

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

The monstrous act by definition demands a monster.

Onto his stomach. Then knees. Then hands. His elbows quivered, his wrists threatened to buckle under his own weight. Self-centered, stubborn, sentimental, childish, vain. I am humanity. Cynical, naive, kind, cruel, soft as down, hard as tungsten steel.I am humanityHe crawled.I am humanity.He fell.I am humanity.He got up.

I confessed I did not have an opinion; I was only thirteen, and this was my very first dismemberment.

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.

To hold on, you have to find something you're willing to die for.

In the 4th Wave, you can't trust that people are still people. But you can trust that your gun is still your gun.

The bent but unbroken ones.

The shadow raised its arm high in the air and I knew - I knew before I heard my name - that he'd found me again, keeper of the promise he couldn't make, the one I had marked with my blood and who had marked me with his tears, a Silencer all right, my silencer, stumbling toward me in the impossibly pure light of a late winter's sunrise promising spring.

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

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

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.

This is the first rule of the last war:Trust No One

With an enemy like that, who needs friends?

I'm a little panicky when I realize he's not here. It's a lot easier to push down my doubt when he's with me. When I can see those eyes the color of melted chocolate and hear his deep voice that falls over me like a warm blanket on a cold night.

She hated him and loved him, longed for him and loathed him, and cursed herself for feeling anything at all

That's my name. Not Cassie for Cassandra. Or Cassie for Cassidy. And it's not Cassie for Cassiopeia. Not anymore. I am more than her now.I am all of them, Evan and Ben and Marika and Megan and Sam. I am Dumbo and Poundcake and Teacup. I am all the ones you emptied, the ones you corrupted, the ones you discarded, the thousands you thought you killed, but who live in me.But I am more than this. I am all those they remember, the ones they loved, everyone they knew, and everyone they only heard about. How many are contained in me? Count the stars. Go on, number the grains of sand. That's me.I am humanity.

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.

We are humanity, the banner read. Wrong. We’re pale reflections of it, weak shadows, distant echoes.

And if humanity is the last war, then I am the battlefield.

You know how sometimes you tell yourself that you have a choice, but really you don't have a choice? Just because there are alternatives doesn't mean they apply to you.

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

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.

It's the ancient instinct: In times of great danger, be wary of strangers. Trust no one outside your circle. But there's another instinct, far older, as old as life itself, nearly impossible for the human mind to override: Protect the young at all costs. Preserve the future." - Vosch

We regarded each other across an expanse wider than the universe, within a space thinner than a razor's edge.

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.

But hope is no less realistic than despair. It is still our choice whether to live in light or lie down in darkness.

Pain is necessary. Pain is life. Without pain there can be no joy.

I've always sucked at games of chance. Always hated them for that reason.

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.

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.

How baffling it is that we imagined cities incinerated by alien bombs and death rays when all they really needed was Mother Nature and time.

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.

Crazy people. They never think they're crazy. Their craziness makes perfect sense to them.