Wake Up and Open Your Eyes Quotes

“The following books proved invaluable in the research and inspiration for this novel: The Dictionary of Demons by M. Belanger. United States of Jihad: Investigating America’s Homegrown Terrorists by Peter Bergen. Pastels and Pedophiles: Inside the Mind of QAnon by Mia Bloom and Sophia Moskalenko. We Need to Do Something by Max Booth III. The Bewdley Mayhem Omnibus by Tony Burgess. Pontypool (the play) by Tony Burgess. The Violence by Delilah Dawson. And Then I Woke Up by Malcolm Devlin. The Passage by Justin Cronin. Dark Persuasion: A History of Brainwashing from Pavlov to Social Media by Joel E. Dimsdale. Meme Wars: The Untold Story of the Online Battles Upending Democracy in America by Joan Donovan, Emily Dreyfuss, and Brian Friedberg. In the Skin of a Jihadist by Anna Erelle. A Good and Happy Child by Justin Evans. Domestic Darkness: An Insider’s Account of the January 6th Insurrection, and the Future of Right-Wing Extremism by Julie Farnam. Boys in the Valley by Philip Fracassi. Come Closer by Sara Gran. Pandemonium by Daryl Gregory. Slenderman: Online Obsession, Mental Illness, and the Violent Crime of Two Midwestern Girls by Kathleen Hale. All These Subtle Deceits by C. S. Humble. The Plague Cycle: The Unending War Between Humanity and Infectious Disease by Charles Kenny. Cell by Stephen King. Doppelgänger by Naomi Klein. The Night Guest by Hildur Knutsdottir, translated by Mary Robinette Kowal. “Hyphae” by John Langan, featured in the anthology Fungi. The Many Hauntings of the Manning Family by Lorien Lawrence. The Penguin Book of Exorcisms, edited by Joseph P. Laycock. Spirit Possession Around the World, edited by Joseph P. Laycock. Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds by Charles Mackay. Daphne and Incidents Around the House by Josh Malerman. Demon Possession: A Medical, Historical, Anthropological, and Theological Symposium, edited by John Warwick Montgomery. The Demonism of the Ages, Spirit Obsessions, Oriental and Occidental Occultism by J. M. Peebles. American Girls: One Woman’s Journey into the Islamic State and Her Sister’s Fight to Bring Her Home by Jessica Roy. Tell Me I’m Worthless by Alison Rumfitt. Deliver Us from Evil: A New York City Cop Investigates the Supernatural by Ralph Sarchie and Lisa Collier Cool. A Head Full of Ghosts by Paul Tremblay. Escaping the Rabbit Hole: How to Debunk Conspiracy Theories Using Facts, Logic and Respect by Mick West.”
― Clay McLeod Chapman, Wake Up and Open Your Eyes

“Nobody under the age of forty was on Facebook anymore. That was where all the dinosaurs socialized.”
― Clay McLeod Chapman, Wake Up and Open Your Eyes

“Anderson Cooper made him feel stupid. Fax didn’t make him feel stupid. Fax just made him feel.”
― Clay McLeod Chapman, Wake Up and Open Your Eyes

“Before the nearest cell tower seared its insidious electrical tentacles into her skull and she could no longer think for herself.”
― Clay McLeod Chapman, Wake Up and Open Your Eyes

“You're holding on to your humanity like it's the last bread crumbs left to eat before starvation sweeps through. You cling to these concepts of compassion and empathy and goodwill, but they're all slipping through your fingers, they are burning up before your very eyes.”
― Clay McLeod Chapman, Wake Up and Open Your Eyes

“This is not a zombie outbreak. Get all those goddamn movies out of your mind. This is not an infection. It is not viral. Not in a COVID cough-cough kind of way. This is like some…some…I don’t know. Some sort of social plague.”
― Clay McLeod Chapman, Wake Up and Open Your Eyes

“Your body is a temple. A ripe vessel. We want to make sure that it’s ready for receiving. “Receiving…what?” A gift, gurl. The juice cleanse was step one in Devon’s spiritual awakening. YOGAMAMA insisted she scrub the plumbing. You gotta purge yourself of any toxins polluting your body, hon. Flush—it—all—out! Make your vessel pure again. Then—and only then—can we welcome in the Wellness.”
― Clay McLeod Chapman, Wake Up and Open Your Eyes

“This is just you. You. Humanity at its worst. The hate in all of your hearts. The bitterness just finally boiled over and look what spilled out. You did this to yourselves.”
― Clay McLeod Chapman, Wake Up and Open Your Eyes

“That’s the insidious thing with YouTube, isn’t it? One video always leads to another, to another, to another, guiding you down a rabbit hole of interconnected clips. It’s not long until a kid stumbles upon a video they’re too young to watch, luring them into lord knows what, all on account of some goddamn demonic algorithm.”
― Clay McLeod Chapman, Wake Up and Open Your Eyes

“He’s baiting you. “You think this happened overnight? You think this country just went bad now?” This father pulls down his bandana. He’s chewing through his anger, ready to spit it out. “Now you’re paying attention. Where the hell have you been the last ten years? Fifty years?”
― Clay McLeod Chapman, Wake Up and Open Your Eyes

“The exact same spot where Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech…The very same location where the AIDS quilt covered the landscape… They’re all fucking on it.”
― Clay McLeod Chapman, Wake Up and Open Your Eyes

