What the Hell Did I Just Read (John Dies at the End, #3)

by David Wong

“You want sympathy, you can find it in the dictionary between shit and syphilis.”

“I don’t know how you stay that size on your diet. I wouldn’t be able to fit behind this steering wheel.” “I have a painting of myself in my closet, it gets fatter every time I eat.”

“I know it’s weird to say this, but for some reason it’s worse when it’s a dog.” “Not weird to say at all. A person, they can be good or bad depending on the day. A good dog, well, it just wants to make you happy,

“Do you believe in Heaven, Amy? Like a literal place?” “I just meant it as a figure of speech.” “Still. Serious question.” “I don’t know. But if it’s real, maybe you get to pick what it’s like. Maybe everybody gets their own. Some burly biker dude, he gets to ride his Harley forever with his gang, maybe the warriors go to Valhalla. But I just want this. Not the rain or the cabin but … just for all the distractions to go away. The money, the work, having to constantly stick food and pills into your body to keep it functioning. All that stuff that puts distance between us, all those boundaries, all those fears, it all goes away until it’s just us, together.

In the grand scheme of things, I am an able-bodied white male with above average intelligence living in the richest civilization that will probably ever exist on this planet. I had every chance, and all of my problems are purely my own. But above all, I want you to be happy. Even if it’s with somebody else.”

They didn’t have witch hunts because they believed in witches. They believed in witches so they could have witch hunts.”

“Society is nothing more than people cooperating with other people they’d much rather murder.

“No. What they want—not just NON, but everyone like them—is for us not to panic, but to be just scared enough. You know that scene in They Live where he puts on the glasses and all the signs have all these propaganda messages hidden in them? In the real world if you put on those glasses all you’d see is one message, repeated everywhere: BE ANXIOUS. Buy this thing or your friends will laugh at you, eat this thing or you’ll get fat and nobody will love you, watch the news to find out who’s trying to kill you today.”

“The problem, David, is your cynicism only runs one direction. If somebody comes on TV and says everything is great and wonderful, you don’t believe it, you say they’re blowing smoke up your butt. You demand proof. But if one second later, some guy comes on and says everything is falling apart, you automatically believe it, no questions asked. If those people had told you that this mine monster situation was no big deal and that we should just go home, you wouldn’t have believed them, not for a second. But the moment they said it was a Class G apocalypse, you were on board. As if nobody ever has motivation to tell you things are worse than they really are. And you know for a fact that’s not true! Nothing controls people like fear.”

like all of life’s bullshit, it keeps trickling downhill even after the storm is over—

she wouldn’t have approved of how much red Mountain Dew I’d stashed in the fridge. I didn’t even enjoy the flavor of it, I think drinking it just reminded me of my early twenties. Back when I enjoyed terrible things.

“Can we just skip this part, Dave? The part where you have this knee-jerk anger reflex over being given an ultimatum? Because it’s not an ultimatum and nobody is trying to push you around. I’ve been here a million times, you know I have, and that anger, it’s the rage of a kid getting dragged out of a warm bed on a cold morning. That’s all it is. Because that depression, it’s the most comfy bed in the world and you will say whatever you have to say to stay in it for one more minute. But there’s people out here who love you a lot, telling you that there’s a truck heading for that bed. And if you can’t work up any concern for your own life, then think of it like this. Somebody Amy and I care about a whole lot is about to get hit by that truck and only you can save them. The person we need you to save just happens to be you. Also, the truck is filled with shit, I don’t know if I mentioned that.”

In our natural state, we’re all smelly, sticky, angry creatures nobody would even pay to look at in a zoo. We’re all at war with that awful, primitive version of ourselves, every day.

I once joked to a colleague that a true horror film would begin with a world overrun by the zombies, who find themselves having to fend off a sudden outbreak of the living.

One almost begins to feel sorry for them. This is why, when asked why there is not greater evidence of creatures such as werewolves or vampires (not that I believe in either), I say the answer is obvious: they are too busy hiding from us!