Rick Yancey Quotes

“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”
― Rick Yancey, The Infinite Sea

“Ha-ha. The dumb jock who can’t talk the Queen’s English. I swear to God, the next person who corrects my grammar gets punched in the face.”
― Rick Yancey, The Infinite Sea

“´Because love is irrational,´ I tell Vosh. ´It doesn´t follow rules. Not even its own rules. Love is the one thing in the universe that´s unpredictable.´”
― Rick Yancey, The Infinite Sea

“They sat on the back porch and looked at the stars while Zombie told the story of a queen named Cassiopeia who lived forever on a throne in the sky.
“But her throne’s tilted down,” Sam said, looking at the constellation. “Won’t she fall out?”
Zombie cleared his throat. “She won’t fall. Her throne is turned that way so she can keep watch over her realm.”
“What’s a realm?”
Zombie pressed his hand against Sam’s chest.
“This is.” Zombie’s hand to Sam’s heart. “Here.”
― Rick Yancey, The Last Star

“Yes, my dear child, monsters are real. I happen to have one hanging in my basement.”
― Rick Yancey, The Monstrumologist

“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.”
― Rick Yancey, The Infinite Sea

“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, The 5th Wave

“I'm determined, when the time comes, to at least go out with clean teeth.”
― Rick Yancey, The 5th Wave

“Run equals die. Stay equals die. So before we go all O.K. Corral on this, let's consider the third option: We blow it up.”
― Rick Yancey, The 5th Wave

“And far more dangerous than greed or lust or envy or any of those things—or anything—was love.”
― Rick Yancey, The Infinite Sea

“He leans forward and kisses me hard on the mouth.
"Don't ever do that again," I tell him.
"Why? Because you liked it or because you didn't?"
"Both.”
― Rick Yancey, The Infinite Sea

“Give someone the power of the gods and he will become as indifferent as the gods.”
― Rick Yancey, The Infinite Sea

“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

“No one will remember us, out footprints erased, our legacies wiped out, our children and their children and their children's children at war against one another unto the last generation, to the end of the world.”
― Rick Yancey, The Last Star

“The nights did not come gently but seemed to slam down angrily upon the Earth, and starlight transformed the golden brown of the wheat to the colour of polished silver.”
― Rick Yancey, The Infinite Sea

“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, The Infinite Sea

“I thought of the unblemished thing, the thing that lasts, and I thought the only thing with the power to save us also had the power to slay us.”
― Rick Yancey, The Infinite Sea

“Are you crying, Ringer?"
"My eyes are watering."
"No."
"Don't tell me no, Razor. I don't cry."
"Bullshit.”
― Rick Yancey, The Infinite Sea

“stay calm. It's like chess. Move and countermove.”
― 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, The Infinite Sea

“Did he fight?"
"Yes, Sam. He fought very hard. He saved my life."
"But you hid"
"Yes." Crushing Bear against my stomach.
"Like a big fat chicken."
"Not like that," I whispered. "It wasn't like that.”
― Rick Yancey, The Infinite Sea

“These are the secrets I have kept. This is the trust I never betrayed.
But he is dead now and has been for more than forty years, the one who gave me his trust, the one for whom I kept these secrets.
The one who saved me . . . and the one who cursed me.”
― Rick Yancey, The Monstrumologist

“The doctor,' Erasmus echoed. 'They call him that—but what exactly is he a doctor of?'
The grotesque, I might have answered. The bizarre. The unspeakable. Instead I gave him the same answer the doctor had given me when I'd asked him not long after my arrival at the house on Harrington Lane. 'Philosophy,' I said with little conviction.”
― Rick Yancey, The Monstrumologist

“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, not staying, 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”
― Rick Yancey, The 5th Wave

“I am drowning in an infinite sea.”
― Rick Yancey, The Infinite Sea

“That’s the way of every human catastrophe. The douchebag is nearly indestructible.”
― Rick Yancey, The Infinite Sea

“The doctor was a private man, engaged in a dark and dangerous business, and could ill afford the prying eyes and gossiping tongue of the servant class.”
― Rick Yancey, The Monstrumologist

“Aliens are stupid. (Cassie in The 5th Wave, part one, chapter one, page one)”
― Rick Yancey, The 5th Wave

“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, not staying, 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.”
― Rick Yancey, The 5th Wave

“I had been interested in the local legends and tall tales regarding the site, and the director had been kind enough to introduce me to several residents who'd grown up in the area and who knew the stories of this mythical "gateway to hell," now a state park, presumably because the devil had departed, making way for field-trippers and hikers.”
― Rick Yancey