Paul Pope > Paul's Quotes

“She moved mainly by pushing with her knees and hips. Her good hand was at her belly, holding her guts in place, keeping her entrails tucked in. They were warm and greasy under her fingers. Even though she was dying inch by inch, she knew they were valuable and she couldn’t let them go. Already, her open belly was packed with brown leaves and dirt and dry pine needles.”
― Tim Curran, Blooding Night

“We could do nothing to stop the towers from falling. We could do nothing to stop the workplaces from being shot up. And when the shootings spilled out of the office buildings and into the schools, we could do nothing to stop that either. The government began watching everyone because we had given them permission.”
― Jason Mott, The Crossing: A Novel

“Children, in the end, were gods of our own design. And when you couldn’t build your own god, you called social services and had one delivered.”
― Jason Mott, The Crossing: A Novel

“Hope,” she said, “is just imagination put into practice.”
― Jason Mott, The Crossing: A Novel

“But then I stopped laughing at his jokes and so he stopped telling them and I got to see him smile less and less often because, no matter how much I wanted to, I couldn’t smile. Somewhere along the way I had forgotten how and, in doing so, I had stolen my brother’s laughter.”
― Jason Mott, The Crossing: A Novel

“It’s human nature not to trust intelligence.”
― Jason Mott, The Crossing: A Novel

“Art only ever goes as far as we are willing to take it.”
― Jason Mott, The Crossing: A Novel

“didn’t have time to think about it. I took a sip. It tasted as if I’d taken a drink directly from the diseased asshole of an incontinent skunk. It took all of my strength not to vomit.”
― Matt Dinniman, Dungeon Crawler Carl

“I smiled. “If we get to the point where we don’t help each other anymore, that’s when we stop being human.” I felt something catch in my throat, and I coughed.”
― Matt Dinniman, Dungeon Crawler Carl

“Just remember, luck goes both ways, like your mom.”
― Matt Dinniman, Dungeon Crawler Carl

“I began to think that my mother’s final act had been something inspired. North Carolina, Virginia, West Virginia, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa: by giving me to Harnett, she had released me from our shared reclusion, and now each state I passed through became my home, because home was anywhere with grass and dirt and stone, and my compatriots, my family, were those who waited beneath to greet me.”
― Daniel Kraus, Rotters

“My hard parts softened; my soft parts hardened.”
― Daniel Kraus, Rotters

“The undeniable appalling comprehension that death couldn’t be spellbound and contorted to appease her. There was no way to tame or beckon it with total accuracy”
― Aron Beauregard, The Slob

“Terror in itself is a helpless feeling that is usually injected immediately into our systems. Almost like it’s just sitting dormant”
― Aron Beauregard, The Slob

“The vacuum had somehow stopped”
― Aron Beauregard, The Slob

“It’s not enough to have meant to do good; if you don’t do good”
― M.L. Wang, Blood Over Bright Haven

“I can’t worship your god or agree with the way he measures virtue. He allows this gray space for delusion. You take a void and name it ‘goodness,’ and it is so? If you can lie to yourself that you’re a good person”
― M.L. Wang, Blood Over Bright Haven

“Thomil had said that how a person felt about their actions didn’t matter; only the actions themselves mattered.”
― M.L. Wang, Blood Over Bright Haven

“Everything I felt about what I saw—the guilt and the terror—wasn’t poison. It was power.”
― M.L. Wang, Blood Over Bright Haven

“In refusing to be a stepping stone”
― M.L. Wang, Blood Over Bright Haven

“I warned you that men with power are always the first to be believed,” she says. “You should have listened. In these situations”
― Ayana Gray, I, Medusa

“Faye forgave me”
― Felix Blackwell, Stolen Tongues

“D’you know what my da would say”
― Joe Abercrombie, A Little Hatred

“By the Fates”
― Joe Abercrombie, A Little Hatred

“Leo couldn’t deny it was a majestic sight. Like some piece of exaggerated statuary. Even his teeth looked muscular.”
― Joe Abercrombie, A Little Hatred

“Her chin and cheekbones jutted”
― Joe Abercrombie, A Little Hatred

“Law alone”
― Joe Abercrombie, A Little Hatred

“Knowledge isn’t always a gift”
― Joe Abercrombie, A Little Hatred

“The one thing I’ve learned in thirty-six winters is the world won’t change itself. You want some wounds mended”
― Joe Abercrombie, A Little Hatred

“Mercy is an admirable quality in smallfolk”
― Joe Abercrombie, A Little Hatred