The Final Girl Support Group Quotes

“Men don’t have to pay attention the way we do. Men die because they make mistakes. Women? We die because we’re female”
― Grady Hendrix, The Final Girl Support Group

“Dying isn’t the important thing. It’s nothing more than the punctuation mark on the end of your life. It’s everything that came before that matters. Punctuation marks, most people skip right over them. They don’t even have a sound.”
― Grady Hendrix, The Final Girl Support Group

“The line between being too careful and not being careful enough is a line you only get to cross once.”
― Grady Hendrix, The Final Girl Support Group

“Murder is man’s attempt to steal birth from women,” she says. “We make children, they kill them. We create life, they create death. It’s the way it’s always been.”
― Grady Hendrix, The Final Girl Support Group

“Each of us has a monster we must confront, a monster designed to test our personal weaknesses. And in the end, they bring about our deaths. Not literal death, but death as the conclusion of this phase and the beginning of another. Death is the harbinger of transformation, that which precedes a new life.”
― Grady Hendrix, The Final Girl Support Group

“I’m every girl who’s ever run from a man with a weapon, every girl who ever ran for her life across spaces where she was supposed to be safe. I crash into the next studio and I’m Julia running through her dorm, I’m Heather running down her high school halls, I’m Marilyn running through the Texas afternoon, I’m Dani running through a hospital, I’m Adrienne running through this camp, this camp where there will always be a girl running and screaming and screaming, and I’m Lynnette, running at last, and he can’t catch me, I’m as fast as all of us put together, I’m faster than Billy Walker, I’m faster than the Ghost, I’m faster than the entire Volker family, I’m the fastest girl in the world.”
― Grady Hendrix, The Final Girl Support Group

“Does it hurt?" I ask.

"Getting shot in the legs?" she asks. "What, because I'm paralyzed? You think it doesn't hurt? Here's an idea, Lynnette. Why don't you go get shot in something you don't use, like your head, and report back, okay?”
― Grady Hendrix, The Final Girl Support Group

“The final girl and the monster are two sides of one person. Think about it. One runs fast, and screams, and is resourceful, and fights for her friends. The other is slow, and implacable, and silent, and he kills, and is alone.”
― Grady Hendrix, The Final Girl Support Group

“Why are we more comfortable with fast, dramatic deaths than the slow decay most people get? After all, isn’t this why we fought so hard? To have the right to do what Michelle is doing right this minute?”
― Grady Hendrix, The Final Girl Support Group

“Out there in the world it’s a nonstop murder party, and if I make the slightest mistake I’ll wind up dead.”
― Grady Hendrix, The Final Girl Support Group

“Sometimes you need the money more than you need to live with yourself”
― Grady Hendrix, The Final Girl Support Group

“You say tomato and I say shamanistic vision quest that uses an ordeal to lead us inward on a journey of spiritual discovery and eventual synthesis and peace.”
― Grady Hendrix, The Final Girl Support Group

“Someone comes along saying they’ll save you and you throw yourself into their arms and let them make all the decisions. You can only hope that by the time you come to your senses they haven’t done too much damage.”
― Grady Hendrix, The Final Girl Support Group

“We tend to die, women who’ve been through the fire. Sometimes we choose obvious ways, suicide and overdoses; sometimes we’re more subtle, marrying someone who likes to use his fists, or we drink too much and keep getting behind the wheel until we run out of luck.”
― Grady Hendrix, The Final Girl Support Group

“There’s so much life and it just keeps going. Maybe not everyone’s life, but Life. (...) Because no matter how hard we try, we can’t stop life. No matter how much we fight, no matter how many we kill, things keep changing, and growing, and living, and people get lost, and fall away, and come back, and get born, and move on, and no matter what it’s all so much, it’s all so hard, the way life just keeps going and going.”
― Grady Hendrix, The Final Girl Support Group

“Isn’t the point of therapy that one day you don’t need it anymore?”
― Grady Hendrix, The Final Girl Support Group

“We get subjected to sequels. That's what makes our guys different, that's what makes them monsters - they keep coming back.”
― Grady Hendrix, The Final Girl Support Group

“I won’t let this keep chewing up more and more people. I won’t let messed-up parents keep making monsters, and I wont let these boys keep making more final girls. It’s not some profound and ancient ritual. It’s just a waste of a life.”
― Grady Hendrix, The Final Girl Support Group

“Trust me,” I say. “I’ve seen things that make your porn look like Dora the Explorer.”
― Grady Hendrix, The Final Girl Support Group

“Ever wonder what happens to those final girls? After the cops eliminate them as suspects, after the press releases their brace-faced, pizza-cheeked, bad-hair-day class photos that inevitably get included on the cover of the true crime book? After the candlelight vigils and the moments of silence, after someone plants the memorial shrub?”
― Grady Hendrix, The Final Girl Support Group

“Women get birth, so men must settle for death. And they’ve become experts on the subject.”
― Grady Hendrix, The Final Girl Support Group

“I don’t wear headphones, I don’t wear sunglasses, I make sure my jacket is tight so there’s nothing to snag, and then I say good-bye to my plant, take a deep breath, step out of my apartment, and face a world that wants me dead.”
― Grady Hendrix, The Final Girl Support Group

“The monsters in our lives are as particular about their final girls as people are about their Starbucks order. Black nonfat camp counselor with high threshold for pain and an extra shot. A double soy lesbian babysitter who’s not afraid to stab someone in the eye, hold the foam.”
― Grady Hendrix, The Final Girl Support Group

“All my words keep coming back to hurt me. The letters. This book. Everything I ever wrote is a weapon turned against me. Everything I’ve ever thought comes back to make me bleed.”
― Grady Hendrix, The Final Girl Support Group

“No,” Marilyn says, and she takes my chin and turns my head to face her. “You’re the best of us, Lynnette. You never quit. You never stopped. You saved everyone.”
― Grady Hendrix, The Final Girl Support Group

“Did you know that all the best oracles in classical mythology were crazy?”
― Grady Hendrix, The Final Girl Support Group

“No,” she says. “You have to understand. Our deaths mean more. They’re bigger. More symbolic. They have resonance. Don’t you ever stop and ask yourself why?”
― Grady Hendrix, The Final Girl Support Group

“Adrienne’s face is all over the news. It’s been a long time since anyone cared about a living final girl, but I guess a dead one really brings the circus into town.”
― Grady Hendrix, The Final Girl Support Group

“There are only six of us still around. It used to make me sad there weren’t more of us out there, but we were creatures of the eighties and the world has moved on.”
― Grady Hendrix, The Final Girl Support Group

“Good girl. Smart girl. Final girl.”
― Grady Hendrix, The Final Girl Support Group