It Waits in the Woods Quotes

“Was this grief’s only gift? The eradication of the highs, by way of leveling the lows?”
― Josh Malerman, It Waits in the Woods

“Most myths have one foot in a reality so distressing mythic decorations are necessary to hide a greater horror, even as they keep the story alive.”
― Josh Malerman, It Waits in the Woods

“There was a truth she was trying to deny, listening again for that pleading: no matter how much a family has grieved, if their missing loved one had not been found, alive or dead, there was always hope.”
― Josh Malerman, It Waits in the Woods

“She dreamed of bridges upside down on the forest floor, as if whatever walked upon them went places nobody had imagined.”
― Josh Malerman, It Waits in the Woods

“She thought of how most terrible things in life began as terrible motivations.”
― Josh Malerman, It Waits in the Woods

“I think some movies work because you believe they’re really happening. I don’t even know if a writer can set out to make something feel so real. It doesn’t have anything to do with a realistic story. No matter how unbelievable they are, some stories ring true.”
― Josh Malerman, It Waits in the Woods

“Why would she hang out in drugstore parking lots like the other teens in town when she could film a movie instead? Why text crushes all night? Why scroll meaningless memes? Why stare critically at digitally altered selfies when there was real art to be made—some actual truth to capture in all its imperfect glory?”
― Josh Malerman, It Waits in the Woods

“One of the things she overheard that day was a brief story about a demon named Opso. An old legend, Brenda understood, concerning a bridge and a mirror deep in the woods. A demon’s mournful cries, a lament in the moonlight, the clip-clop of demon feet on weak, eroded wood. An entity, Brenda heard, with a strange name and an even more unsettling goal: to find a face to replace the one it was missing.”
― Josh Malerman, It Waits in the Woods

“There was, allegedly, an entity, a creature, the demon imp who owned the bridge and was certainly close by if ever the white-and-yellow carvings were seen through the trees. The legend said that it was not so much strong, but smart and cruel, and stalked its prey in the woods. The one constant description of it was this: it’d lost its face and longed to find a suitable replacement.”
― Josh Malerman, It Waits in the Woods

“Was she moving through her own fog? Wheeling clothes and blankets into the woods, hoping to find there a setting as dark as her heart had become?”
― Josh Malerman, It Waits in the Woods