The Angel of Indian Lake Quotes

“I used to be all about the final girl standing on top of a pile of the dead at the end of the movie, her face dripping blood, her chest heaving, her eyes fierce. Now I’m all about holding the door of the slasher-proof shelter open, so everybody can duck in, ride this out.”
― Stephen Graham Jones, The Angel of Indian Lake

“There's final girls everywhere, aren't there? I used to think they were the rarest breed, the finest vintage. But everyone who's got something to fight for, they'll fight for it, never mind if it's a fight they should win. 'Should' doesn't always matter. What does is that you run screaming into this thing, and don't stop until it's over.”
― Stephen Graham Jones, The Angel of Indian Lake

“And if any of them knew horror, they’d know you let the dead rest.”
― Stephen Graham Jones, The Angel of Indian Lake

“But some women, you can tell that in another time, a different age, they would have been leading armies. Or they would have been that army.”
― Stephen Graham Jones, The Angel of Indian Lake

“the impulse to wrap ourselves in our trauma because some protection’s better than none,”
― Stephen Graham Jones, The Angel of Indian Lake

“Good, fine. Yeah, I’m back, bitches. My hair’s different, I’m older, less eyeliner, and this isn’t exactly the outfit I would have picked, but I’m still that same pissed-off girl, her hands balled into fists.”
― Stephen Graham Jones, The Angel of Indian Lake

“If you stand there and watch the evil, keep it in check, like, then it can’t come across.”
― Stephen Graham Jones, The Angel of Indian Lake

“I’ve always wondered how religions get started, but now I have a better handle on it, I think. Take some subjugated group of people and give them something to hook their hope claws into. Something that can, in the retelling, just get better and better. Then by the time it’s climbed high enough, you can’t let go anymore, because the fall’s too scary, so you go all in on that it really happened this way, and only this way.”
― Stephen Graham Jones, The Angel of Indian Lake

“I’ve been talking to counselors and therapists since I was seventeen, I mean. One thing I’ve learned is not to tell them anything that makes them tap their pens against their lower lips and say “interesting,” with all this open space opening up after, for us to “discuss” and “work through.” Can’t I just seal stuff in a barrel, roll it into the cellar, and forget about it? Please? Talking about it all just keeps it alive and happening, when “dead and buried” is what it should be.”
― Stephen Graham Jones, The Angel of Indian Lake

“I guess maybe teachers aren’t supposed to flip parents off, either. If so, they should have said it in the faculty handbook. In big letters. In the chapter specifically for me.”
― Stephen Graham Jones, The Angel of Indian Lake

“who’s got something to fight for, they’ll fight for it, never mind if it’s a fight they should win. Should doesn’t always matter. What does is that you run screaming into this thing, and don’t stop until it’s over.”
― Stephen Graham Jones, The Angel of Indian Lake

“enough ahead that Letha can sniffle, say after sneaking a look back, “How am I going to tell her?” Her chin’s pruning up again, her lips in kind of pre-quiver mode. I think this is kind of where she’s going to be living, the next year, year and a half. At least. Every slack moment between this and that, she’s going to be falling back into Banner not being around anymore. I step in by her, take her by the back of her left arm to make sure she doesn’t stumble.”
― Stephen Graham Jones, The Angel of Indian Lake

“justice is just another stupid dream. All there is is luck, and mettle. But luck’s where it’s really at. The grim reaper’s always rolling those bones.”
― Stephen Graham Jones, The Angel of Indian Lake

“You're not the monster anymore," I tell him, holding that pickaxe by its ragged blunt end, "I am.”
― Stephen Graham Jones, The Angel of Indian Lake

“You didn't have to believe in me. You shouldn't have. I gave you so many reasons not to. The Girl Impossible to Hug-- I know that's who I was. It didn't mean I didn't need one.”
― Stephen Graham Jones, The Angel of Indian Lake

“It's you, Jade," Letha tells me, quietly, seriously. "It's always been you." "But I'm not--" "You are." "Just now?" I say, opening my hand to the beatdown that just happened. "I just get lucky when the shit's flying. Heaven doesn't want me and Hell's afraid I'll take over, you know the deal with me.”
― Stephen Graham Jones, The Angel of Indian Lake

“American Gothic, 'somebody's at the do'r?”
― Stephen Graham Jones, The Angel of Indian Lake

“But would the final girl trade in what she's found in herself just to have the people she cares about back? I know I would.”
― Stephen Graham Jones, The Angel of Indian Lake

“The final girl's mask is ripped off just the same, isn't it? Revealing her true self, that she never even knew what she had inside. Does she watch herself scrabbling and fighting and screaming and wonder how this can be her doing all this?”
― Stephen Graham Jones, The Angel of Indian Lake

“It was me who called the horror down on Proofrock, though, I can never deny that. Meaning my job now, much as I hate it, is it to put down each one that rises, so long as I can still breathe and kick and fight and scream.”
― Stephen Graham Jones, The Angel of Indian Lake

“Do you like scary movies, Mr. Holmes? I used to. Until I had to try to live through them.”
― Stephen Graham Jones, The Angel of Indian Lake

“imposter syndrome - me not thinking I was worthy, me certain everyone was gong to see that I just got lucky, that I wasn't really final girl material”
― Stephen Graham Jones, The Angel of Indian Lake

“Still a man, so, ninety percent an idiot.”
― Stephen Graham Jones, The Angel of Indian Lake

“Can't I just seal stuff in a barrel, roll it into the cellar, and forget about it? Please? Talking about it all just keeps it alive and happening, when "dead and buried" is what it should be.”
― Stephen Graham Jones, The Angel of Indian Lake

“This is great, talking to you. We should do it all the time."
"You started it."
"Yeah, well, I'm ending it.”
― Stephen Graham Jones, The Angel of Indian Lake

“Evil’ and ‘Christian’ are interchangeable to Indians,” I tell him, daring him to clarify that.”
― Stephen Graham Jones, The Angel of Indian Lake

“The light won’t work when we need it to, because we’re in the genre we’re in, but it’s comforting to pretend it will, anyway.”
― Stephen Graham Jones, The Angel of Indian Lake

“they’ll re-enact on America what America did to us, because we don’t even count as people, to them. Not when there’s riches to be looted.”
― Stephen Graham Jones, The Angel of Indian Lake

“Doll’s eyes, Quint said, once.”
― Stephen Graham Jones, The Angel of Indian Lake

“Sharona tells me it’s a function of evolution, our inability to forget trauma. She says that crows, when they gather around one of their own dead in the street, they’re not there to mourn like people say, they’re there to document and investigate and sear this into their memory, so it never happens to any of them.”
― Stephen Graham Jones, The Angel of Indian Lake