The Staircase in the Woods Quotes

“Words hurt as bad as a fist. Maybe worse. Because a fist, maybe you excuse that as oh, he couldn’t help it, he’s just an animal, a primate, his blood was up. But someone cuts you with words? Calls you names, tells you how little they think of you? That bypasses all your armor. A razor sliding across the meat of your heart.”
― Chuck Wendig, The Staircase in the Woods

“C’mon, please.” Lore shook her head. “He always was what he was, and he told us from the beginning. When someone tells you who they are, believe them. Isn’t that the saying? You knew who he was and who you were voting for. You probably voted for him the other times, too, you just won’t say it out loud. You took the hat off, oooh, but I bet you still own it. If I squint, I can still see it on your head.” She rolled her eyes. “Half of America put the hat on and took the mask off and that was that, and that’s where we’re at now.”
― Chuck Wendig, The Staircase in the Woods

“Friendship is like a house,” Lore finally managed to say, Owen’s head cradled in her lap. “You move into this place together. You find your own room there, and they find theirs, but there’s all this common space, all these shared places. And you each put into it all the things you love, all the things you are. Your air becomes their air. You put your hearts on the coffee table, next to the remote control, vulnerable and beautiful and bloody. And this friendship, this house, it’s a place of laughter and fun and togetherness, too. But there’s frustration sometimes. Agitation. Sometimes that gets big, too big, all the awful feelings, all that resentment, building up like carbon monoxide. Friendship, like a house, can go bad, too. That air you share? Goes sour. Dry rot here, black mold there, and if you don’t remediate, it just grows and grows. Gets bad enough, one or all of you have to move out. And then the place just fucking sits there, abandoned. Empty and gutted. Another ruin left to that force in the world that wants everything to fall apart. You can move back into a place like that, sometimes. But only if you tear it all down and start again.”
― Chuck Wendig, The Staircase in the Woods

“Dreams curdling fast into nightmares. It's where home stops being where the heart is. Home is where the hurt is. Where the horror lives. Home becomes another name for that place where monsters go to hide and do their terrible work.”
― Chuck Wendig, The Staircase in the Woods

“whole thing about sticks and stones was a lie. Words hurt as bad as a fist. Maybe worse. Because a fist, maybe you excuse that as oh, he couldn’t help it, he’s just an animal, a primate, his blood was up. But someone cuts you with words? Calls you names, tells you how little they think of you? That bypasses all your armor. A razor sliding across the meat of your heart.”
― Chuck Wendig, The Staircase in the Woods

“Life makes life, a fungal efflorescence of existence begetting existence.”
― Chuck Wendig, The Staircase in the Woods

“How fucked is it that I didn't even like myself enough to hate him for what he did to me?”
― Chuck Wendig, The Staircase in the Woods

“A father straight out of the 1950s with the Ronald Reagan hair and the pipe in his mouth, his salmon pants & trim cardigan spattered in the blood of his family.”
― Chuck Wendig, The Staircase in the Woods

“Those who'd perished under the weight of a difficult & unloved life.”
― Chuck Wendig, The Staircase in the Woods

“Her mental teeth worked every problem like gristle, at the cost of rest.”
― Chuck Wendig, The Staircase in the Woods

“Like a call & response inside his own mind, the spiraling thoughts like a buzzsaw, chewing into his sanity.”
― Chuck Wendig, The Staircase in the Woods

“Were these his thoughts? Were they his father's words? Had they buried themselves in his dirt so long ago that the plants that grew there felt like they were part of his garden instead of the invasive root and choking vine?”
― Chuck Wendig, The Staircase in the Woods

“It pulsed & flickered with images: scenes of war, of White House insurrection, of rallies & red hats, of the man with the face like a melting citronella candle, of transgender women made to look demonic, of a border wall going up, of starving migrants in a sun-fucked desert, of a big red X flashing cartoonishly over a vaccine needle, of red-cheeked, froth-mouthed white men thrusting tiki torches forward into the dark night as if to burn away anything that wasn't white and bright like them.”
― Chuck Wendig, The Staircase in the Woods

“The Blood Spatter Music Room, teenager playing an electric guitar, fingers ruined & bloody, the blood spraying with every power chord, rock on, kid.”
― Chuck Wendig, The Staircase in the Woods

“And that's when [he] hit him. At the end of his fist rode a world of resentment.”
― Chuck Wendig, The Staircase in the Woods

“I'd stare in those mirrors & I'd say the worst things to myself. Things you'd never say to your worst enemy, man.”
― Chuck Wendig, The Staircase in the Woods

“But that, he supposed, was what it meant to be human. To exist in constant opposition to yourself, you as your very best friend at the exact same time you were your own worst enemy. Oh, how stupid it was to be a person.”
― Chuck Wendig, The Staircase in the Woods

“Like a bad hangover dissolved by a good cup of coffee & a little sunlight. That's what this place felt like. Sunlight.”
― Chuck Wendig, The Staircase in the Woods

“A spark of destruction lit in the darkness of her wandering mind.”
― Chuck Wendig, The Staircase in the Woods

“Strings of flesh & blood hung between his cratered visage and the jungle wallpaper, like a cheese pull from pizza, sticky with marinara.”
― Chuck Wendig, The Staircase in the Woods

“His mental state had begun to dissolve: a sandcastle under assault by the steady drumbeat of the sea. Except in this case, the sea was a nightmare tide, corrosive & foul.”
― Chuck Wendig, The Staircase in the Woods

“His children were mysteries to him. They were like those Russian nesting dolls except he never saw the smaller dolls inside, only the one on the outside. The one they showed to the world. He never bothered looking deeper.”
― Chuck Wendig, The Staircase in the Woods

“Hell is not a place, or a presence. Hell is an absence.”
― Chuck Wendig, The Staircase in the Woods

“Another bedroom, a boy's bedroom out of the fifties with faded teal walls and a bed made up with rocket ship sheets, had a Scouts uniform laid out on the floor, and on the ceiling above it, a swinging noose made from clothesline.”
― Chuck Wendig, The Staircase in the Woods

“He found himself wandering the ever-shifting rooms of this place, but they were half-formless, bubbling & melting even as he passed through them, like the sloppy hallucinations of so-called artificial intelligence.”
― Chuck Wendig, The Staircase in the Woods

“Like when she gave Billy a piece of chocolate and he said, 'This tastes weird, Mama,' and she told him, 'The pills make everything taste weird, sweet baby.' But it wasn't the pills making it taste bad. It was the Windex.”
― Chuck Wendig, The Staircase in the Woods

“That was the funny thing about a fear of the dark: you weren't really afraid of it, but rather what lurked within it. A perfect emblem of the fear of the unknown.”
― Chuck Wendig, The Staircase in the Woods

“Words hurt as bad as a fist. Maybe worse. Because a fist, maybe you could excuse that as oh, he couldn't help it, he's just an animal, a primate, his blood was up. But someone cuts you with words? Calls you names, tells you how little they think of you? That bypasses all your armor. A razor sliding across the meat of your heart.”
― Chuck Wendig, The Staircase in the Woods

“But the parents, they hated each other. Hate so strong it trapped them together, like chains.”
― Chuck Wendig, The Staircase in the Woods

“In the slanted morning light, the intersection of reality & unreality was dizzying.”
― Chuck Wendig, The Staircase in the Woods