“There’s an orgy along the National Mall. There are bound to be hundreds—Jesus, thousands—of people humping away across the cherry tree–lined boulevard. There isn’t a single inch of free space as far as you can see.”
― Clay McLeod Chapman, Wake Up and Open Your Eyes

“Trust the source. Verify. Verify. Verify. If your news only comes from one outlet, and they’re the only ones reporting it, well, then…chances are it’s not true. News doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It lives and breathes and…spreads. Other outlets will catch it. Pick it up. Cover it. But it’s got to start somewhere. Begin somewhere.”
― Clay McLeod Chapman, Wake Up and Open Your Eyes

“It didn’t matter who was right. It was all about who had your attention.”
― Clay McLeod Chapman, Wake Up and Open Your Eyes

“No war at all. Just aimless anger. Anger at what they’re doing in the public schools. Anger at the libraries. Anger at vaccination mandates. Anger at—at— Jesus, anger at just about everything.”
― Clay McLeod Chapman, Wake Up and Open Your Eyes

“Baby Ghost, boo-boo, boo-boo Baby Ghost, boo-boo, boo-boo Baby Ghost, boo-boo, boo-boo Baby Ghost… Boo! Mommy Ghost, boo-boo, boo-boo Mommy Ghost, boo-boo, boo-boo Mommy Ghost, boo-boo, boo-boo Mommy Ghost… Boo! Daddy Ghost, boo-boo, boo-boo Daddy Ghost, boo-boo, boo-boo Daddy Ghost, boo-boo, boo-boo Daddy Ghost… Boo! Grandma Ghost, boo-boo, boo-boo Grandma Ghost, boo-boo, boo-boo Grandma Ghost, boo-boo, boo-boo Grandma Ghost… Boo! Grandpa Ghost, boo-boo, boo-boo Grandpa Ghost, boo-boo, boo-boo Grandpa Ghost, boo-boo, boo-boo Grandpa Ghost… Boo! Let’s go haunt, boo-boo, boo-boo Let’s go haunt, boo-boo, boo-boo Let’s go haunt, boo-boo, boo-boo Let’s go haunt… Boo!”
― Clay McLeod Chapman, Wake Up and Open Your Eyes

“Fax News Brain. It’s spreading. It’s communicable. Mad cow disease for conservatives.”
― Clay McLeod Chapman, Wake Up and Open Your Eyes

“He’s missing her holiday recital for this. Kelsey’s soloing, selected by her teacher to sing “The Greatest Love of”
― Clay McLeod Chapman, Wake Up and Open Your Eyes

“But even here, Alicia is sometimes mistaken for Kelsey’s Haitian nanny. It’s everywhere, even in their liberal haven. Unavoidable. Inescapable.”
― Clay McLeod Chapman, Wake Up and Open Your Eyes

“Mom is still Mom, isn’t she? Somewhere deep down? Trapped in her own body? There has to be a scrap of sanity left, just a glimmer of common sense buried deep beneath the calcifying wave of conspiracy theories shellacking her brain, one queasy meme after another.”
― Clay McLeod Chapman, Wake Up and Open Your Eyes

“So let’s be clear on this salient point, okay? This is not everybody. This is not some worldwide takeover. Look. Just look at who’s attacking who. This is—and I’m just going to say it here—this is some white people shit. There, I said it. Somebody had to. I’m sure your racist grandmother was a lovely person back in the day, baking her apple pies or whatever, but…I’m sorry. Look at her now. This is what happens when you let that shit fester.”
― Clay McLeod Chapman, Wake Up and Open Your Eyes

“This ain’t new. It’s just new to you. Rest of us have been out here dealing with this shit for decades now. Centuries. It’s only because life got all bad for you white folks that you’re opening up your eyes to it all, but the rest of us have been faced with this shit since the day we were born…”
― Clay McLeod Chapman, Wake Up and Open Your Eyes

“Look about you. Look around. Look who’s still here. Notice that our world leaders have gone silent. Notice that our candidates and our politicians have all slipped into hiding—or joined the fray. Notice that the people sworn to protect us are powerless. Why? Because the pillars of society have always been faulty. They hold up our ivory towers but they do not reach down deep. Now those pillars are crumbling.”
― Clay McLeod Chapman, Wake Up and Open Your Eyes

“There’s a kind of groupthink going on here. A thought or an idea has spread from one person to the next. A meme for the mind. Once that thought locks in, these people…they can’t unthink it. It just keeps looping around their brain, repeating itself. It’s like their mind is on autopilot while this thought hijacks their body. A switch. That’s what it feels like. Somebody flipped a switch in America and now all these people are going batshit. Men, women, young, old…I’ve seen elderly women and little kids and just about everybody in between lose their sense of self in the blink of an eye. Clustering together. Tearing the shit out of everything. They seem to be coming primarily from affluent areas. Suburbs. I don’t have anything to corroborate this with yet, nobody’s confirmed this, but…well, it seems like the people primarily affected by whatever are…are…Caucasian. Fax News Brain. That’s what we’re—I’m—calling it. Literal brain rot.”
― Clay McLeod Chapman, Wake Up and Open Your Eyes

“After years of Instacart and Uber rides, you do not have the tools to survive. Your liberal values aren’t going to save you now that the world has gone to total shit.”
― Clay McLeod Chapman, Wake Up and Open Your Eyes